2. Context
• Library strategic action:
–What can Skills@Library do to support student* digital literacy?
–Investigation of current good practice, literature, research, perceptions.
*Undergraduate and Masters students at the University of Leeds
3. The survey
Bristol Online Surveys
Likert scale, multi-choice, free response questions
Distributed to academic staff in most faculties at Leeds
143 responses from staff teaching Undergraduate and Masters students
4. Respondents by faulty
Arts Humanities and Cultures = 59
Medicine and Health = 27
Engineering = 18
Education, Social Sciences, Politics
and Law = 18
Biological Sciences = 10
Maths and Physical Sciences = 10
Environment = 0
Business = 0
5. What did they say?
Students are motivated to learn new digital literacy skills.
Students are given opportunities to develop their digital literacy skills at Leeds
Students are routinely expected to source appropriate information online without
guidance.
Students graduate from Leeds with digital literacy skills that are good enough for
graduate work.
6. What did they say?
Students coming to Leeds don’t have good enough digital literacy skills.
Students don’t think enough about the credibility of the digital information they use.
Students are not proficient in using appropriate digital tools and resources for
their study/research
7. Opinion was divided on whether:
Students are able to create and curate their own online learning spaces (e.g.
Evernote or Google Docs)
Students make effective use of the digital tools provided by the University.
Leeds students are given guidance about creating and curating their digital
profile(s).
8. Free response comments
Lots of students lack Microsoft skills (e.g. long documents, Excel)
Coding should be considered a basic digital literacy skill
Staff expectations are high
Students overestimate their digital literacy and are embarrassed to ask for help
Students are competent with social media, but this doesn’t equip them for
assessing information
Students believe that all ‘answers’ can be found online rather than through
enquiry
10. How did staff want Skills@Library to help?
Provide more help for students on critical analysis
More face-to-face help - there are too many online tutorials already
Self assessment quizzes
Tailored activities on how to find information for your subject
Webinars and videos on digital literacy topics
Online learning activities to develop student digital literacy
11. How did staff want Skills@Library to help?
Provide more help for students on critical analysis
More face-to-face help. There are too many online tutorials already
Self assessment quizzes
Tailored activities on how to find information for your subject
Webinars and videos on digital literacy topics
Online learning activities to develop student digital literacy
12. What can we conclude?
Everyone agrees that digital literacy is important
Everyone has a different view of what digital literacy is
Staff don’t always know about or use existing services
Is there ‘too much’ online only training in HE?
We need to make digital literacy more obvious as a ‘thing’ that Skills@Library
offer support for
Hinweis der Redaktion
Skils@Library role within the Library and wider University.
Estimate that we have around 4 – 5 K academic staff. Total number of university staff = 7.5k
You can see which staff/from which faculties responded in the handout.
Lots of positives here about the motivation of students, the opportunities they have and that they need those skills for their work.
This is not to say that these are universally endorsed by the survey – the majority supported these views.
Academic staff seem to be saying that although students lack appropriate skills when they arrive, Leeds does enough to equip them with DL appropriate for graduate work.
Critical thinking and analysis is an issue.
Students need guidance.
Lots of complaints about students not being able to use/do specific things – e.g coding, creating and maintaining a long document in Word etc.
A lot of staff commented that they just didn’t know how students engaged with services like Google Docs or even on campus IT services.
They were also very unsure about advice that students received or sought about their digital profile. Leeds Careers service report massive uptake of advice on using LinkedIN.
There were a LOT of comments, here are some of the main themes that cropped up several times.
Another theme that ran through the comments was that students still need/want to be able to get face-to-face advice and training. There is a staff perception that the trend is towards replacing this with online tutorials etc.
5 minute discussion to generate suggestions in response to staff feedback.
We already do most of this, but we could promote it more than we do, and look at whether we’ve got the balance right throughout the year.