Background
The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and employers demand that graduates can demonstrate digital literacy skills in their work (where digital literacy is defined by the European Commission as ‘the confident and critical use of ICT for work, leisure, learning and communication’). Employability skills are becoming of increasing importance now that higher education requires a costly personal investment.
The Faculty of Health & Social Care (HSC) at the Open University is using various approaches to digital literacy skills development. These have evolved over recent years ever since the faculty first started designing its own resources to support students as the OU adopted a model of learning based increasingly on digital technologies. These HSC resources included activities to develop both information literacy (IL) skills (developed in collaboration with the OU Library) and ICT skills and recognised the particular needs of its students, who typically lacked confidence or motivation in using computers and therefore required additional support and encouragement. As the move to online and technology enhanced learning has advanced in the faculty and the wider university, the available resources and student skill sets have likewise evolved.
In Higher Education in general, information literacy skills development is increasingly being embedded within the curriculum, and the available evidence suggests that this is the most effective approach (see for example Andretta, Pope & Walton, 2008; Lloyd & Williamson, 2008; Shenton & Fitzgibbons, 2010).
The EADDLS project aims to take stock of what provision best meets the needs of our current HSC students and therefore what approach (or approaches) is now most fit for purpose. It is also concerned with how best to make explicit the benefits to learners of engaging in digital literacy skills development in order to enhance their employability skills.
Some HSC modules use early iterations of the faculty’s skills activities which include discipline-focused, comprehensive guidance on ICT and IL skills integrated with module-specific details. Other modules use generic skills activities, which often have less detailed guidance, held in a central faculty repository, the HSC Resource Bank (HSCRB). These generic activities can be used by any HSC module because module-specific guidance is kept separate.
These evolving approaches have thus given rise to different learning designs and learner experiences. The EADDLS project aims to evaluate learner perceptions of the effectiveness of these approaches (drawing on learners from a cross-section of the faculty) and, based on these findings, to identify implications for good practice in learning designs for skills development activities.
This project builds on the work of the Prepared for Practice? project (a PBPL CELT funded project, 2008–2009) which explored the views of OU Social Work degree graduates on how well-prepared for practice they felt, including their views on skills in ICT and Information literacy.
Project Schedule
May 2011 - project start
August 2011 - data collection via questionnaires
October-December 2011 - interviews held, audio recordings of interviews transcribed
January 2012 onwards - data analysis
June-November 2012 - dissemination of project results via conference presentations
September 2012 onwards - start to prepare project report and articles for publication
December 2012 - final project report submitted to Open University funding bodies
2013 onwards - continued dissemination of project results via conferences and articles
Funding
1 August 2011 - 31 July 2012: OU Fund for Scholarship of and for Learning and Teaching, HSC Faculty, OU Library
Aims
1. Evaluate learner perceptions of the effectiveness of:
Different approaches used in HSC to develop skills in digital literacy – e.g. use of generic skills activities held in the HSCRB versus discipline-focused (module specific) skills activities.
Skills activities used by the different approaches in meeting discipline-specific demands.
2. Investigate how learners perceive the relevance of skills learning to themselves and their employers.
3. Develop understanding of how learners engage with skills learning and the design features and other factors motivating their engagement.
Objectives
Identify good practice so that future learning designs are informed by student needs.
Identify factors facilitating reuse of activities across OU modules and disciplines.
Approaches to developing skills in different HSC modules
This project is evaluating student experiences from K113, K216 (both from the Social Work programme) and K217 (from the Health and Social Care programme).
In K113 and K216 the skills activities form part of a programme approach to meet its professional requirements (BA Hons Social Work). The activities are designed to develop skills both for study and work-based contexts. The activities, created around 2005 to 2006 specifically for the modules at the inception of the degree, are provided as Adobe Acrobat PDF documents on each module website, and allow for updates when required.
Where an ICT or Information literacy (IL) skill is required (e.g. the ability to find journal articles online, download images from the internet, or analyse data using a spreadsheet), the set-up is:
The print-based module learning guide contains a brief introduction to each skills activity and may include some social work related contextual orientation.
Assessment information is contained within the module assessment guidance.
The information for achieving the task, including any further social work contextual information and relevant assessment instructions are integrated into the customised PDF documents. The skills guidance is presented in comprehensive step-by-step detail with screenshots. This may include links to online resources, including skills activities in the HSCRB (see below).
Learners must judge what parts of the information are necessary for them to complete the task; they can skip parts, depending on their skills level and on which parts are assessed.
By working through the PDF document, students achieve the tasks required.
In summary, the PDF activities include:
discipline-specific requirements (catering for the specific needs of social work students)
some module-specific information, such as assessment related guidance
some generic activities (links to relevant HSCRB skills activities if these cover the targeted skill)
detailed computing guidance including sets of steps separated into boxes, screenshots alongside text, and an index list for each document.
In K217, digital literacy skills are also developed in the module subject context. However, skills learning per se is based entirely on HSCRB skills activities which are external to the module.
Where a module-specific task requires a particular ICT or IL skill (e.g. the ability to find journal articles online, download images from the internet, or analyse data using a spreadsheet), the set-up is:
The task is set up in the online module learning guide.
A direct link is provided to the relevant HSCRB skills activity so that learners can complete it if they do not already have the required ICT skill.
Students who already have the necessary skill can skip the HSCRB activity and continue with the module task.
The HSCRB skills activities are written, wherever possible, in such a way that the task set in the module can be used to complete the HSCRB activity, so that learners do not have to do things twice (once to acquire the skill and once to complete the module task).
Since the HSCRB and the online module guidance are both housed within the OU’s VLE, they each appear as a set of web pages of similar appearance, so the separation between the module and the HSCRB may not be obvious to the learner.
Assessment information is contained within the module assessment guidance and, where appropriate, in the online module learning guide.
In summary, the HSCRB activities include:
generic activities which can be used by any HSC module
computing guidance including numbered sequences, sets of steps separated into sections, occasional screenshots where these are felt to be essential, and an index list (menu of sections) for each activity.
Methods
Data have been collected from each of the three modules via:
An online questionnaire, presented as a reflective activity, towards the end of each module (this included an invitation to be interviewed).
Semi-structured interviews with 6 students from each module, held after the module had been completed.
Questionnaires will be repeated in future presentations of these modules to provide longitudinal data.
Analysis of data
Data are being analysed using a mixed methods approach:
A statistical analysis of quantitative questionnaire data (n=300).
A qualitative thematic analysis of comments from questionnaires and from 18 interviews.
We aim to identify whether there are significantly similar or different responses according to the different approaches to skills development taken by K113, K216 and K217, for example, how students respond to the use of generic HSC Resource Bank activities compared with discipline-specific activities, and what design features best support learner engagement.
We are also looking at relationships between the demographic background of respondents (such as age or gender) and their preferences for particular design features, to establish what, if any, demographic factors need to be considered in order to best support learners and optimise engagement.
References
ANDRETTA, S., POPE, A. & WALTON, G. (2008) Information literacy education in the UK, reflections on perspectives and practical approaches of curricular integration. Communications in Information Literacy, 2, 36–51.
LLOYD, A. & WILLIAMSON, K. (2008) Towards an understanding of information literacy in context: Implications for research. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 40 3–12..
SHENTON, A. K. & FITZGIBBONS, M. (2010) Making information literacy relevant. Library Review, 59, 165–174.