My University has just initiated a Digital Capabilities Project which I am jointly managing. Our work is being influenced and to some extent shaped by the work JISC is undertaking (see https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/building-digital-capability) and also activities by complimentary organisations such as UCISA (see their Digital Capabilities Survey). In an e-nutshell, digital capabilities focuses on the specific digital knowledge and skills individuals should have to capably interact with their social, work and learning environments. This is needs driven and bespoke, unlike digital literacies which focuses more on general IT skills. For example somebody may have a general knowledge of MS Word but they may need to know more about how to efficiently produce long documents. So instead of taking an advanced Word course they may just undertake some self development, such as watching an online tutorial on YouTube to acquire this specific skill.
JISC's project started 2 years ago although they have been involved in research in this area for many years. However, I was undertaking a little bit of surf researching on gender and capabilities and was interested to find that the BBC were early promoters of the term "digital literacies". This is evident in one of their archived web sites About BBC Learning, where there is a link was to an IPSOS MORI report commissioned in 2012 Understanding Media Literacy: Digital Capabilities (unfortunately it does not link to whole report). Much of the research on digital capabilities has focused on staff and student skills in the education sector but this report looks at the state of the nation.
The study found that although there was a desire by individuals to learn about new technologies increasing the confidence of those with low literacy was a considerable challenge. The research also identified barriers such as fears about security, cost, speed and even screen size. Mostly those that used the internet were content with what they knew seeing little need to know more but paradoxically the study found that users also felt they needed upskilling, because they were concerned with being left behind. For women and older people an obstacle was worrying about losing their work on their own devices, this may have changed over the last couple of years with increased ownership of tablets (see my previous blog My hair is silver and I surf but don't call me a silver surfer). For those with low level digital literacy skills learning from others was really important, for those with higher literacy skills a range of methods was used to develop their knowledge, such as YouTube and Google.
Despite this report being a couple of years old and even taking into account the developing mobile market I think some the observations are still relevant and could inform some of the approaches we are using to develop digital capabilities. Not only should we think about the context and the digital need, we should also focus on learning styles. The reports identifies 7 internet population segments, from "hi-techtrend setter" to "concerned resistor", a framework that could still be relevant in the in particular when identifying approaches to developing skills.
