The Use of Digital Texts as an Alternative Method of Determining Functional ICT Literacy Levels

摘要

The aim of this study was to determine ICT literacy levels using a situated approach, targeting the functional understanding of technical terms contained in digital everyday culture texts. A cohort of 70 first year undergraduate Education students participated in the study. The assessment task included writing definitions for 47 technical terms which were derived from a series of digital texts, such as songs and advertisements. Students' definitions were evaluated using a simple rating scale. Results indicated that for two-thirds of the terms examined students'understanding ranged from medium to high. On the other hand, students'understanding of the remaining one-third of the terms was either poor or minimal. Furthermore, the correlation of students' understanding of the terms with student's self-reported familiarity with software applications was low to moderate. The paper is concluded with a discussion of the potential of using popular cultural texts as an alternative approach for assessing levels of functional ICT literacy.