Baseline Review: Worcester College of Technology Digital Literacy
(WORDLE)
Worcester College of Technology
WORDLE
Baseline Review: Worcester College of Technology Digital Literacy
WORDLE
The landscape of WCT for digital literacy (Wordle)
Baseline Overview
1. Introduction - The Wordle Project
2. Introduction – Overview of the college
3. Study Centre Provision at WCT
4. The Personal Tutor role at WCT
5. Moodle platform and usage at WCT
6. The Digital Technology Support Infrastructure at WCT
7. WCT PAL Agenda
8. CPD staff training at WCT
9. Previous WCT projects & previous knowledge considerations
10. Project start-up – college profiling and baseline case studies
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1: Introduction - The Wordle Project
Evaluation of a pilot blended learning approach at the college called PAL (Personally
Accountable Learning) over the last academic year has shown that teachers and learners at
Worcester College of Technology have a varied range of skills in their digital literacy. This
ranges from teachers being able to create the materials or students using technology for
their learning effectively. As a college we have found that blended learning courses
developed by teachers with strong digital literacy skills tended to be more effective than
those who had weaker skills and more digitally literate students were more successful at
learning through PAL packs than their colleagues with lower level skills and confidence. It
has become apparent that digital literacy skills are the crucial underpinnings to the
effectiveness of implementing the PAL model of delivery. The PAL model is described in
more detail later in this report.
Our vision for digital literacy is to focus on skills and attributes that learner’s need for
becoming effective 21 century lifelong learners, and those that teachers need to make the
best use of technology to deliver and support learning. The focus would not be on specific
technologies or applications but more on identifying and developing the skills that would
enable confidence in using today’s technologies emerging technologies that they would
encounter in their future learning, teaching, vocational and personal lives.
Objectives

Review college profile of skills and abilities to identify needs and expectations for
21st Century learners and educators

Identifying and Mapping digital literacy skills for learners and teachers at various
levels of education from school leavers through to graduates

Work with OCN to develop a framework of short qualifications for both lecturers
and students in digital literacy and roll out at WCT and for wider availability

Research progression and measurement of change over time of digital literacy
skills (prior to training and then after intervention) from school leavers through to
graduates at WCT – OCN intervention Impact Study

Report and dissemination of outputs from project through many dissemination
channels for JISC community and beyond

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Dissemination of all reports and outputs
Baseline Review: Worcester College of Technology Digital Literacy
Fig 1.1: Project Plan Basic Diagram
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Our initial baseline case studies (Studies A, B and C in Fig 1.1) and existing information we
already know from previous projects and our college infrastructure (as seen in red on Fig
1.1) will offer profile data about our college community to proceed further into the project. It
is intended that this baseline data will be used to inform our ‘starting point’ but also be used
further into the project to pull together many sources of information to conduct an in depth
skills and needs analysis.
For example later in the project we intend to probe much deeper into the skills, confidences,
usage habits and abilities from our whole college community. We then aim to delve into the
reality of issues raised to identify key strengths, weaknesses, challenges or pockets to
harness to support digital literacy at Worcester College of Technology. This will not only be
from a skills analysis point of view but also looking at how our current infrastructures and
roles systems can be involved collaboratively to enhance the support of digital literacy skills.
The knowledge gained from this project will help identify the core areas of digital literacy that
need the most support so a framework of OCN units can be developed to target the needs in
these areas but also offer a menu of bespoke optional interest areas. These OCN units will
developed and piloted with user groups from both the learner community and teaching
community.
Our project will conclude with a study to measure the impact of such OCN intervention
offering before and after data to see the effects of such support. This is intended to offer
comparable data between those who have not had intervention and those who have.
We have produced a basic diagram of our project and broken down our baseline information
into two categorisations, those in red and those in blue (top section of Fig 1.1). The red is
existing knowledge we have about our college community (Fig 1.2) and the blue is that we
are additionally adding (Fig 1.3). The rest of this baseline document will be themed by these
categorisations to offer an overview of each of the college infrastructures, resources and
support teams that will play crucial parts, both human and environmentally, throughout our
project and any the extra information we intend to collect from the case studies we have
conducted for our baseline.
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2: Overview of the College
This research will be conducted at Worcester College of Technology (WCT) over two years
from July 2011 – July 2013. Worcester College of Technology is a medium/large city centre
college that offers a broad range of educational course in a variety of subjects and levels,
from school age diploma courses (14-16), Entry level qualifications, FE A-levels courses,
BTEC and other vocational qualifications, HE courses such as HND’s, Foundation degrees
and Professional Qualifications, it also caters for community based learning and work placed
learning. The college offers a unique opportunity to measure and address digital literacy
from a cross section of perspectives from teachers and learners within the lifelong learning
sector.
The college also holds key partnerships with local employers linking learning with the
workplace, with many courses linked with apprenticeships as well as providing crucial work
placement connections for students. This link with the local business community could
provide a core insight into what attributes employers expect from young workers. The
college also has strong partnerships with higher education institutions and delivers HE and
professional courses accredited by link universities. Additionally the college is already a
registered and accredited OCN provider with an established good reputation.
Fig 1.2: Existing Knowledge and Infrastructures in the college
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3: Study Centre Provision at WCT
Over the last decade the college has heavily invested in study centre environments to help
facilitate learning and teaching in the college. Their concept was derived from students being
surrounded by and immersed in all the tools they need to help them with their learning, such
as the traditional library resources, computers, study centre assistants and easy access to
learning support personnel. This environment currently supports the more information
literacy stand of digital literacy and the team are very keen to heavily input into the project to
see how they could best support the learning of information literacy but also assist learners
and staff later in their OCN study.
The study centres are organised by subject area housing relevant resources or informed
personnel all with the subject orientation to help them. They are also widely spread around
the college, interestingly all having their own identity as a learning environment. For
example, the management and professional study centre feels more like a traditional
academic university library environment due to the more mature learners and courses it
caters for, whereas the more vocational study centres caters more for learners that are more
socially and physically orientated with more tactile resources and equipment.
These have been embedded into the practices at the college and not only are they used as
drop in centres for learning and the PAL initiative, but also enable timetabled sessions so
teachers can additionally plan and facilitate the more structured inquiry based independent
learning methods within their curriculum or scheme of work. These centres are an ideal
environment to both ethnographically study the habits of learners and teachers but also ideal
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to use as an effective platform to embed the OCN qualifications and support them
throughout the project and beyond.
It is the study centres we will use as our hub for the project, from the distribution of surveys,
to setting up the observational tasks that will also be conducted. The study centre team are
also at the chalk face with the everyday student enquiries that come in about the use of
technology, finding resources, barriers they need to overcome in their learning; and the
learning habits they have. This study centre knowledge will be harnessed both in the
development of baseline auditing but also when we develop and deliver our OCN units
The study centres play a crucial role during induction and introducing students to our study
centre environment and support provision. With this project we aim to possibly extend this
support to a more formal structure within the OCN framework.
The induction phase in the study centres is usually at the beginning of term and covers the
range of resources available, key support personnel, demonstrations, sources of future
reference and advice. This usually happens to each and every course group at the beginning
of the academic year and often can take a whole morning or afternoon. Further to this
students have an additional session that creates their IT network account and introduces
them to the online resources the college provides, from library based resources to the virtual
learning environment and college portal. These two sessions are aimed to offer a strong
overview of all they need for their learning journey and introduce them to their study centre
teams. Each study centre has their own dedicated subject team so learners and staff have
both a familiar face and a team that has focused knowledge around the resources available
in their subject area. This is a provision we aim to extend beyond just the study centre
induction period to formalise it into an underpinning OCN module that not only to introduces
such resources and environment but also develop their ongoing information literacy as they
progress by regularly reinforcing and practicing these skills.
The study centre staff team have been an integral role in the success of previous ILT based
projects, initiatives or strategies. Their close relationships and proximity to teaching staff and
teaching sessions has established them as the key point of contact for support and advice
especially in the job of locating good quality resources and to provide assistance within
teaching sessions. In previous projects it has been the study centre team that have been
best placed to lead on implementation or assistance especially in their liaison role with
teachers for. In our previous JISC project MRcute it was the study centre staff who took on
the role of populating the repository, advised on meta-tagging, held training sessions and
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encouraged staff to engage with sharing resources. They have also played a key part in
making teaching staff aware of new and emerging resources, practices and projects.
The study centre team take information literacy very seriously and are very keen to develop
their informal support to a more formal basis. Currently they offer short non-accredited
courses on the use of resources and information. However attendance on these courses is
left to the discretion of those students who feel they need it. Often teachers report that this
needs to be a more underpinning feature for all their students. Both teachers and study
centre teams are very keen for a more formal framework of accredited learning hours to be
dedicated to this. This project is the ideal catalyst to develop OCN provision in this area
4: The Personal Tutor Role at WCT
In September 2011 the College introduced the role of the personal tutor as a support
framework for both learners and teachers. The personal tutors take away much of the
underpinning stress from teachers and support the basics such as study skills, emotional
support networks and additional issues that learners have to ensure teachers can better
focus on subject delivery. The personal tutors focus entirely on the learners needs beyond
that of just the classroom. They deliver sessions throughout the entire academic year directly
focusing on needs such as study skills, UCAS, career planning, e-safety, CV’s, assignment
support and other issues that are central to a learner’s emotional and academic support as a
young person in education. These sessions are delivered in a structured way using both
group and one to one methods and extending where necessary to the more sensitive
support issues such as mental health or sexual health to same but a few.
It is intended that the personal tutors will play an integral role in the development, then
delivery and support of the OCN qualifications to students. It is envisaged that with OCN
they will be offering a more structured and accredited framework around topics they already
address that fall under the digital literacy OCN spotlight. These tutorial sessions and the
personal tutor roles are the ideal platforms and existing infrastructures to deliver OCN to
students and we intend to use this channel as the main vehicle to support student digital
literacy skills within the college. It is envisaged that together the personal tutors and study
centres can work in tandem to provide a strong underpinning level of support in both
information literacy and digital literacy.
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5: Moodle platform and usage at WCT
In 2005 the college made the decision to move from their existing VLE and transfer over to
Moodle. This transition saw the use of the institutional VLE vastly expand, and additional
development has been undertaken to further integrate a range of open source supporting
systems. The VLE is widely used with over 1500 courses and approximately 10,000 hits on
an average day. The college considers itself to be in a good position having an embedded
and widely used e-learning infrastructure to be able to deliver and implement digital literacy
support. Having an embedded VLE and the study centre environments, both offer an
excellent platform and strong successful foundation to build the digital literacy project upon.
It is aimed that the VLE will be a core technology in assisting the delivery of the OCN units
both as a source of support but also as a learning platform to offer a blended learning
approach. The VLE is at the very heart of the current PAL agenda and is used widely by
personal tutors and study centre teams.
6: The Digital Technology Support Infrastructure at WCT
The college has both an IT and an ILT strategy that is regularly reviewed and updated. The
current ILT strategy focuses heavily on the embedding of PAL within the college, a key
driving force that will underpin the long-term need and future strategy to integrate digital
literacy support for both staff and students.
The college has a heavy presence of IT in both classroom and study centres. The majority of
classrooms all have at least a PC and a projector as standard. In many classrooms and the
study centres students can access desktop machines as well as laptops. Each member of
teaching staff either has a college laptop, desktop machine or can easily gain access to a
computer via the five study centres throughout the college. One study centre also has a
dedicated teaching area of machines with assisted technology or equipment installed.
The college has heavily invested in wireless provision so staff and students have broad
coverage of wireless connectivity throughout the campuses. Alongside this there is also a
virtual private network (VPN) service so all users can connect into their college network from
anywhere, not just inside the institution.
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This physical technology infrastructure is well supported by a staffed IT helpdesk provision
with a direct and dedicated IT Support phone number and email. This service is available
from 8:30 am to 5pm and up to 9pm two evenings a week with jobs allocated to an
immediate response team member. This team have a wide and in-depth range of expertise
in both hardware and software to ensure all needs are catered for. There is also a member
of the IT support helpdesk based within a study centre to ensure that a face to face presence
is at close hand in the more central college building. In addition the college has developed
an online virtual help desk for password resets or to set up privacy settings to manage your
own account off campus. All of the online support can be easily accessed from the college’s
main website or through their internal personalised My Site portal page.
The college offers wide scale wireless coverage that enables anytime, anyplace learning. It
also encourages and enables both staff and students to incorporate the use of personal
technologies if they prefer.
The college also has a dedicated ILT team to work specifically with teaching staff to support
skills, practices and keeping the college abreast about new technological tools and emerging
practices, both social and for education. Members of the ILT team are positioned throughout
the college within teaching staff rooms, study centres and localised offices to ensure they
are at the very beating heart of the teaching and learning community.
All of these supporting roles and resources will be key infrastructures to both the
implementation of PAL and to firmly embed digital literacy within the college. The JISC guide
‘Emerging Practice in a Digital Age’ (2011, P.8) quotes HEFCE as seeing the availability of
specialist support as essential to effective curriculum design with greater emphasis on
partnerships between technologists, learning support specialists and academics. The college
is well placed with the interacting roles of personal tutors, learning support, the IT & ILT team
and study centre hubs to work collaboratively with teaching staff to achieve this. These
relationships have been strengthened over the years by the development of the study centre
ethos. Each of the roles mentioned has a key presence within the study centres, thus
making them the beating heart hub of the collaborative college community, an ideal platform
to springboard a successful project such as this.
7: WCT PAL Agenda
From September 2010 it was introduced that all BTEC First and National Diploma
programmes for full time students included a mandatory self-study package. This could take
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the form of an electronic package using the College MOODLE platform or any other
appropriate medium for Personally Accountable Learning or PAL for short.
This ‘defined model’ of curriculum delivery was in response to a number of long term issues
facing the College (the whole FE sector not just WCT). The four main issues are:
The learner taking greater ownership of the learning process

The continued reduction in the overall level of LSC funding supporting the current
modes of delivery

The need to drive up the quality of the learning process through differentiated
learning (personalisation) and personal support.

Expectation by the LSC and educational agencies that the learning process is
improved through peer support and group activity.
This strategy was built upon the success and foundations of the VLE usage and study
centres to offer a more blended delivery approach to teaching and learning to drive forward
independent learning skills all of which are underpinned by digital literacy skills.
The PAL agenda is in its second academic year and becoming accepted as an integral part
of the learning delivery. Digital Literacy from the point of view of students being effective
learners using PAL relies heavily on their digital abilities and academic application to using
technology for learning. Digital Literacy from the point of view of staff underpins their ability
to be able to use and evaluate a range of tools and processes to create effective learning
content and activities for PAL.
As PAL and blended learning strategies become the ‘norm’ in education at WCT it is
important that all involved supporting such initiatives are up to speed and have the skill sets
necessary to make this happen in the most effective way. Training for PAL is widespread for
not just teachers, but is also being rolled out to personal tutors, learning support, the IT
team, study centres and library staff. The rolling out of the OCN digital skills support
framework will be built on top of these existing embedded practices.
It is aimed that underpinning and developing the digital literacy skills of staff will assist in
better quality knowledge and skills to be able to design and deliver effective PAL packs for a
blended learning approach within the college. It is also an aim that developing digital literacy
skills in students will enhance the quality of learning by the students with them feeling more
confident and efficient to be able to work in a blended manner.
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8: CPD staff training at WCT
The College takes CPD very seriously and offers a wide range of training opportunities for
both teaching staff and business support teams. Over the last few years the scope of
learning technology based training has expanded to include short courses from the basics of
introducing Moodle tools and its activities to the more elaborate training on areas such as
twitter, Qwizdom tools and iPads to same just a few.
The ILT department offer a wide range of CPD training on a regular basis and throughout the
whole academic year offering a wide range of sessions that staff can book onto through the
college CPD system ‘passport to success’. Currently the menu of ILT CPD is heavily focused
upon the development and delivery of PAL.
Beyond the ILT provision the study centres also offer training sessions or workshops
throughout the year often aimed at both staff and students. Many of these are advertised
through the study centres rather than formally through the staff CPD system. These are
often staggered due to demand or can be requested on an ad-hoc basis. These cover the
following:

E-books

Workshops – study skills

On demand training/workshops

CPD expands beyond just timetabled sessions

Moodle enquires/IT support on hand – passport/portal etc

Drop-in support – ILT/SC
All teaching staff currently are required to be members of the IFL and have to complete a
mandatory 30 hours an academic year to meet the requirements of their IFL membership.
Learning technology training can contribute to that. The college is currently considering that
3 hours of this training should be made up of compulsory ILT training due to the new PAL
initiative and the importance of digital literacy in today’s learning society.
Prior to this project starting none of the learning technologies courses came with any
accreditation so other than being able to declare their involvement in such staff development
activities with IFL there was no formal certification or reward for what they learned or
achieved as a result. It is aimed that as part of this project most of the courses that involve
digital literacy skills can be developed and enshrined with an OCN accredited award for the
unit of learning they do. In time it is aimed that a menu of OCN modules will be available for
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staff to learn, gain accreditation and build a range of credits towards a much wider
qualification to better represent their learning, effort and progress.
In the longer term it is aimed to make such courses and accreditation much more widely
available to staff or individuals from external institutions.
9: Previous WCT projects & previous knowledge considerations
Worcester College of Technology has previously been involved in funded projects over the
years including a variety of projects that have evaluated practices or the impact of
technologies in teaching and learning.
Most relevant to digital literacy and our PAL rationale was our recent LLN funded activities
for the evaluation of PAL practices in an FE/HE context. These highlighted the range of skills
and considerations needed to embed digital and blended learning initiatives effectively.
The main themes that emerged were:
Using technology effectively in education is as much about learning process as it is
about tools and that technology use, as with all teaching methods and resources,
should be driven by sound pedagogical roots, the student experience and be subject
to ongoing evaluation.
Both teachers and learners need clarity of vision to be able to adopt effective
technology use in education and this comes from solid and consistent support
infrastructures and understanding within the college, from student level all the way up
to the management.
Appreciate the diversity of skills levels and exposure to a range of technologies
amongst both students and staff and meet these needs in a differentiated way and be
aware of the differences however extreme or subtle between the FE and HE
community.
It is aimed that the Wordle project can build upon this understanding. With an even greater
understanding of our community’s skills and a core focused OCN qualification framework we
should be able to begin to address some of these issues previously raised.
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Improving the digital literacy skills of all our community should work towards enhancing the
understanding and application of technology to improve the educational experience of using
digital tools and environments for learning effectively. Better understanding of the digital
tools and environments for teachers should help them lead to better informed
understandings of learning technologies and how they could be pedagogically applied in an
educational setting.
To embed a support framework for digital literacy should offer a clear vision of expectations
and a supportive scaffolding of guidance in a digital age to show not only our commitment to
how this positively impacts on learning at every level but also support the skills needed for a
lifelong journey, not just during their time at Worcester College of Technology. In the long
term we envisage that a clear digital literacy framework of supporting OCN qualifications can
offer a benchmarking scale for learners to measure and plan their own progression and be
able to identify how these skills over time have become embedded in their learning and lives.
To offer a range of OCN qualifications at different levels we could offer differentiated support
to both those who need the help most to those who may just need to brush up or refresh
their expositing skills.
Included in this section we also reviewed a whole host of documentation in Digital Literacy to
underpin our understanding at Worcester and present this in two hyperlinked reference
guides. These are:

The definition and associated themes associated with digital literacy (Detailed)

The main documentation available investigating the digital natives profile
Each document was useful for us to have a baseline of literature to reference and underpin
our understanding. We felt reading and documenting reports we had read was useful but
also felt a document of hyperlinks to this literature would be useful to the JISC community as
a whole.
The first of our literature searches was to underpin our understanding of the term digital
literacy and the various definitions and interpretations there are from the wider arena. We
found there were many definitions and umbrella terms associated with digital literacy. This
depended very much on the context of use or agenda of those defining it. This ranged from
pure IT skills to skills more associated with learning and traditional library literacies.
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10: Project start-up – college profiling and baseline case studies
Fig 1.3: Additional baseline data
To form our baseline profile of our college community Case Studies will develop our baseline
understanding of our community, those who will be our main OCN audience for the second
phase of the project. These case studies will be submitted as separate documents to form
our baseline pack.
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Auditing tools for the Baseline Review:
All Case Studies will be available on the project website (temporary address:
http://bradyx.pbworks.com/w/page/13706875/FrontPage )
CASE STUDY A:
Just curious- a review of the understanding of terms associated with Digital Literacy
at Worcester College of Technology
Our students range from teenagers who have grown up digital both educationally and
socially to those returning to education as mature learners whose computer use was
a later addition to their more ‘un-digitally’ educated profile, some of whom regard
their digital literacy as still a current and ongoing learning curve. As such our learners
can often range within the ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’ profile (Prensky,
2001) who apparently possess a completely different set of learning, information and
tools backgrounds for research, communicating or information use.
With this in mind we asked our students and staff to interpret key words or terms
associated with digital literacy (these terms or words will be identified during our
literature search phase) to see if these differences are reflected. The participants for
this will were randomly selected from learners and members of staff who fit into the
mythical categorisations as natives or immigrants profiles. This offered us an insight
to identify if a spectrum of such differences really does exist and highlighted the
range of interpretations and consequently the support needs there maybe addressing
different levels of interpretation. The findings from the two mythical groups (‘natives’
and ‘immigrants’) are represented separately in the case study to compare using
visual Wordle word clouds each end of the understanding spectrum from those
classed as natives and those classed as immigrants, or those who have grown up
with the influence of technology since birth and those who have not.
Key Findings:
This was an interesting exercise to undertake and did reveal some differences
between the generations. However these differences are not indicative of any claims
that one generation understands digital literacy and the associated terms better. It
demonstrates that our college community has a spectrum of understanding of the
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terms used when discussing the area of digital literacy, learning, information,
research and what it means to be literate.
There are an overview of emerging themes and differences to take into consideration
such as the strong influence that has emerged from the 'natives' view of the world
and how these terms fit in their perspective. The natives very much focus on the tools
of the age, possibly influenced by the fact they have grown up with these in their
everyday life and don't know any different. The 'immigrants' show an influence of the
more tradition tools and experiences and the process side of interpreting the key
terms. They do show awareness of a range of tools both digital and traditional but
this is not a strong preference for understanding digital literacy per se. It seems they
see many of these terms from the dimension of 'doing', 'understanding' and ability.
The natives however show a little naivety towards the processes that possibly
indicates their early exposure to the range of processes that post compulsory
education can bring as they mature as lifelong learners.
The native interpretation may change as they progress along their lifelong journey
and as they are exposed to more processes, deeper understandings and more
independent processes. It is clear that as a whole community that there are a range
of starting points for their understandings of the range of tools, processes and skills
they need for learning and as such the digital literacy support that is needed may be
very different at each stage.
The influence of the web could be masking the 'native' non awareness of other tools,
but could also indicate a shallow depth of using resources for learning. It could be
they turn to the web for everything and bypass the more traditional methods due to
convenience, time and the need for immediate answers.
Due to the range of interpretation as a college we need to clarify our educational
focus for Digital Literacy and identify the framework of tools, resources and people to
support all levels of scholarship to apply digital literacy skills effectively in both
breadth and depth. The whole community need to be working towards an agreed
understanding of digital literacy and understand our vision to support Digital Literacy
Skills across all levels. This should also indicate the depth and breadth of tools,
resources and processes needed to be digitally literate - not just in the
use of computers keystrokes and awareness of tools and devices but also and most
importantly in the cognitive processes involved to use them effectively for quality
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learning experiences.
CASE STUDY B:
Overview: Baseline - Attribute Survey (Confidences/skills/Abilities/Usage) - self assessment
As part of the initial base lining phase of the JISC Digital Literacy project ‘Wordle’ at
Worcester College of Technology we decided to ask our whole community about
their technology usage, experiences and the perceived levels of confidence and
proficiency. We felt a rich profile of a wide range of participants would offer a unique
insight into our college community as we develop our ideas about where to focus the
key levels of OCN support within our college environment.
This was a college wide survey and was distributed amongst a range of staff and
student stakeholders within our college who interact with each other at the chalk face
of education or who offer key support structures. In total we had approximately 250
respondents to our survey.
The student participants were taken from a random cross section of courses that
ranged from school age right through to higher education. The staff participants were
from the three main roles that interact with students in their daily learning or roles that
underpin the support needed for study skills and using the library and digital
resources for learning.
This took the form of a survey questionnaire that was broken into sections that asked
questions about their technology experiences, preferences, usage and proficiency
confidences in their skills. This offered us a very detailed picture of their individual
profiles and attributes. It was chosen that the surveys be distributed in paper form
rather than an online survey to ensure that all users could participate and not just
those familiar or comfortable using online surveys. We felt that as this project was to
conclude with the development of OCN modules to underpin any weaker skills we
needed to get a richer picture of all digital literacy skills and usage levels both the
strong users and the very weak.
Key Findings
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This was a very interesting exercise because the results were not necessarily
matched to broad assumptions made about the differences between staff and
students in terms of the confidence levels of some tools.
To be expected the was a difference in the experience of the more academic tools,
such as teachers had more experience and confidence in these than students, and
the reverse was true of social tools which students dominated in their experiences in
these.
What was most interesting though was the confidence levels in the use of everyday
tools such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint there were differences but not
anywhere near as significant as were are always led to believe in the hype of the
‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’ classification debate. The use of a VLE to
locate resources was also pretty matched between staff and students.
These figures will be examined in more depth at each age and stage of education to
plan and develop the right level of support for the OCN qualifications.
CASE STUDY C:
Overview name: Students/Teachers perceptions of Each others digital literacy
This is a short study to feedback to the debate about expectations of students and
teachers. We felt it pertinent to ask both students and teachers what they expected of
each other. The questions specifically tried to draw out any weaknesses they
perceived were at play between them.
The students were asked to comment on the digital skills they feel they and their
teachers lacked and teachers commented on the same. These were skills they feel
they both lacked when applying technology usage and skills to education.
Key Findings
Most concerns raised by teachers were related to the processes of applying
technology academically, most especially regarding finding and using information for
education and how poor they see these skills in FE.
They reflect the perception of low level student skills, skim reading, impatience for
answers, copy paste etc that suggests some very shallow learning methods or
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learner experiences using the net for finding and learning from information. This
could be indicative of either their concerns in this area with spoon feeding identified
or it could also indicate their frustrations when turning their students to the net
assuming they know what they are doing.
The teaching staff also mention the intrusion of social activities such as using mobile
phones or Facebook when students should be working, clearly this intrusion is an
area of frustration or seen as a distraction to learning or even a barrier that they feel
needs to be overcome.
It seems the teachers battle the Learning with the distraction of social activities in the
online arena, almost akin to having the playground in the classroom.
When learners were asked “What digital skills they lack” this resulted in responses
relating to traditional skills of reading writing and finding quality learning content.
Overall they see little wrong in their digital skills.
Students realise they under utilise the potential learning on offer through books as
their lack of skills in this area are highlighted in many of the responses. They also
seem to be aware of what the internet is taking away in learning skills.
It seems then that learners are fully aware of their lack of use of the more traditional
methods in their learning and this could be due to their heavy reliance on using the
web or influence of growing up with digital tools. It could also indicate that they are
being turned to using the net because teachers assume this is what they want or
what they will do anyway.
Perhaps a reliance on the use the internet to research points to a need to push
students towards a broader reading requirement when sourcing and using
information. It also maybe that student’s are not being given the support to practice
self led learning due to the confined skills they have to work with?
Learners have a strong perception that their teachers don’t have the skills or knowhow to use digital technologies or understand their world as teenagers/young
learners today. In Particular those technologies used in the classroom or for learning
activities where students seem to identify the potential for a more engaging learning
experience. Students also see themselves as comfortable using online methods
where as they perceive teachers as not engaged with it.
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An interesting anecdote is they believe that staff don’t have “Computer skills and
using Google” possibly indicating that they feel the teaching staff don’t know how to
use Google. Interestingly they also mention that “assumptions- assume students
know what they're going to do they just say use the internet as a resource”. Here
they indicate that staff send them to Google but don’t know it themselves. This could
offer an interesting interplay of ideas that indicates staff are turning students to
Google assuming they know, but yet staff don’t know either. With these assumptions
and staff maybe not knowing about Google themselves it maybe little wonder why
students use is only surface level, they are possibly getting no structured support
when using it, resulting in teachers complaining that these skills are weak. This is
definitely an area to investigate as these weaknesses on both sides could be
responsible for the surface level use of Google and using skim reading techniques.
In no other area would teachers made such broad assumptions when planning
learning experiences for students.
An interesting interpretation is that maybe that teacher’s are sometimes exceeding
the skills expectations of their groups, inhibiting the learning process. In that case it
maybe it is teachers are the ones reliant on Google thinking they are reliably
assuming they are giving students a technology tool they know and want to use; and
believe it is a place they think students can and want to find information from.
This study certainly identified a range of ideas and themes that could be further
investigated in this project to get a more detailed account of key perceptions and the
roots from which they grow.
SMALL PILOT ENQUIRY STUDY:
Overview: Baseline - Pilot - The need to look closely at Information Literacy
Based upon the findings in case study C from teachers than they felt students lacked
skills when finding and using information; and due to a prior JISC project (LLiDA) that
had identified similar, we felt it would be useful to pilot some tasks to see if this
warranted enough concern to investigate in depth later in the project, especially as
information literacy underpins much of what is needed for effective study skills.
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We took two groups of learners that have been described by teachers as ‘worlds
apart’ in the way they apply and digest information and conducted an experiment to
test the validity and reliability of student confidences in using and applying
technology survey (Baseline Case Study B). Our initial findings in the early days of
the student survey (Baseline Case Study B) provided us with information that
suggested our students had a greater confidence in using technology than teachers
were reporting (Baseline Case Study C). During an initial meeting teachers raised
considerable concern that although students felt they were confident finding and
using information, especially using Google, these skills were evidently much weaker
than students themselves perceived. In fact teaching staff felt that students had
grossly overestimated their competence when finding and using information
academically.
With this in mind we felt this project was the ideal opportunity to scrutinise the
differences of opinion. As a result we conducted and piloted a small scale hands-on
activity task to measure the reality of such confidences using a series of task based
activities to investigate and observe the reality in process.
The task was conducted with two categorised groups from an A-level profile and from
a level 3 FE vocational profile to identify similarities within the age group and
differences in their educational background and profile. This was also conducted with
the intention to pilot a wider investigation for latter in the project.
The tasks were all conducted in one study centre to ensure the consistency of
environment and equality of resources available.
Key Findings
Book Task
A very noticeable difference between the two groups was their use of books. The ALevel students went for the book on the shelves which correlated with them finding
the right answer. Interestingly there seemed to be a much wider use of Google to find
the book from the FE Vocational group. I found this interesting as it did seem to
uphold the teachers’ view that these two groups sought and consumed information
differently from different sources.
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It is interesting that although these students are in the same age bracket yet their
habits for seeking information are different. It does demonstrate that learners in
different subject areas or qualification structures have different information seeking
styles therefore do not necessarily conform to the stereotypical notion that all
learners turn to the web or that all learners have a preferred style of learning and
finding information.
The next two tasks were based around the use of Google and competence when
finding, using and evaluating information found on the web or from online sources.
For this we will be comparing basic data from each task (Fig 1.4 and Fig 1.5) with
basic data gained in this area from Baseline Case Study B (Fig 1.3).
We surveyed students to find out how confident/proficient they believe themselves to
be in finding and using information. Then we got them to actually do some associated
tasks to see if their perceptions matched the reality of skills.
The confidence levels were very high for their perceived proficiency on using search
terms in Google to find information, yet using the more formal ways to seek
information was no so apparent.
We wanted to see if this was the case in reality. By their own admission they should
be good in finding the information on Google rather than anywhere else.
We then set students some tasks to find information online. We chose tasks to find a
specific date or a specific event and also asked them to find a front page newspaper
headline.
Lottery Task
An alarming finding is that those who used Google mainly did using copy and paste.
This was interesting as they copied this directly from the paper worksheet,
suggesting possibly that copy and paste is not just confined to computer use. An
alarming amount of people got the answer wrong and instead of answering with the
daily play lottery date they answered with the national lottery date. It can only be
assumed that this is the answer Google offered in the content thrown back in the
search results indicating a very shallow analysis of the results. This does correlate
with the survey that overall less than 40% felt they were good at evaluating whether a
source was valid reliable or trustworthy. It seems that the first answer they came
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across was the answer they used without checking it was correct. This is rather
worrying.
The two processes involved in finding information on Google are first the search
terms (which in majority was copied and pasted) and then sourcing our a reliable or
correct answer which is alarmingly low, most especially with the FE Vocational group
at 7.1%
There is definitely a strong need to support information seeking skills from the
entering of search terms right the way through to evaluating the sources they find,
even students themselves perceive their use of Google as proficient.
Newspaper Headline Task
This offered another worrying use of shallow copy and paste search techniques that
seems to correlate with wrong answers. What is most interesting is those that
searched using the more formal methods such as the guardian site or newspaper
archives correlates with less incorrect answers. However to search these types of
resources is not necessarily a shallow task that can be done with copy and paste.
Future Implications
From this we intend to widen the activity to include finding video resources and
asking participants to look for more scholarly and credible content or information. We
also intend to further analyse the comparative data between the perceptions of
confidence survey (Case Study B) and findings from the hands-on tasks.
REVIEW OF THE COLLEGE INFRASTRUCTURE:
The college is well placed to uphold this project and the support of digital literacy in
the long term. There are already established practices within the college to uphold
the long term vision and to drive the initiative forward:
The introduction of PAL is the springboard that is driving our project and a huge
college incentive to underpin digital literacy support. It has already been
acknowledged within the college that digital literacy skills are linked to the success of
PAL. Teachers who have better digital and information literacy know-how are
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producing better quality PAL materials for their students. Students are showing a
similar trend that those with better information literacy are getting more out of the
PAL agenda than those who are not.
Personal Tutors are a new role in the college and there to underpin the extra support
needed beyond subject teaching. They already have a curriculum of sessions that
will lend themselves well to the formalisation and embedding of OCN qualifications
and the delivery of these to students
Study Centres are our college asset and the flagship environment to foster and
nurture good digital literacy practices and most importantly information literacy, the
backbone to study skills.
The college has a well established IT infrastructure with a dedicated ILT team to work
alongside teachers. This places the college well to deliver digital literacy in the ILT
CPD provision ands more importantly a way of highlighting and embedding effective
digital literacy into PAL packs with teachers.
For the long-term the college has a strong relationship with employers and HE
institutions, with the college additionally its own providing HE and professional course
provision through partner bodies. The college also has a close relationship with OCN
with established courses already successfully in place. This offers us an established
relationship and protocol the college can tap into to produce further OCN provision.
The wider contacts the college have will enable us to broaden our OCN provision,
with the possibility of looking to employers in the longer term to help with bespoke
OCN units that will meet their needs and produce the learner attributes they expect in
the 21st Century workplace.
Partner HE providers and institutes could also contribute to bespoke units to prepare
learners to demonstrate the attributes they will need for higher or post graduate
education.
All of the case studies and further detailed information can be found at:
http://bradyx.pbworks.com/w/page/13706875/FrontPage
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