The formation and development of media literacy of students as an important task in student scientific circle`s work

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Stepan Gzhytskyi National University of Veterinary Medicine and Biotechnologies

THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIA LITERACY OF STUDENTS AS AN IMPORTANT TASK IN STUDENT SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE'S WORK

OLESIA SMOLINSKA, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor,

KHRYSTYNA DZYUBYNSKA, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences,

Associate Professor, Associate Professor

MAGDALYNA DRACH, Candidate of Veterinary Sciences, Associate Professor

Lviv

Анотація

ОЛЕСЯ СМОЛЕНСЬКА, доктор педагогічних наук, професор, завідувач кафедри філософії та педагогіки, Львівський національний університет ветеринарної медицини та біотехнологій імені С. З. Гжицького, Україна

ХРИСТИНА ДЗЮБИНСЬКА, кандидат педагогічних наук, доцент, доцент кафедри української та іноземних мов, Львівський національний університет ветеринарної медицини та біотехнологій імені С. З. Гжицького, Україна

МАГДАЛИНА ДРАЧ, кандидат ветеринарних наук, доцент, доцент кафедри внутрішніх хвороб тварин та клінічної діагностики, Львівський національний університет ветеринарної медицини та біотехнологій імені С. З. Гжицького, Україна

ФОРМУВАННЯ ТА РОЗВИТОК МЕДІАГРАМОТНОСТІ СТУДЕНТІВ ЯК ВАЖЛИВЕ ЗАВДАННЯ В РОБОТІ СТУДЕНТСЬКОГО НАУКОВОГО ГУРТКА

У статті стисло проаналізовано зміни інтерпретації змісту поняття медіаграмотності відповідно до сучасних завдань української вищої освіти. Окрім того, зроблений прогноз щодо подальшого розвитку медіаг- рамотності як компетенції та інтерпретовано п'ять основних принципів медіаграмотності, щодо наукових повідомлень. Подані короткі рекомендації з опрацювання цих принципів, у ході обговорень на засіданнях студентського наукового гуртка.

Ключові слова: медіагра- мотність, принципи медіаграмот- ності, наукове повідомлення, вища освіта, студентський науковий гурток.

Annotation

media literacy education competence

The article briefly analyzes the changes in the interpretation of the term content of media literacy according to the modern tasks of Ukrainian higher education. Besides, the prediction of further development of media literacy as a competence is made, and five main principles of media literacy, concerning scientific messages, are interpreted. Short guidelines of these principles are given and they are based on the discussions of the student scientific club's meetings.

Key words: media literacy, the principles of media literacy, scientific message, higher education, student scientific circle.

Introduction

Changes in higher education, that take place, as well as reorganization of scientific and scientific-technical activities in Ukraine, first of all, are aimed at qualitative transformation of the process of generation and transmission of scientific information. Both a modern teacher, scholar, student and a manufacturer, businessman face the same challenge: how to master and spread the information. The traditional methods, in particular, direct or mediated by paper medium of communication, are able to provide the support of increasingly less amount of information-communicational flows. The situation became more complicated because of their division, that caused difficulty in the process of generalization and conceptualization, which, in addition, lose their prognostic nature. Modern concepts state and generalize the real state of certain process, fixing the direction of its essential factors expansion, shaping it rather than forming a vision of future development. It concerns mainly social and humanitarian, economic and political processes and therefore science, but it does not skip other fields of knowledge.

The difficulty in managing the information-communicational flows and understanding them is in tune with the complexity of operating a large number of scientific facts. That's why media literacy, in addition to its primary importance, is also projected on teacher's and student's scientific activities in terms of educational process in higher institution. That caused the writing of an article.

The main text

The discussion of media literacy in Ukrainian social sphere, especially in the educational area, is comparatively new, however abroad it has been actively developing since the mid-80s of the XX century. During this period, various researchers were distinguishing different principles that lead to the development of media literacy: starting with five which were set out in Canada in 1987 and applied by Goodman (2014) in his thematic publication, which is declared to be one of the best in 2014; six, which the National Association of media education in the USA base on (2007); eight principles of J. Pungente, taken into account by the authors of Ukrainian textbooks on media education and media literacy (Media education and media literacy, 2012) and B. Duncan, which are referred to by M. N.Yildiz and J. Keengwe (2015) in their manual. The above mentioned authors consider a number of issues in their works, including the technology of construction and deconstruction of media texts concerning the change of their influence (Різун et al., 2012), the rise of social competence in media space (Goodman, 2014), connection between media literacy and pedagogical technologies (Yildiz, Keengwe, 2015). Domestic pedagogic science has already begun the search of common features between media education and professional training, namely the appliance of media- educational technologies (Dukhanina, 2011) and the formation of media literacy of future social teachers (Matvijchuk, 2014). Although, the studies of media literacy issues as an integral, organic part of higher education are not conducted. This is, partially, due to the absence of this subject in cultural and educational space of modern higher education. Nevertheless, a foreign research practice implies certain level of media literacy of students, while the Ukrainian reality is somewhat different. In addition, there i s a contradiction between the understanding of media literacy as to the mass media and to the circulated scientific information.

Taking into account the degree of investigation of this topic and its actuality, we consider it necessary to distinguish its following elements: media literacy as one of the professional competencies of a modern specialist, its development as a premise of an effective scientific research work of students, updating of the content of student scientific club's work.

The investigation of this subject is quite complicated, since there are many unsolved research problems, first of all - the problem of relevant usage of the term "media literacy" to its ability to find, analyze, assess texts containing scientific content. Arguments "for" such an approach may be, for example, the rapid development of electronic scientific publications, the preventative measures of informational monopoly formation of the so-called "authoritative" publications, in philosophical context - the diversity of the subjects under research and others. The arguments "against" - opposing to the above mentioned, in particular, is the necessity to protect copyright and improve the quality of scientific publications. Another argument is the need to form and maintain a single scientific picture of the world, as a problem of ideological and philosophical level.

Despite having not enough counter arguments, we still believe it's appropriate to use the term "media literacy" concerning its ability to understand and assess information with scientific content because the commercialization of science caused the competition as to the scientific information, therefore, the monopoly that may arise will deform its flow. One of the means of such deformation, which is appreciable enough, is the absence of direct correlation between the quality of the content of scientific information and qualitative characteristics of a journal that publishes it, because the rating is also formed thanks to the restricted access to the content of publications. Thus, the number of publications circulate in a limited space, while many others may be of different quality (but not necessarily) are open to the public and, as a result, can be used more easily as a source of scientific information, especially by the students of such higher educational institutions that do not provide access to popular databases such as Scopus, Web of Science and others.

Another issue that should be stipulated is the problem of tools for determining the level of media literacy. In the abstract of Matvijchuk's thesis (2014) a number of methods and techniques are listed, but it's difficult to diagnose them in such large quantities and, in addition, we have no information as to the validity of these means. We consider the approach of such researchers (Ashrafi-rizi et al., 2014) more reasonable but, taking into account the object of our study, firstly, it needs more concretization and, secondly, it requires the adaptation, which can be itself an independent subject of the study. Therefore, having information about the provision of schools and higher educational institutions with computers, the rapid spread of means of communication, observing the tendencies of information circulation, we can state rather low level of media literacy of young people in general and students in particular.

One more aspect that requires argumentation is the link between the social and professional competences in terms of media literacy. The increase in social networks involvement gradually stimulates the creation of both scientific and professional internet associations, for example, Academia.edu, LinkedIn and others, which will, surely, lead to the going of the academic community beyond the educational institutions and the formation of branch networks, the functioning of which will embrace not only employment, publication or communication but, in our opinion, will also lead to the existence of separate scientific "nets" - educational- scientific-professional internet, specific global universities. It should be noted that many preconditions for this have already existed: it is the expansion of thematic and social range of educational programs and their high linguistic unity (thanks to the widespread usage of English), going of science beyond the measures of laboratories, libraries and departments, certain reorientation of its objectives that is manifested both through the decrease in a number of fundamental scientific works and through the deterioration of their quality, certain stagnation in this field of scientific research. Such situation is considered to be temporary because it distorts the structure of science, but still optimal ways to organize this information should be found.

In connection with this, the issue of information "filtration" and its classification becomes of urgent importance, which needs to be solved, first of all, through the choice of appropriate means. As it was above mentioned, such means as the selection of scientific information through the selection of means of its distribution have certain disadvantages. Taking into account the general trends of modern society, we can predict that the problem of "filtration" and classification of information is being considered on a personal-group level. In this case, media literacy changes from means to competency, which will determine the ability (regardless of the level of generalization) to join and function in a certain informational space, including informational-professional, and which will be characterized by individualized features. In such a way, media literacy is a coherent link between social and narrow professional competencies and in the prospect may comprise them inside, though; it will have probably been presented in other way by that time.

Turning directly to this issue, we would note that the formation and development of media literacy is one of the most important tasks that should be implemented in the educational process of higher educational institution. The most beneficial pedagogical circumstances for this task implementation are extra curricular work, especially - the activities of student scientific circle. The essential content that should be paid attention to is, first of all, the discussion of key principles of media literacy. The analysis, which had been made, stated different number of these principles, but we base on primary five and like S. Goodman (2014) examine their content as to the scientific messages (regardless of their content, scope and source of origin).

Consequently, we are paraphrasing the first of principles "all the scientific massages are constructed. " The specificity of science lies in its commitment to manipulate objective facts. However, the primary responsibility for the content lies on the distributor, like in media. Topic, which is really important for discussion with students, is how scientists confirm the objectivity of their research, the width of topics (e.g. highly professional, specialized) and the level of public interest in its development.

"Scientific messages form our perception of reality." Firstly, the revelation of the concept content of Homo informaticus deserves special attention in the debate on this principle; secondly, the clarification of the educational mechanisms, thanks to which, acquirements of science become the acquirements of consciousness.

"Different audiences understand the same scientific message in different ways." Our own experience of such discussions with students shows that the most effective tool to form the understanding of this principle is current questionnaire of the most memorable material during the lesson (short tests are conducted). Then you can discuss common experience, giving different explanations of the same event via brainstorming. As to the scientific message itself, the students need to understand, that scientists who study certain scientific subject can not be completely isolated from their life experience that influences, at least, the choice of topics, the way of forming conclusions, etc. That is why we should not beware of working on the same scientific topic, therefore collective scientific cooperation is popular, and, thanks to it, a new intellectual product, which is enriched with the individual experience of a number of researchers, is formed. In this connection, we consider erroneous practice of centralized (on a state level) coordination of research topics, including thesis research.

"Scientific messages undergo commercial interference." This principle is not very efficient in Ukrainian science because of limited funding, but it can be interpreted in another way: the quality of the scientific message is affected by the traditions of scientific schools, by the way of solving a problem concerning intellectual property, by the editorial policy of journals.

"All the scientific massages are the medium of certain values." Despite being contradictory enough, this statement results from the above mentioned. Besides, each scientific community has its own conception of expediency of certain scientific subject development; in addition, each scientific message goes through the "sieve" of researcher's selfcensorship. Owing to this, a specific rejection of some ideas and promotion of others takes place, while the motives can be not only scientific, but also mercenary or social. Modern scientific world is absorbed in finding new and up to-day technical and technological achievements, which is quite natural, but it is well understood that the reality is created by a man, as if "omitting" undesirable. Therefore, the question "what and why this researcher rejected, while solving certain scientific problem" still remains open. A good example for the students is the story of "random" and "forgotten" inventions, starting with Columbus.

In general, the study of the above mentioned principles is aimed at formation and development of media literacy, actually, doesn't directly intend to move to a significantly higher level of media literacy itself. These principles are the way for a student, future scientist, businessman, worker or the owner of an enterprise to supply himself with means by which it will be easier to orient in the informational oversaturated space. As regards this, D. Gillmor (2008) formulated the principles of new media literacy for journalism, distinguishing the principles of media consumption and media creation. Indisputably, these statements are closer to the principles of modern journalism, nevertheless, they should not be ignored in the work on scientific publications, as they may be accepted as personal credo and, in such a way, will affect the formation of researcher's motivation, his point of view, determining the level of his scientific activity and efficiency. Therefore we consider these principles are worth discussing with the members of student scientific circle as a ground to their own success stories. One of the applied pedagogical methods was the change of the status of these statements from the principles to the motivational slogans, while being grammatically used in the first person singular. Own experience shows that educational, as well as scientific, activity of students increases, as they stick to the rules formulated by D. Gillmor (2008) (Table 1).

Table 1

Transforming Gillmore principles into personalized motivational slogans for media consumption and media creation

Summarizing all the above written, we would state that the issue of media literacy is an urgent problem for higher education in Ukraine because except for its own direct meanings, such as the ability to analyze and evaluate the media, it also comprises much broader philosophical educational problem of mediation in the system "information-personality- information"

References

1. Ashrafi-rizi, H., Ghazavi Khorasgani, Z., Fateme Zarmehr, F. & Zahra Kazempour, Z. (2014) A survey on rate of media literacy among Isfahan University of Medical Sciences' students using Iranian media literacy questionnaire. Journal of Education and Health Promotion, V3, doi 10.4103/2277-9531.131939 (in English).

2. Gillmor, D. (2008) Principles for a new media literacy. Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. URL: https:// cyber. law. harvard. edu/sites/ cyber. law. harvard. edu/fi les/ Principles%20for%20a%20New%20 Media%20Literacy_MR.pdf (in English).

3. Goodman, S. Social Media Literacy: The 5 Key Concepts (2014). URL: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ social-media-five-key-concepts- stacey-goodman (in English).

4. National Association for Media Literacy Education. Core Principles of media Literacy Education in the United States (2007). URL: http:// www.blingginc.com/NAMLE- CPMLE-w-questions2.pdf (in English).

5. Yildiz, M. & Keengwe, J. (2015) Handbook of Research on Media Literacy in the Digital Age (in English).

6. Dukhanina, N. M. (2011). Pedagogical conditions of usage of Media Technology in preparing masters in computer sciences: author's summary of thesis... candidate of pedagogical sciences, Kyiv (in Ukrainian).

7. Matvijchuk, M. N. (2014) Formation of media literacy of future social workers in the process of professional training: author's summary of thesis....candidate of pedagogical sciences, Kyiv, (in Ukrainian).

8. Media education and media literacy (2012). Editor V. F. Ivanov, A. Volosheniuk; scientific editor V.V. Rizun. Kyiv, (in Ukrainian).

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