An ongoing longitudinal study “Digital Visitors and Residents” has found “that learners develop a variety of digital literacies often through a social trial-and-error process, without the direct support or advice of their educational institutions” (press release, report (pdf)).
This is unlikely to come as a surprise to staff directly involved in teaching and learning, of course, and forms part of the framework of the concepts of the Personal Learning Network and the Personal Learning Environment. Informal learning accounts for a large part of all our learning, and with the rapid rate of technological innovation we are experiencing it is unlikely that any institution or individual can hope to provide education, or even training, to support the variety of literacies, tools and contexts necessary for people living, learning and working in a digital society.
In the first phase of workshops we have run for students at UoR, based on the experiences of surveys, focus groups and observation of students’ digital literacies (skills, behaviours and attitudes towards using digital technologies in all aspects of their lives) over the last 7 years, we have highlighted different ways people learn new technologies, and prompted learners to start to take ‘ownership of their learning’.
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We are all looking forward to our celebration event today – ‘Digitally Ready for the Future: Sharing Good Practice’.
