23102009 Slide 1

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Learning Literacies for a Digital Age

• ELESIG symposiumLongbridge Technology Park20
  November 2008
• Helen BeethamBecka Currant

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About the LLiDA project
Helen Beetham Lou McGill Allison
Littlejohn Small-scale JISC study Reporting in
Jan 09 (ish)
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Our questions and methods

• 1. What practices underpin effective learning in
  the digital age? (a) conceptual and competency
  frameworks relevant to learning literacies in UK
  HE and FE
• (b) The changing landscape of learning
  literacies
• 2. How are learning literacies currently being
  supported in UK HE and FE institutions?(a)
  Institutional audits
• (b) Best practice exemplars
• 3. What is the evidence of successful outcomes
  for learners from different types of learning
  literacy provision?

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What do we mean by digital literacies?
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Activity 1

• In pairs
• Talk, write, draw, map, sing, act or dance your
  definition of digital literacies to each other
• Write down some of component skills, literacies,
  competences, capabilities, practices etc you
  would include under your definition of digital
  literacies
• Please be prepared to give these up as we will be
  making shameless use of your ideas!

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Feedback
this leaves us with some tensions.
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Instrumental (technical/economic) definition
Make your training investment go furtheronly
invest in the skills your workforce needs!
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Socially situated definition
socially situated practices
interpreting understanding manipulating analysing
creating sharing learning (how to)
what kind of society?
social value

• information
• representation
• media
• knowledge

Criticality Awareness Agency Value Purpose
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digital tools are changing really fast!
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literacy learning stays much the same!
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literacy as entitlement

• a foundational knowledge or capability, such as
  reading, writing or numeracy, on which more
  specific skills depend
• a cultural entitlement a practice without which
  a learner is impoverished in relation to
  culturally valued knowledge

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literacy as difference

• communication expressing how an individual
  relates to culturally significant communications
  in a variety of media
• the need for practice acquired through
  continued development and refinement in different
  contexts, rather than once-and-for-all mastery
• a socially and culturally situated practice
  often highly dependent on the context in which it
  is carried out
• self-transformation - literacies (and their lack)
  have a lifelong, lifewide impact

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LLiDAs starting point

• By digital literacies we mean the range of
  practices that underpin effective learning in a
  digital age
• We use the term effective learning as
  characteristic of skilled, digitally aware
  learners with the capacity to participate in
  learning using technologies of their own
  choosing.
• We use the term digital age as a shorthand for
  technical, social, economic, cultural and
  educational contexts in which digital forms of
  information and communication predominate

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LLiDA literacy resources
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literacies

• academic literacies

information and media literacies
ICT literacies
critical thinking problem solving reflection acade
mic writing note-taking concept mapping time
management analysis, synthesis evaluation creativi
ty, innovation self-directed learning collaborativ
e learning
searching and retrieving question
framing critical evaluation managing
resources navigating info spaces content
creation editing, repurposing enriching
resources referencing sharing content
ICT skills web skills social networking using
CMC using TELE using digital devices word
processing using databases analysis
tools assistive tech personalisation
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identifying and critiquing competence frameworks
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Auditing institutional provision
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Developing the audit

• Mainly descriptive/qualitative data that does
  justice to the complexity of the phenomena
• But quantitative data has rhetorical value,
  particularly scoping the need for further
  development
• Tools should support institutional change
  processes as well as data collection

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Activity 2

• In pairs, choose one section of the audit
• Interview each other about how this looks at your
  respective institutions
• How revealing is this exercise? What data
  collection and analysis issues do you foresee?

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Snapshots of best practice
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• Looking under the institutional radar and behind
  the institutional stories
• Excellent practice, not standardised provision
• Excellent institutional policies and policy
  frameworks
• Excellent central services provision e.g.
  library, learning development, e-learning, ICT
  support
• Excellent provision embedded into curricula
• a. specialist modules
• b. embedded skills
• Excellent learner-led provision, e.g. formal
  and informal mentoring, buddying, sharing of
  strategies, learner representation

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Activity 3

• Consider examples of excellent practice known to
  you, especially types 3 and 4
• Could any of them become one of our snapshots?
• Individually, try filling in a submission (you
  could get 100!)

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Discussion over to you
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• Why research digital literacies?
• What research issues does our project raise
  (including methods)?
• What outputs would actually be useful?

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• http//www.academy.gcal.ac.uk/llida/

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Challenges to this paradigm capacity

• I think our teachers have IT lessons, I think
  maybe once a year
• The teachers dont know how to use them their
  understanding of computers is behind ours
• Students experiences in commercial contexts
  led them to see the university VLE as
  unimaginative and the tutors use of it as
  lacking in vision. SEEL project, Greenwich

Learners are developing and practicing these
outside of formal learning contexts
Attention Creativity Social participation
Developing and projecting identities
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• Many of todays learners use technology primarily
  for social networking.
• Learners often find asynchronous discussion
  forums (such as those within VLEs) problematic,
  and they are used less frequently and
  enthusiastically than other forms of
  communication. Learners suggest this is due to
  the lower frequency and promptness of
  contributions compared with other technologies
  learners use to support their own social
  networking.
• The studies found that learners share work with
  each other at previously unsuspected levels.
  Informal learning, facilitated by technology, is
  also commonplace. (From LXP report)

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Challenges to this paradigm cultures

• GoogleGen knowledge culture
• Style- and usage-based
• Justification-in-use
• Issue-based methods and explanations
• Peer review (open community)
• Rapid response to change
• Pro-sumer cultures (cut-and-paste, re-edit,
  repurpose)
• Personal identity, reflection
• Circulation, connection

• Academic knowledge culture
• Evidence-based
• Historical justification
• Discipline-based methods and explanations
• Peer review (closed community)
• Evolutionary development (paradigm shifts every
  10 yrs?)
• Culture of production
• Objectivity, critique
• Publication, reputation

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Some counter-evidence

• While the students expect to be able to set
  themselves up, technologically they will not
  expect the technology to encroach on what they
  see as the key benefits from university
  interaction and learning.
• I prefer to learn face to face with a teacher
  helping me understand any problems that I have.
• Traditional teacher/pupil learning methods are
  preferred as the backbone for everyday learning.
  Technology needs to be used as a tool to
  complement this way of learning.
• (JISC Student Expectations study, November 2007)
• Consultations carried out with children, parents
  and other citizen juries to determine preferred
  scenarios for education in 2025 and beyond
  (Beyond Current Horizons) find a strong
  preference for relationships with teachers to
  remain at the heart of the learning experience.
  (FutureLab, verbal report, February 2008)

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An alternative paradigm

• Universities and colleges rethink themselves as
  communities in which learners skills are valued
  and recognised
• Learners receive credit for developing their own
  and other peoples skills this is an explicit
  part of the contract between learners and the
  institution
• Universities and colleges focus on what learners
  value in higher learning, recognising that this
  is different from what they value in other social
  and cultural spaces.
• Technology is used to support core academic
  values and practices such as problem solving,
  creativity, critique depth of attention,
  scholarly collaboration and research. These uses
  of technology form the core of institutions ICT
  offering to learners.

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Common to both paradigms

• Institutions and their staff understand what
  work and community participation entail in the
  digital age, and prepare learners to be active
  participants in those spheres
• The focus is on embedding skills for a digital
  age into all curricula.

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Some alternative research questions

• What do learners value of the experience they
  get through formal higher/further education?
• How can technologies support those values and
  empower individuals and institutions to uphold
  them?
• When do learners experience themselves as being
  effective agents in this environment, and what
  role can/does technology play?
• What alternative futures are we bringing about
  (as well as preparing learners for) in our
  approach to developing digital literacies?