IL and ICT literacy correlations; A digital creative writing device #ECIL2023

More belated liveblogging from ECIL (Sheila here). I was presenting in a session this morning from a room with no wifi connection - I will post my liveblogs of the other talks in 2 posts, and Pam also blogged my talk, so that will be posted separately. First paper in the session was: Undergraduate Students’ Information Literacy in Relation to their ICT Proficiency and Psychological Characteristics presented by Danica Dolničar, coauthored with Bojana Boh Podgornik (University of Ljubljana). She started by talking about the frameworks used in their research: the Digicomp ICT framework and the ACRL framework, and noting that ICT literacy doesn’t automatically imply information literacy.
Dolničar introduced the research questions, which were exploring relationships such as between demographics and information literacy, or between the two literacies. They had a convenience sample of 498 students at the University of Ljubljana, with a preponderance of natural science students and female students, and administered three survey instruments (concerning IL, ICT, and motivation).
A few results were: In terms of information literacy / demographics, the only difference was between the 1st & 2nd years and the greater IL of 3rd & 4th years. In terms of software, only the use of general software correlated significantly with IL. The highest correlation of IL was with communication tools, and even more with confidence in using internet. In terms of motivation self-concept about learning, self-efficacy and self-concept about problem solving were correlated with IL and ICT. 

In the same session this morning was Information and Digital Literacies as Written Culture: The Case of a Digital Creative Writing Device presented by Béatrice Micheau. The context is an institutional framework to assess digital devices used in creative writing. The studied device is the Cub’edito from Short Edition. Ethnographic research was carried out with observations and interviews (examining educational use with young people and interviewing teachers, librarians, authors and (in focus group) students). The aim was to assess the device and explore the devices use and relationship with literacies. The device is a cube which enables you write, to exchange text, and to print a short text as a long paper ticket – this helps to surface the links between paper and screen “a covenant between a long term written culture and digital textual practices and norms”.
Also it has some aspects of documentation – e.g. allocating author, title. Micheau showed how the stories could be printed out and arranged or grouped (e.g. a haiku tree hung with poems; stories physically grouped in different ways). She talked about various aspects of reading and writing that were engaged in this project such as linguistic, semiotic, finding your place in the world, aesthetic aspects and socio-pragmatic aspects.
She concluded that we don’t have to indulge in “digital dualism” (seeing the the written and digital culture as separate) but rather that should examiine them together in order to understand literacy today. Micheau also referred to cultural “poaching” between everyday written culture and school culture, and between literacy, information literacy and digital literacy. The studied device can also be seen as an “action apparatus”.
Photo by Sheila Webber: bags of ECIL (each one had free chocolates!)