Conference Agenda

Research Background and Methodology

The study investigated how students’ personal characteristics and information and communication technology (ICT) skills relate to their level of information literacy (IL), with the aim of identifying the ICT/psychological concepts that are most closely related to IL and could help in planning future IL education in terms of focus, methods and timing. The study determined the IL level of 498 undergraduate students using a 40-item knowledge test (Boh et al., 2016), examined the influence of demographic parameters (gender, study major, year of study), compared the IL with two aspects of ICT literacy measured by the 26-item questionnaire (Šorgo et al., 2016), and examined IL’s relation to seven psychological characteristics, using a 70-item questionnaire (Juriševič et al., 2016).

Results

Students demonstrated moderate IL knowledge (M=67.3%, SD =12.3%). Gender and study major type (science vs. social science) were not significant factors, unlike year of study. Factor analysis revealed three areas of ICT tool use: a) general (e.g., search engines, social media, videos), b) learning (office tools, virtual classrooms, bibliographic databases), c) working (image/video editing, programming). IL correlated best with general use (r=0.16). Factor analysis revealed three areas of Internet confidence: a) general (e.g., search engines, social media), b) advanced (forums, presenting work), and c) specialized (scientific databases). General factor correlated best with IL (r=0.23). Of the seven psychological characteristics (PSY), self-concepts about learning (r=0.25) and problem solving (r=0.23) correlated best with IL. Factor analysis on PSY revealed three factors: a) learning/motivation, b) problem solving/self-efficacy, c) external motivation. Factors a) and b) correlated best with IL (r=0.23 and 0.17, respectively).

Conclusions

Our results offer some suggestions for IL practice. Although studies often show that digital natives are not necessarily information literate, we found that students’ IL was associated with both frequency and confidence of search engine use and confidence using social media. Therefore, ICT skills conducive to IL should be emphasized in IL education. Students’ problem-solving ability correlated positively with both IL and ICT literacy, implying that IL education would benefit from incorporating a problem-based approach wherever possible. External motivation did not have a significant effect on IL in our study, so students’ autonomous motivation should be addressed more during IL instruction. The characteristics of the curriculum combined with small differences in IL between 1st and 2nd year students suggest that the 2nd year of study may be optimal for introducing an IL course.

Acknowledgements

The study was financially supported by the Slovenian Research Agency, project J5-5535.

References

Boh Podgornik, B., Dolničar, D., Šorgo, A., & Bartol, T. (2016). Development, testing, and validation of an information literacy test (ILT) for higher education. J. assoc. info. sci. technol., 67(10), 2420–36.

Juriševič, M., Baggia, A., Bartol, T., Dolničar, D., Glažar, S. A., Kljajić Borštnar, M., Pucihar, A., Rodič, B., Sajovic, I., Šorgo, A., Boh Podgornik, B. (2016). Motivational aspects of information literacy in higher education. In The International Conference on Excellence & Innovation in Basic-Higher Education & Psychology, Rijeka, Croatia, May 18-21, 2016 (p. 93).

Šorgo, A., Bartol, T., Dolničar, D., & Boh Podgornik, B. (2017). Attributes of digital natives as predictors of information literacy in higher education. Brit. J. Educ. Technol., 48(3), 749–67.

The aim of this paper is to identify the relationship between game literacy (GL) and information literacy (IL), in order to provide cross-disciplinary insight as a foundation for future research. This will be done:

• By examining the origins, definition and treatment of the two literacies in scholarly literature in the disciplines of Games Studies and of IL, and;

• By using examples drawn from two recent mixed methods research studies of information behaviour and information literacy in video games, to illustrate the connections between GL and IL.

Previous studies investigating video games and IL have tended to focus on the elements of IL used in gaming (e.g. Beutelspacher, & Henkel, 2021), rather than, as in this paper, the conceptual intersection between IL and GL. IL and GL developed in different disciplinary contexts. Whilst the concept of IL emerged from the field of librarianship and the online information industry (Nazari, & Webber, 2012), GL emerged in the field of literacy studies, influenced by the New Literacies movement’s focus on multimodality and social practice, and stimulated by a desire to include cultural media popular with young people (Squire, 2008). Initially, definitions and frameworks of IL focused on practical skills applied to published print or digital material. However, more recently IL experts have identified IL as socially situated, involving production as well as consumption, and engaging with multimodal information, for example in Mackey & Jacobsen’s (2022) definition of metaliteracy. This brings IL ontologically closer to Hayes & Gee’s (2010, p. 69) conception of GL as “a family of different practices engaged in by different social groups with a variety of cross-cutting similarities and differences”.

Despite this, the information literacy component of GL is not surfaced in GL definitions, and nor does engagement with games feature explicitly in IL definitions and frameworks. This paper aims to fill this research gap by (1) drawing on the scholarly literature to compare and relate definitions of GL and IL, and (2) illustrating the connections between GL and IL with findings from two investigations supervised by the author (both of which received ethics approval). Wang (2022) used questionnaires (n=600) and six interviews with Chinese gamers to investigate information behaviour in the ban-pick phase of League of Legends (an internationally popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game). Using similar methods (164 questionnaires; six interviews) Meng (2022) researched Chinese gamers’ IL in playing the social deduction game Dread Hunger. The three dimensions of Bourgonjon’s (2014) model of game literacy (i.e. operational, critical and cultural) will be used to identify how IL is intertwined with GL. For example in compiling and analysing clues that indicate whether a player is the traitor in Dread Hunger IL and GL are required in both operational and cultural dimensions. Further examples will be given in the final paper.

References

Beutelspacher, L., & Henkel, H. (2021). Information literacy in video games’ affinity spaces: A case study on Dota 2. In S. Kurbanoğlu, S., Špiranec, S., Ünal, Y., Boustany, J., Kos, D. (Eds.), Information Literacy in a Post-Truth Era, The Seventh European Conference on Information Literacy, ECIL 2021, online, September 20-23, 2021: Revised Selected Papers. Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) 1533. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Bourgonjon, J. (2014). Meaning and relevance of video game literacy. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 16(5), 8.

Hayes, E. R., & Gee, J. P. (2010). No selling the genie lamp: A game literacy practice in The Sims. E–learning and digital media, 7(1), 67–78.

Mackey, T. P., & Jacobson, T. E. (2022). Metaliteracy in a connected world: Developing learners as producers. Chicago: Neal-Schuman.

Meng, X. (2022). Investigating social deduction computer games’ impact on players’ information literacy, using Dread Hunger as an example. [Unpublished master’s dissertation]. University of Sheffield.

Nazari, M., & Webber, S. (2012). Loss of faith in the origins of information literacy in e-environments: Proposal of a holistic approach. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 44(2), 97–107.

Squire, K. (2008). Video-game literacy: A literacy of expertise. In J. Coiro, M. Knobel, C. Lankshear, D. J. Leu. (Eds.), Handbook of research on new literacies. (pp.635–670). London: Routledge.

Wang, Y. (2022). Information behaviour in ban pick phase of League of Legends. [Unpublished master’s dissertation]. University of Sheffield.

Nowadays, the web is where we most often search for information, and generalist search engines are the access point and filter that lead us in the overwhelming ocean of digital documents. One key challenge for current Information Literacy (IL) education is understanding how young people search online and interact with search engines. While algorithms grow more and more complex and efficient, research suggests that online search practices can take many different forms depending on topic, situation and searcher’s expertise. When teaching IL and online search, teachers grapple with a compelling difficulty: while search results can be made tangible as a report or a presentation, the search process remains often confined to individual screens and hidden from the teacher’s eye (Botturi et al., 2022b). Research evidence also indicates that users are often unaware of their own actual search process, and post-search accounts are mostly inaccurate (Teevan, 2008). This prevents teachers from capturing “teachable moments” (Hansen, 1998) and and providing effective process-oriented feedback, which is important for the development of self-awareness and self-regulatory skills (Corral, 2017; Bruce, Edwards & Lupton, 2006). The invisibility of the search process also hinders learning from peers, as search behaviors cannot be compared and discussed.

In a research project funded by the Swiss National Research Foundation we investigated online search behaviors, and developed techniques to capture and analyze search stories. Search story is the digital record of the actions that a user performs to solve an online search task (Botturi et al., 2022a). We developed a system to generate graphic and interactive visualizations of search stories to allow researchers and teachers to inspect them (Botturi et al., in press).

Between November 2022 and March 2023, 29 lower and upper secondary school classes (involving 535 students aged 12-18 and 16 teachers) participated in a two-phase IL education activity aimed at developing online search awareness and self-regulatory skills. In the first phase (1 contact hour or at home), students engaged in 3 pre-defined online search tasks. Their navigation actions were captured and visual search stories generated. The second phase (2 contact hours) started with an analysis of their own search stories in order to discuss a selection of relevant topics (e.g., the use of queries, reading time, search strategies) and included the solution of a new search task.

The activity was evaluated through an online post-session questionnaire with both closed and open items. Results so far indicate that students found the activity useful (average score 8/10); the content analysis of open answers reveals that the most appreciated learnings included reflecting on the reliability of online information, and the increased awareness that searching online is not so easy or “natural” as one might think.

References

Hansen, E., J. (1998). Creating teachable moments... And making them last. Innovative Higher Education, 23(1), 7–26.

Botturi, L., Addimando, L., Giordano, S., Hermida, M., Luceri, L., Bouleimen, A., Galloni, M., Beretta, C. & Cardoso, F. (2022a). Finding visual patterns in information Search Stories. European Conference on Educational Research 2022, Yeerevan (August).

Botturi, L., Addimando, L., Hermida, M., Beretta, C., Bouleimen, A., & Giordano, S. (2022b). Understanding Online Information Search Practices with Search Stories. American Educational Research Association – AERA Annual Meeting, Chicago (13-16 April).

Bruce, C., Edwards, S., & Lupton, M. (2006). Six Frames for Information literacy Education: A conceptual framework for interpreting the relationships between theory and practice. Innovation in Teaching and Learning in Information and Computer Sciences, 5(1), 1–18.

Corrall, S. (2017). Crossing the threshold: Reflective practice in information literacy development. Journal of Information Literacy, 11(1), 23–53.

Teevan, J. (2008). How people recall, recognize, and reuse search results. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 26(4), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1145/1402256.1402258

This communication is the result of an ethnographic research about a digital device created by a French publishing house to make pupils and students write, read and print short stories: the “Cub’Edito”. I count this device as an action apparatus (Barrère, 2013), a tool made to support selected cultural practices.

Objectives

The analysis of such an apparatus by studying how it is used by teachers and students is one way to question links between written culture and information literacy in a digital era. I am trying to critique “digital dualism” (Gourlay, et al., 2015) and demonstrate that there is a practice’s and skill’s continuity between written culture and digital culture. I seek to show that digital devices are both communication and documentation machineries. Digital information literacy could be regarded as a reconfiguration and amplification of written literacy because digital devices are textualization devices (Després-Lonnet & Cotte, 2007), technologies to make, share and record documents.

Methodology

Analysis of the digital device and pupils’ works employed a semiotic approach. I observed training sessions, pedagogical projects with pupils, and evaluation meetings concerning those projects and this apparatus. Semi-structured interviews with teachers, librarians, and teenagers’ focus groups were also conducted.

Outcomes

Uses of Cub’Édito appears like a way to practice and understand computers and Internet as document technologies. The Cub’Edito interfaces set ways to access, read and publish texts: it depicts text’s visibility and readability at a digital era. This device re-enacts written culture (digital or not) by introducing terminology and injunctions about literary genres, collections, authors, indexation, editing, approval and print processes. Moreover, most of the observed pedagogical projects play with textual materialities and genres by relying on the device’s platicity. Thus, they participate in the covenant between a long-term written culture and digital textual practices and norms. They show the cultural and skills’ continuity between writing and reading, the cultural poaching (De Certeau, 1990) between ordinary written culture and school written culture, and between literacy, information literacy and digital literacy. I count this device, its uses and its escort discourses as an apparatus (Foucault, 2001) to regulate writing and reading practices.

References

Barrère, A. (2013). Les établissements scolaires à l’heure des «dispositifs». Carrefours de l’éducation, 36, 9–13.

De Certeau, M. (1990). L’invention du quotidien: 1. arts de faire. Paris: Gallimard.

Després-Lonnet, M., & Cotte D. (2007). La sémiotisation d’une pratique professionnelle. L’activité de montage numérique dans l’audiovisuel. In C. Tardy, & Y. Jeanneret (Ed.), L’écriture des médias informatisés: espaces de pratiques. Paris: Hermès science.

Foucault, M. (2001). Le jeu de Michel Foucault. In Dits et écrits II (pp. 298–329). Paris: Gallimard.

Gourlay, L., Lanclos, D. M., & Oliver, M. (2015). Sociomaterial texts, spaces and devices: Questionning “digital dualism” in Library and Study Practices. Higher Education Quaterly, 3, 263–278.