Report from #ecil2014 - digital literacy

Drawing to the close of the European Conference on Information Literacy, held in Dubrovnik. Radovan Vrana talked about Digital literacy as a prerequisite for achieving good academic performance. He did a survey of students at the University of Zagreb (apologies, I did not note the number, I think it was about 120 respondents). He asked what elements participants thought were included in digital literacy (see the slide for the responses): I thought it was interesting that a minority thought that writing text was part of digital literacy. When asked what they thought they needed in terms of additional learning, creating web pages, editing digital photographs, creating animating, and video editing came top; using email came last. Self-learning was the biggest means of learning. Participants thought the influence of ICT on their academic performance was strong. He asked about who was responsible for development of digital literacy, they thought that they themselves were most responsible, with formal education (school and university) after that. In the question session, an interesting question arose about application of digital literacy to their lives; that students are likely to have a narrower view of digital citizenship, as while they are students they haven't had to deal with things like buying houses, cars, children's education, and other interactions that come with later adult life.