Digital literacy : – a necessity in digital learning spaces

• Background and purposeWe assume that, in a possible “post-Covid-19”-scenario, the distance-based teaching at KTH will still be a vital influence onKTH-students' learning experiences and future working lives. This assumption is corroborated by the newly implementedKTH policy on digitalisation, which indicates a higher degree of digital learning activities [1]. By digital literacy we mean the general ability to work productively with digital and technical tools, in particular in blended ordistance-based learning activities. We here use the framework of JISC [2] to define six different elements of digitalcapabilities, whose content can be summarized as: Functional skills, critical use, creative production, participation,development, and self-actualizing. Viewing this framework, we conclude that digital literacy ispart of the general academic skills that students of today need to possess. And as digital literacy is a general academic skill, it is natural to view the library as a promoter of digital literacy. This is in linewith the library already being a learning space for different media literacies [3]. A recent example of this is the “datacarpentry”-activities produced by the KTH Library with collaborators [4]. Hence, our purpose is to investigate how the KTH Library can be both a virtual arena and a physical learning space for digitalliteracy.Finished work/ongoing workWe made a survey in order to see if, and how, digital literacy is strengthened by learning activities at KTH today. In thesurvey, we frame the questions according to the six JISC-elements. The survey was divided into three parts: a. A directed survey, with follow-up interviews, to KTH Program Directors as well as key administrators of KTH educationalprograms. b. A general survey to students, with emphasis on students in later years of study. c. A directed survey to PhD-candidates, who have participated in KTH Library learning activities recently. From the results of the survey in c. above, we have developed a few workshops on digital literacy, in particular on differentaspects of research data management. The ideas for them also come from needs and requests made by students and teachersin earlier contacts with the KTH Library staff and learning activities. Subjects of these workshops are reflecting the sixelements of the JISC-framework.Results/observations/lessons learnedThe preliminary results of our survey indicate that aspects of digital literacy are covered to some extent by learning activitiestoday, but that the coverage is far from complete at KTH. In our future work, we will explore additional results from thesurvey.Take-home messageWe have mapped how digital literacy is facilitated at KTH today via a survey. We have developed a series of workshopson different aspects of digital literacy for an academic environment. And through our survey and these workshops, we havegained additional insights on how a library can be a natural learning space for fostering digital academic skills. We will in ourtalk highlight some of the achievements, and also briefly discuss some of the challenges for the future.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Lärande (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Learning (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Digital literacy

Global Competence

Course development

Digitally flexible

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