This session will introduce the work being undertaken by a JISC- funded study based at the Institute, which is exploring what digital literacies our students are using or need to develop. This work has followed a phased approach, starting with general data from the iGraduate survey, using this to inform a series of focus groups (with PGCE, Masters, Doctoral and Online MRes students), and to lay the groundwork for a longitudinal study with a dozen students. The findings to date have identified practical challenges facing students' use of technology in their studies, pointed to conceptual issues such as their developing sense of professional and scholarly identity, and allowed us to map the spaces and places that students use or create as they pursue their studies. The presentation will identify early implications and provide an overview of the remainder of the project's work. Participants will be invited to relate the project's work to their students' activities and inform the implementation phase that will conclude the project.

1. Understanding and
supporting students' digital
literacies
Martin Oliver &
Jude Fransman

2. Overview
• What’s so important about ‘digital literacy’?
• An introduction to the JISC project
• What we have been doing, and how
• Themes and issues
• What this might mean for you
• What this all might mean for the IOE
– Slides available from diglitpga.jiscinvolve.org/
– References included in slide notes
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3. Context: digital who?
• Prensky, Tapscott, Oblinger & Oblinger
– Digital natives, Net generation, Generation
Y, Millenials…
• We know our learners, and they’re not us
(even down to how their brains work)
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4. Some have surmised that teenagers use different parts of
their brain and think in different ways than adults when at the
computer. We now know that it goes even further—their
brains are almost certainly physiologically different. *…+
Digital Natives accustomed to the twitch-
speed, multitasking, random-access, graphics-
first, active, connected, fun, fantasy, quick-payoff world of
their video games, MTV, and Internet are bored by most of
today’s education, well meaning as it may be. *…+
The cognitive differences of the Digital Natives cry out for new
approaches to education with a better fit.‖ And, interestingly
enough, it turns out that one of the few structures capable of
meeting the Digital Natives’ changing learning needs and
requirements is the very video and computer games they so
enjoy. This is why Digital Game-Based Learning is beginning to
emerge and thrive.
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5. • There are trends, but no generational differences
Rather than being empirically and theoretically informed,
the debate can be likened to an academic form of a
‘moral panic’
(Bennett, Maton & Kervin, 2008)
• Most students use whatever the course requires
them to (…but are inconsistent in what they think
is “required”…)
• There are important exceptions to engagement
– E.g. minorities who engage in different ways, in the UK
and internationally
(Jones, Ramanau, Cross & Healing, 2010; Czerniewicz, Williams & Brown, 2009)
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6. Context: digital what?
• ‘Digital literacy’ pushed nationally but ambiguous
– Functional access
– Skills development
– Situated practices
– Creative appropriation / identity work
(Sharpe & Beetham, 2010)
• Also argued that digital literacies should be
understood as textual, not technological,
practices
(Jones & Lea, 2008)
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7. • A cluster of issues:
– Skills development for ‘economic competitiveness’
– Development of critical and research skills
– Many stick to the basics rather than explore possibilities
– Most learners are still strongly led by tutors and course
practices
– ‘Clash’ between informal practices and academic norms
There is a tension between recognising an 'entitlement'
to basic digital literacy, and recognising technology
practice as diverse and constitutive of personal identity,
including identity in different peer, subject and workplace
communities, and individual styles of participation.
(Beetham, McGill & Littlejohn, 2009)
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8. JISC project overview
• Digital Literacies programme, 10 projects
– http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/developingd
igitalliteracies/developingdigitalliteraciesprog.aspx
• “Digital literacies as a postgraduate attribute”
• 2-year funded project
– 1st year, student research
– 2nd year, implementation projects
• What do our students do and need?
• What can we change to help them?
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9. Project team
Jude Fransman
Lesley Gourlay
Susan McGrath
Martin Oliver
Gwyneth Price
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10. Year one: student research
• Start broad and shallow; go deeper
– Review of existing data via iGraduate
– Focus groups
– Journalling study
• Introduce each in turn
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11. iGraduate review
• Almost nothing about students’ identity
– Blackboard ‘confusing’, library ‘fantastic’
• More on study practices
– Want more discussion with peers, tutors
– Concerns about lack of timely response to
accommodation emails, and “ridiculous”
password change policy
• Little on skills
– Requests for orientation sessions
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12. • Lots about access
– Delays getting into VLE (up to two weeks)
– Not enough open access computers
– Sign on frustratingly slow (up to 20 minutes)
– Not all students can access online course info
– Frustration about internet access – particularly
WiFi – and blocking Skype etc.
– Request for out-of-hours IT support
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13. Focus Groups
• Aims: to identify course-specific issues/themes
• Methodology:
– 3 face-to-face focus groups held with PGCE, MA and
PhD students
– +1 online focus group with Distance MRes students via
Elluminate
– Selection: spread across courses, demographics and
between part-time/full-time students
– Challenges (coordinating the PGCE group)
• Focus on resources, domains, practices, identities
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14. Domains and Resources
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15. Well, in my bedroom, on my bed, it's mainly my
mobile and going through my emails, travel
information, whether on Facebook, my mobile
too. Then, um, and in the study room, that
would be my laptop and, um, laptop, that would
be Blackboard, research, entertainment.
(MA student)
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16. Emerging issues
• Who controls access to domains/resources?
• How are resources defined as appropriate to one
domain or another? (E.g. for study/work
socialising)
• How do resources function differently in different
domains? (E.g. using IOE email in the library/ at
home)
• How do resources in particular domains configure
students relationally? (E.g. Elluminate/Skype)
• How do resources connect to other resources?
(E.g. Googledocs => Skype)
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17. Digital Practices
With the forums, I think I would have found that very difficult to
track posting because when we’re meant to be looking at all the
different conversations and participating, I would have found
that too time-consuming to trawl through. So, what I found
more helpful is just... Obviously you get the e-mail alerts from
any forums that you’re involved in and so I just, you know, check
those occasionally and look at all the stuff that’s coming in and
make a mental note and then just go in maybe once a day and
reply to the ones that relate to me rather than having to search
around the forums themselves. So, that’s how I’ve handled it but
I just kind of did that as my own system.
(OMRes student)
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18. Emerging issues
• Searching for and managing information
(access/awareness/filtering strategies etc.)
• Learning how to use new resources (e.g.
Interactive Whiteboards)
• Identifying the right resource for the task
• Problems with software/hardware/
infrastructure
• Who has responsibility for addressing
technical problems?
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19. Student Identities
The only thing I struggle with, like I just mentioned it earlier
before, is the issue of like keeping your private life separate
from your work life because I think increasingly the two,
you're being forced to kind of mush the two together. Because
like Birkbeck used to have its own email server and it would
provide you with an email. Now it’s provided by Gmail and it’s
like everybody knows that Gmail is the nosiest thing in the
world and tracks absolutely everything you do. And […] I'm a
little bit uncomfortable with the idea that my work email
knows what shopping I do and, you know what I mean? I just
find the whole thing is starting to get a little bit scary.
(PhD student)
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20. Emerging issues
• Do digital resources (e.g. VLEs or platforms like
Facebook/Skype etc.) segregate or merge
student/social/professional identities?
• How do students relate to the university as an
institution? (E.g. physical building; website;
institutional email account; representatives such
as exam centres or tutors)
• How are students configured or how do they
configure themselves as learning communities
(E.g. Blackboard/Facebook/Skype/face-to-face
meetings etc.)
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21. Longitudinal journaling
• Aims: To generate in-depth multimodal data on
student’s digital practices in each of the 4 courses
• Methodology
– Methodology piloted by the three researchers
– 3 students selected from each course (12 in total)
– 3 interviews with regular contact in between to
discuss data collection
– Interest in data collected, representation of data and
process of data-collection
– Analyzed according to students’ own theorisations of
their data
– Methodology mediated by the device (iPod Touch)
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22. Mapping spaces and resources
http://youtu.be/3IXGspusiWU
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23. Access
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24. Print literacies
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25. Digital/digitised texts
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26. 26

27. • Challenges with resources and strategies to
resolve them
o Knowledge and skills
o Problems with technology/
infrastructure
o Learning
o Institutional and informal support
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28. • Feelings of belonging/isolation in different
spaces mediated by resources
The sense of community is much stronger at my new school.
People stay at work later- at the old school everyone left
early. And at the old school we weren’t given any work
space in the English department so we had to work in the
staff room but at the new one we have desks so we really
feel connected to the department. And its great because
everyone works at their desks and then for lunch they have
‘turn-in’ time when we all move our chairs away from our
desks and eat together in a circle.
(PGCE student)
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29. Emerging
methodological/
conceptual issues
How are students
processing and representing
their data?
• Different multimodal writing
practices (e.g. handwritten
journal in notebook V virtual
notebook apps)
• Video used in different ways
(e.g. audio explanation of
images; capturing moving
images; capturing sound and
ambience)
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30. Domains: access and control
• Reluctance to use inscribed iPod in public
• Reluctance to use certain modes of data
collection in certain spaces (e.g. camera in IOE
library because prohibited; video in public
galleries because of legal issues or school
placements because of personal discomfit)
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31. So, what might this mean for you?
• Just a small window on a complex picture
• A few minutes for discussion:
• What does this look like from your position?
– What technologies do you require students to use?
– How do you react when they don’t?
– Where and when do they do this? (Do you know?)
– What do they struggle with or get concerned about?
– What could we (all) do to help them?
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32. What might this mean for the IOE?
• Your feedback:
– What should we be aware of in the project?
– What needs to be fed back to committees,
services, etc?
– What do teachers, learners and support staff need
to do differently?
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33. Thanks
For more about the project,
including access to the slides from this session,
go to: diglitpga.jiscinvolve.org
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