EMPOWERING ENGINEERING STUDENTS TO FACE PRESENT-DAY CHALLENGES - FOCUS ON DIGITAL, INFORMATION AND MEDIA LITERACY CONFLUENCES
EMPOWERING ENGINEERING STUDENTS TO FACE PRESENT-DAY CHALLENGES - FOCUS ON DIGITAL, INFORMATION AND MEDIA LITERACY CONFLUENCES

Summary/Abstract: We are at the advent of a new era, that of the emergence of a complex multifaceted type of literacies that the contemporary person is expected to master, far beyond the traditional one, which used to merely assume reading and writing abilities. The newly occurred paradigms comprise digital, information and media literacies components, with an intricate pattern of relationships connecting them. Knowledge of only one of these is gradually becoming insufficient, as the new waves of youth, whether they are called Millennials or the Z Gen, are expected to enter the labor market endowed with at least basic skills of all the new kinds of literacies. There are major risks that, if appropriate education is not widely provided in this respect, the new generations may be negatively affected at personal and global levels, at all three phases of action: searching for, evaluating information, and even creating it. Against this background, the paper aim is to propose a coherent comprehensive approach to empowering IT engineering students in higher education in order to become media-savvy and to develop an array of information and media literacy skills and competences that would prevent them from being prone to maneuvering forms of any type. Moreover, another important objective of the proposed approach is to contribute to developing the trainees’ critical thinking, as well as their awareness raising attitude and mentality meant to support them throughout their lifelong learning process. A technical university can get involved in this mission, which will result in delivering better prepared, work-ready engineering graduates, with both soft and hard skills at a high level of complexity. A foreign language course of the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) type can accommodate an approach to developing the students’ information and media literacies quite successfully, as a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) based module, with content about information and media literacy, and with the corresponding linguistic input blended. It will include a Student Questionnaire on the topic, as well as a chain of other activities/tasks, designed to collect data, sensitize the learners and increase their awareness of the phenomena under focus, by providing models of analysis, reflection opportunities and discussion topics.

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