Digital Literacies as a Postgraduate Attribute?• JISC Developing Digital

Literacies Programme • Focus groups / multimodal

journalling in year 1PGCE, taught Masters, taught Masters (Distance), PhD

• Case studies across four areas in year 2:Academic Writing CentreLearning Technologies Unit LibraryInstitution-wide

Digital academic practice • Academic practices are

overwhelming textual• These are situated in social

and disciplinary contexts• Textual practices are

increasingly digitally mediated• These practices take place

across a range of domains• Students create complex

assemblages enrolling a range of digital, material, spatial and temporal resources

Complex resourcesNeither all ‘institutional’, nor personal

Office tools (primarily Microsoft, plus Google docs and Prezi)Institutional VLEs (Moodle and Blackboard)Email (institutional, personal and work-based)Synchronous conferencing services (Skype, Elluminate)Calendars (iCal, Google)Search engines and databases (including Google, Google Scholar, library databases, professional databases such as Medline, etc),Social networking sites (Facebook, Academia.edu, LinkedIn) and services (Twitter)Image editing software (photoshop, lightbox)EndnoteReference works (Wikipedia, online dictionaries and social bookmarking sites such as Mendeley)GPS servicesDevices (PCs at the institution and at home, laptops including MacBooks, iPhones, iPads, Blackberries and E-book readers).

3

Spaces, places and times• Making, not just finding,

places for study‘Digital literacies’ as coping strategy

• Managing the separation and integration of personal, professional and study placesEmail accountsPrinters in schoolsSocial networks etc

Distance studentsWho controls what?

IOE, tutor, student, ULIPMultimodal identity work, across a range of media

What kind of relationships?Relationship with the institution almost exclusively via tutor, as experienced via the VLEA sense of engagement with modules, not the institutionSense of ‘intimacy’ associated with collaborative technology and richer media

A web of engagementLearning about one technology via use of another, e.g. introduction to Google Docs via Skype chats

Digital literacies From my experience is they... it was, I mean... I guess, partly because it’s, you know, it’s an online programme; you know, there’s the assumption that everyone’s going to be able to do that. I think that, for me, it was the first time that I’d used Google docs like that; so it was, you know, not something that I was used to, but, I guess I’m... I consider myself, you know, fairly savvy in technological matters, so it was... you know, it wasn’t a steep learning curve for me, I wasn’t pretty intimidated like, oh, yes, these are [inaudible], so I just understood that the information’s there and everybody can edit it whenever they want, it’s not difficult; and I imagine that that’s what it was like for most of the people. (Danny Int 1)

They do all the sessions with no video so we don’t see each other, the classmates, we don’t see each other. It does enable you to start talking, raise your hand, maybe its less threatening. (Lara Int 1)

Digital literacies When you first do Elluminate I remember being so nervous and unsure and, you know, it’s just you’re in the darkness, only one person can speak, you are speaking into the abyss really. As we’ve used that software more people are putting up more smiley faces when they’re talking, stuff like that. But really when I’m talking I’m thinking, I’m not really concentrating on the smiley faces [unclear]. But initially that was really daunting and difficult to do. (Bokeh Int 1)

Digital literacies One of the challenges of undertaking an online course is that most probably you will do this alongside ‘other’ activities such as a job or other. As a result you end up with multiple email addresses and different folders, files and docs in your computer. I am finding that one needs to be very organised and a practical thinker in order to: retrieve the information you need, navigate between one and in the other. (Lara email)

Project webpage: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/developingdigitalliteracies/DigLitPGAttribute.aspx Project blog: http://diglitpga.jiscinvolve.org/wp/Project contacts:Lesley Gourlay (l.gourlay@ioe.ac.uk)Martin Oliver (m.oliver@ioe.ac.uk)