Transformative Literacies
Developing Information Literacy with Language Acquisition
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Joseph Couch
Even with today’s amazing graphics and multimedia capabilities, computers cannot be fully useful to a student conducting research without the correct words entered into them. As a result, undergraduates in first-year composition and general education courses treat academic research on databases like searching for information on Internet search engines. Asking questions of databases, the preferred online research strategy, provides little of the way in useful answers and leaves students frustrated. As a result, they often return to non-academic searches with which they feel familiar and with non-academic results. Students need not feel frustration, however, as undergraduate research in first- and second-year courses most often does not require sophisticated jargon or complex constructions. In practice, students often have the appropriate level of language acquisition to conduct research at this level, despite other individual differences in academic and/or information literacy. This paper outlines methods that instructors and students can respond to the challenges of the computer and the internet through pedagogical practice. Specifically, the paper provides strategies for student research that draw upon students’ acquired language skills to increase information literacy, strategies that apply not only to the above-mentioned courses but across subject areas. With this pairing of information literacy and language acquisition, instructors can help shorten the digital divide in high-impact courses and beyond in students’ academic careers.
Transmediation as a Powerful Learning Tool for Central American Immigrant US High School Students
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Theresa A Mc Ginnis
Transmediation, or the translation of semiotic content across modes, is grounded in the idea that alternative sign systems (linguistic, image, video) are available for making sense of the human experience (Mills, 2016; Siegel, 1995; Suhor, 1984). Moving across sign systems is a generative process which increases students’ learning opportunities, engages them in reflective thinking and allows youth to explore new insights and meaning (Mills, 2016; Siegel, 1995). Based on an ethnographic case study of one U.S. High School located in a suburban community of New York State that received 1400 new immigrant students from Central America in the fall of 2014 through 2016, my paper presentation will focus on how a digital production project featuring transmediation supported the youth in expanding their narrative writing in Spanish and English to incorporate a wide range of text types and genre structures, to draw on their own life histories with authority and power, to disseminate knowledge to school educators and administrators, and to become designers of critical digital texts. Overall, I discuss how the Central American immigrant youth, representing hundreds of thousands of Central American youth who have migrated alone to the United States, became participants in the creation of knowledge, and became more literate in the powerful way they can use new digital tools to express their voice, and political voice.
Identification and Evaluation of Information Literacy Skills of Greek High School Students
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Elissavet Koulakidou, Vassilios Dagdilelis
The aim of the present study was to identify and evaluate the information literacy skills of Greek High school students. A set of 22 questions applied to 249 students of High Schools of Thessaloniki, Greece. Their literacy skills were evaluated with 4 TRAILS questions. Quantitative and qualitative parameters analyzed with analysis of variance and Pearson chi square criterion, respectively. Students were trained to computer use at home (59%) by their parents (30.4%), and to Internet use at home (55.5%) on their own (33.6%). Daily Internet use was high (4.2±2.4 hours), being communicative (73.6%) and entertaining (26.1%) and to lesser extend educational (12.9%). Students were mostly self-trained to quick and efficient search to the Internet (32.1%). There was no difference in time spent on the Internet between genders or classes. However, students with the highest school grades spent significantly less time compared to those with the lowest grades (3.41±1.44 vs 5.95±3.08 hours, P<0.0001). Students seek information for their homework mainly on the Internet (81.6%); 27.3% of them never used a library catalogue. Information search techniques were mainly the use of keywords (31%) and the “search within results” (13.6%). Students' self-assessment regarding information literacy skills was very high; it ranged from 59% (use of indexes) to 94% (information search in the Internet). However, only 10% answered correctly to the 4 control questions. Moreover, 79.2% of students find necessary the enforcement of their information literacy skills through school learning programs. In conclusion, students’ literacy skills are not well developed, despite their positive self-evaluation.
Learning German in English-speaking Environments
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mary Grace Quigley
As we learn new skills and information, we construct and update our identities. Identity construction mediates how willing we are to engage, participate, and to learn through action. Learners’ identities can direct them to invest in practices which facilitate learning or to resist these practices. Previous research has focussed on contexts of migration in which economically and socially disadvantaged language learners enter primarily monolingual English-speaking environments. Despite the consequences for teaching methodology and learning theory, there has been a lack of investigation of language learning and identity in English-speaking contexts. Having English as an alternative avenue of communication has many implications for power dynamics between language learners and more proficient speakers, and for learners’ willingness to practice the language. This paper uses qualitative and quantitative data to report on the identities and investments of learners of German at an international university in Berlin, where English is often used as the working language. It discusses these learners’ identity construction in relation to the learning opportunities they are willing to create and use, as well as the social reasons for choosing to resist certain chances for learning. By working towards a deeper understanding of the social factors involved in English-speaking contexts, this paper advocates a teaching approach that encourages practices in which learners are invested, thus improving their learning outcomes.
