Projects

HOW PEOPLE ENCOUNTER E-ILLITERACY AND HOW THEY CAN TAKE ACTION TO OVERCOME IT (PENCEIL)

Summary

What are the experiences of, and implications for, people who do not possess any, or sufficient, skills in the use of ICTs living in an increasingly technologised society? Are the current basic ICT education and training programmes adequate to meet their needs and can better programmes be developed through the involvement of people in the design of their courses?

Surveys have shown that although the use of ICTs is growing fast, there are groups, frequently those already experiencing social exclusion, who face further marginalisation through their inability to use computers and other digital technologies. While national and local government are well on their way to meeting their target of putting all services on line by 2005, there is less progress in ensuring that significant parts of the population is able to make use of them.

The study will contribute to understanding: how e-illiteracy produces and is produced by social exclusion; the construction of the meanings given to e-literacy; the interaction between e-literacy and other literacy, language and learning problems; how public and voluntary services can use these technologies to meet social inclusion aims and how their adoption risks increasing exclusion; how UK online centres design their programmes; how excluded groups can self-organize through, and to use, e-technologies; and curriculum development.
This study aims to understand e-literacy skills through exploring e-illiteracy. Working with the community and education providers it focuses on local understandings of e-illiteracy through action research. To understand how to combat e-illiteracy, we will use the lessons of adult literacy's development of a learner led curriculum, based on students' writing, to design programmes. E-illiteracy is a currently absent term which will be explored through an action-research study on a housing estate to represent the experience of e-illiteracy, and the ways in which it excludes people from goods, services and networks delivered through e-channels. The view is not of people as consumers of goods and services; but of people who represent and create their worlds through all the means at their disposal.

While it is difficult to predict the outcomes of action-research projects it is anticipated that the impact will be in a number of related fields: Education Practice; Education Policy; Social Policy; and E-government. Key topics will include:

A greater understanding of the impact of lack of other basic skills and of physical and psychological disabilities on use of ICTs.
At the local level the findings of this research may have an impact on the strategic plans of local colleges, the borough's adult learning service and the local Learning and Skills Council through revealing to these bodies areas of education and training demand and need that they have not yet identified.
At a national level the research will inform the development of the curriculum for the OfES's IT Skills for Life strategy.
This research may indicate ways in which national ICT policies can be framed to minimise their exclusionary effects and exploit their claimed potential for inclusion.

This research will identify the extent of the reliance of people with poor ICT skills on non electronic channels and illuminate any need to prioritise the continuance of such channels, if e-access is not to result in non-access by other routes.

How People Encounter E-illiteracy and how they can Take Action to Overcome It

The Penceil project (How People Encounter E-illiteracy) starts from the belief that people’s IT needs have, for too long, been defined from above: by government; by IT suppliers; by training providers; by exam boards; and so on. The basic questions of how people experience any lack of skills in their daily lives have not been asked: what barriers it presents to them? and what they want to do with the skills they learn?

These are not new concerns. When adult literacy attracted interest in the 1970s providers started by believing they knew what their students wanted. It took some time to realise that asking the students was a necessary part of the process. This experience of getting students to design their literacy curriculum is one of the foundations of Penceil: the experience of students, teachers and providers of computer and IT skills is another. A third strand is the work that has been done in defining media and information literacies, but most of this work starts from ‘what is literacy?’ rather than ‘what does it mean not to have these skills?’.

Government and commerce are moving their services to the internet and other computer systems, partly because they can provide a better service that way, but largely because they can save money by doing it. For instance, Gordon Brown’s aim of cutting over 100,000 public service jobs depends upon people using the internet to access services and inputting their own data, rather than civil servants doing it for them. Companies like Amazon and Expedia can save money, and reduce prices, because customers find their own products and services.

This raises the questions of whose game is being played. Is it the individual who is being given the power to communicate easily with friends and family around the world or are people being fitted into new ways of doing business for other’s benefit? Even more, what is happening to people left outside this electronic loop?

The Penceil project believes we can start to answer these questions better if we start from studying illiteracy rather than literacy.

The Penceil project is being undertaken by the Department of Information Systems at the London School of Economics and Political Science in conjunction with the National Institute for Adult and Continuing Education. The project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council under their e-society programme and runs for two years from October 2004.

The project will be based around the St Martin's Estate in Lambeth, South London, and has the support of High Trees Community Development Trust—the local community association—Lambeth College and Lambeth Adult Learning Service. It will be an Action Research project, so it will not only try to understand the issues but will also work with local residents to design and implement programmes which will meet their needs.

Articles about the project

Life Swap—TES, 12 November 2004 (pdf)
Overcoming E-illiteracy—Adults Learning, October 2004 (pdf)
Penceil Point—Acorn Publicity Newsletter (High Trees), October 2004 (pdf)

Project outputs

Area profile:
St Martin's Estate area profile (pdf)
Presentation on the profile (pdf)
Census data on the study area (xls)

Social exclusion and ICT (non)-use - slides of presentation to LSE SSIT open research forum - 6 April 2005 (pdf)

E-service delivery and the non-user - to ECIS 2005 Research Panel, E-Government, the Citizen and Equity - 27 May 2005
outline of the presentation (pdf)
slides of the presentation (pdf)

Outline proposals for a new basic ICT curriculum - May 2005 (pdf)
Presentation to advisory group - July 2005 (pdf)

Review of Literature on Good Practice in Basic ICT Teaching and Review of Policy (pdf)
Presentation to advisory group - July 2005 (pdf)

Outline course plan for ‘Living with Computers’ course - September 2005 (pdf)
Mapping 'Living with Computers' course to ICT Skill for Life Standards - September 2005 (pdf)

Non-users of computers in south London: their experiences and aspirations for use - Paper to be presented to IRFD World Forum on Information Society: Digital Divide, Global Development and the Information Society – Tunis November 2005 (pdf)

Publications

Cushman, M. & Klecun, E. (2005). "Non -Users of Computers in South London : Their Experiences and Aspirations for Use". in IRFD World Forum on Information Society: Digital Divide, Global Development and the Information Society , Tunis, Tunisia ,14-16 November 2005.

Cushman, M. & Klecun, E. (forthcoming ). “ How (can) non-users perceive usefulness: bringing in the digitally excluded” Accepted subject to revision for the IFIP working group 8.2 conference on

Social Exclusion—Societal and Organisational Implications for Information Systems to be held in Limerick, Ireland in July 2006 and for publication by Chapman and Hall in the volume of conference.

Clarke, A & Cushman, M. (forthcoming). “ Gaining control, and a voice, through technology” submitted for British Education Research Association Conference in Warwick in September 2005.

Cushman, M. & Klecun, E. (forthcoming ). “How non-users approach technology” under review for publication in The Social Study of Information and Communication Technology – Concepts and Cases (Cornford, T. & Whitley, E.A. [eds])