Mrs Fariba Mirzaei, Dr Maryam Sarrafzadeh, Dr Mohammad Khandan,
Volume 7, Issue 3 (12-2020)
Abstract
Aim: today, digital literacy, as a set of skills that enable people to use digital space effectively for success in personal, educational and professional life, has become a necessity in all societies and public libraries are one of the most important providers of digital literacy education in the world. Digital literacy education has not been considered in public libraries in Iran. The first step in promoting digital literacy education in Iran`s public libraries is to design courses and topics that can cover a variety of this aspects of the phenomenon. Now, the boundaries of this content art not clear, and this research seeks to design a comprehensive framework to meet this need. The purpose of this study is to present a content framework for digital literacy education to Iranian public libraries users.
Methodology: this research is a qualitative research and it`s method is qualitative content analysis. at first, the courses provided by the public libraries of Iran Were reviewed and then content analysis of digital literacy courses was conducted in public libraries of developed countries. 16 libraries were selected from English speaking countries that hold digital literacy courses and share information on their websites by cluster sampling with probability proportional to size. To perform Delphi, Experts from the fields of library and information science and information technology, and public libraries professionals were selected.
Findings: 9 courses were identified and after compiling a questio0nnaire and preforming two Delphi rounds, these courses were reduced to 8 main courses and 37 sub-courses. These courses were included computer, internet, job management, information literacy, financial literacy, learning skills, effective communication skills and how to work with smartphones. Software courses were not considered suitable by specialists. This seems to be due to the different groups of society and the heterogeneous community of public libraries users and the experts do not see this as a readiness in the society to receive software related courses.
Conclusion: digital literacy education in Iran has generally neglected. Generally, digital literacy education in universities and educational institutions is provided in formal computer training courses. Libraries in general have paid very little attention to the issue of education. the first step in advancing digital literacy education in public libraries is designing courses that can covers the various aspects of this phenomenon. Educational content is also one of the sides of the education triangle (learner, educator and educational content). However today the boundaries of this content are not clear and this study try to design a comprehensive framework to meet this need.
