New development project – “IT literacy and digital didactics”

Possessing digital skills is an important prerequisite for being perceived and experiencing oneself as a “full-fledged citizen” in Denmark. Digital skills are essential when dealing with a wide range of specific situations as a citizen and worker, but also to gain access to creating a well-functioning everyday life and an attractive existence in the new country.

At Sprogcenter Midt, however, we see a not insignificant group of students – not only on Danish education 1, but also on Danish education 2 – who have surprisingly few digital skills and who are not familiar with other forms of IT equipment than their mobile phones. We find that the course participants themselves have a great awareness of the importance of digital skills and a great motivation to develop despite weak prerequisites.

In the spring of 2022, we have therefore applied for and been awarded DKK 160,000 by the Agency for International Recruitment and Integration for a new and exciting competence development project for our teachers. The aim is to develop new effective methods for organizing Danish lessons, so that the students learn new digital skills at the same time as they learn Danish in a well-thought-out way. It requires that the teachers develop and incorporate a precise didactics for IT literacy that can support and go hand in hand with other didactic considerations and planning of language teaching. This is what the project “IT literacy and digital didactics” is about.

The project form is based on the principles of action learning, where work is done dynamically with planning, testing, sparring, adjustment, retesting and evaluation. Concretely, the development work is handled by a group of actors consisting of teachers and a project coordinator in close collaboration with researcher Louise Tranekjær from Roskilde University. The stakeholder group tests, evaluates and adjusts the learning activities with their students in everyday life, after which the results are passed on to an extended group of teachers.

We expect that this development and dissemination work will result in the establishment of a “best practice” in our entire teaching group and generally inspire and contribute to increasing understanding of digital didactics and IT literacy within the teaching of Danish as a second language for adults.