RSE digital participation enquiry

The Royal Society of Edinburgh is launching an enquiry on digital participation in Scotland and submissions from individuals and organisations are welcome.  See below. Martyn Wade  is on the  Committee which is good news.

It does seem to me that looking at the various headings the two areas where we can contribute most are training and employability and skills development.  Skills development to promote the Scottish economy always goes down well and I think we could promote this as an information skills training need and how it might be addressed.  The move to an information society is widely acknowledged as the base from which an information literate society should be promoted.

 I think there is scope for input from most library sectors with particular sectors contributing more under some specific headings. 7 –Risk is an obvious are for school librarians for example.

public librarians are already doing valuable work but there is probably a need for a more co-ordinated approach to training with a willingness to provide targeted and probably certificated training on a nationwide basis.

HE probably presents fewest problems but it would still be useful to point to the good work that HE librarians do in preparing students for employment. 

I think the most significant area to address, however, is the workplace and in particular small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) which constitute the bulk of the UK economy. The research which has been done in this area suggests that IL skills in SMEs is poor and is detrimental to economic development.  This matter does not receive systematic attention anywhere in the UK and to highlight and suggest the need for action could be useful and also innovative.  However what training is needed and who should provide it are major issues. Training for SME staffs needs to be highly targeted and there is also evidence that SMEs are unsure of their own training needs and it is undoubtedly the case that many SME employees will be unaware of what information literacy activity is even if they are engaging in it.

All these points, of course, are predicated on the assumption that Scottish librarian are willing to engage much more with education and training and be suitably trained themselves to undertake such work.

Website and further information: http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/1058_SpreadingtheBenefitsofDigitalParticipation.html

Inquiry Blog:   http://engagingdigitalscotland.wordpress.com/

Inquiry online submission form: http://bit.ly/diginquiry

 John

Update on Thursday, June 20, 2013 at 3:55PM by Ian McCracken

This is my submission:

Royal Society of Edinburgh Enquiry Submission

From Ian McCracken, Information Consultant

(replying as an experienced practitioner)

Information Literacy issues

1) It is a matter of serious concern that there is no question in the Enquiry addressing the issue “from your experience, what are the current challenges with digital participation? This is totally different from Question Six “What risks do you associate to digital participation”

2) The latter question seems to suggest that the main issues are “technical” or about access to computers, but in fact, these are minor compared to the challenges encountered by educational users at all levels. The word “skills” is often applied with the assumption that what users need are skills associated with Microsoft Word or other Computer Applications, but in fact the big skills gap for many pupils, students and teachers is in terms of Information Literacy skills. There is a “Catch-22” situation in that student teachers are not taught these skills and therefore do not recognise where students are going wrong. Frequently, teachers are so impressed by pupils supposed “industry” that they do not observe precisely what the pupils are actually doing: they do not assess their work with the same rigour that they do more traditional classwork..

3) A recent survey of 900+ pupils in a West Lothian School found that “1 in 5 pupils often can’t find what they want online” (School Library Association Scotland Newsletter; Spring 2013). If similar surveys are conducted, results throughout the country would echo such alarming findings.

40 This disturbing situation has also been recognised by the SQA, with Mr Joe Wilson, Head of New Ventures, noting at the Parliamentary Cross-Party Digital Participation Committee in April this year that two of the key challenges in relation to digital participation for the SQA were the “Skill base of teaching staff” and “who teaches digital literacy in schools, colleges and community?” The importance of the implications of these comments cannot be exaggerated.

5) There is, as Joe so clearly identified, a complete lack of coherence; in that each department within a school or college can teach pupils in different ways; or everyone assumes it’s someone else’s job; or the teacher her/himself has insufficient in-depth understanding to teach appropriate techniques or to identify what information literacy skills need, or how these can be developed in a holistic way.

60 This results in pupils/students copying and pasting, misunderstanding questions, failing to use précis, not learning good note-taking techniques, with in addition huge implications in such areas as plagiarism.

7) Question Eight in the Enquiry is also predicated in an assumption “what prevents you from using digital technologies and the Internet?” This question seems to be geared to the expectation of a “technical” or “technological “answer. It is also the case that many pupils/students think that they found the correct answer but closer examination clearly shows this not to be the case. Assessment in schools/colleges almost always fails to look at the “working”; in other words, how the students or pupils reached the answer they did. This means that frequently major omissions, errors by students/pupils are completely overlooked, thus making it impossible for many people to answer the questions in this survey comprehensively.

Conclusions

8) Particularly in respect of Strand Six (“Consider how to mitigate the risks…”), the RSE Enquiry should consider such valuable recommendations as

-         a national policy on Information Literacy developed by academics and practising IL specialists in schools and colleges (such as school and college librarians)

-         national standards for schools, colleges etc

-         a nationally recognised skill set, based on Higher Order Skills within the context of a Curriculum for Excellence

-         a comprehensive and realistic training package for teachers/lecturers to ensure that they are aware of IL skills and IL issues

-         a lifelong learning model, based on the Scottish information Literacy framework http://www.therightinformation.org/archive-silp/  in order to close the gap between schools and tertiary education.

-         Marking criteria for IL skills within assessments to ensure that pupils are encouraged to develop such skills and to discourage plagiarism and copying and pasting

Appendix

9) Assumptions of Skills:-In many learning centres, colleges and schools, pupils are often exhorted “go to the library and look up…” or “go on the Internet and find…”. In other occasions, pupils are handed assignment either prepared by the lecturers/teachers themselves or more often acquired from external companies or agencies.

10) All of these situations can have serious inbuilt assumptions, which the Enquiry needs to recognise in its deliberations and conclusions.

These fall into several broad categories:

i) Do pupils/students have the skills to find and utilise the information-has the teacher/lecturer checked this; is there a mechanism by which this can be checked (e g via previous assessments testing students’/pupils’ abilities)

ii)  Skills need to be tracked in a co-ordinated manner but the new Curriculum for Excellence has failed to recognise this, using different words to describe the same process through its experiences and outcomes:-

iii) Reading level of information- it is often assumed that the very fact that material is on the Internet makes it more readable: accessibility is being confused with readability.

iv) Pupils/students leisure use of the internet will most often be the fields of entertainment where material is mainly writhen by young people for young people. It is also often enhanced by music, video clips etc. However, only a small percentage of the material on educational topics falls into this category. Teachers and lecturers should therefore always “try it for themselves” and ask themselves whether the average pupil/student would be able to comprehend and actively engage with the information s/he has found.

v) Pupil/Student expectations – because skimming and scanning skills are not taught and practised or embedded into the curriculum, pupils/students will waste much time trying to match up their question with what might be described as the “El Dorado” site; the one where the answer to this question leaps out at them. Pupils’ lack of training in keyword use has similar negative consequences; the frequent assumption or expectation being that by entering an entire question as a Google search will “surely” result in the correct answer.

vi) Many schools/colleges buy or download tasks for pupils/students to research. However, these are more often style rather than substance and very few if any indicate whether anyone actually attempted the questions in the work before letting it loose on pupils/students.

Thank you for taking the time to read this submission.

Ian McCracken

IMCracken@govanhigh.glasgow.sch.uk                 18/6/13

Update on Thursday, June 20, 2013 at 5:15PM by Christine Irving

Here's my response - i decided to concentrate on questions 6, 7 and 8.

To quote C. Stern (2003) ” To prosper in the Digital Age, people must become masters of information.”

6. The risks associated with digital participation is the assumptions made that all that is needed is for computers etc. / technology to be accessible / available and digital participation will take place. Without the necessary skills and competencies meaningful participation will not take place. By necessary skills and competences I mean not just digital literacy but information literacy.

Information literacy is a prerequisite for participating effectively in the Information Society and is part of the basic human right of lifelong learning. It encompasses everything we do and our approach must therefore be holistic. It:
* comprises the competencies to recognise information needs and to locate, evaluate, apply and create information within cultural and social contexts;
* is crucial to the competitive advantage of individuals, enterprises (especially small and medium enterprises), regions and nations;
*provides the key to effective access, use and creation of content to support economic development, education, health and human services, and all other aspects of contemporary societies, and thereby provides the vital foundation for fulfilling the goals of the Millennium Declaration and the World Summit on the Information Society; and
* extends beyond current technologies to encompass learning, critical thinking and interpretative skills across professional boundaries and empowers individuals and communities.
* is too important to be left to any one institution, agency or profession; collaboration is essential.
* needs to be approached within the context of people’s cultural values, societal groups and personal information needs.
* is concerned with empowering people regardless of modes of information access and delivery.

Achievement of information literacy goals require flexible strategies to meet the needs of diverse communities and individuals.
Alexandria High-Level Colloquium on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning (2005) http://archive.ifla.org/III/wsis/High-Level-Colloquium.pdf

7. How can such risks be addressed?
We need to reinforce, support and build upon the information / critical literacy within the Curriculum for Excellence. This does not happen by osmosis.
We need to recognise and support the skills and competences including information literacy that librarians in schools, colleges, universities, workplaces, health institutions and organisations and public libraries have and support them in their work with pupils, students, colleagues and the general public so everyone has these skills and competencies.
There is a lot of good practice taking place in Scotland (see http://www.therightinformation.org/temp-exemplars/)

8. What prevents people from using digital technologies and the internet?
As stated above not everyone has the skills and competencies to use digital technology and the Internet and the library and information profession has a key role to play.

Whilst the Internet and World Wide Web has a lot of information it is not the only source of information. Information is available via all media types and formats – electronic, people and printed information sources. Individuals need to be aware of these choices and choose which of these sources are accessible to them and are relevant, suitable, available, written at the right level for them and reliable / from a source that they can trust. The Internet is full of information that needs to be evaluated particularly its authenticity and reliability. We all need the right information and the information literacy skills and competencies so that we know when and why we need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate it, use and communicate it be able to use it and inform our thinking and decision making.

As Bill Johnston (2013) says we are in an Information Culture and our citizens need to be information literate.

Christine