Publications

The construct of digital literacy serves to examine the set of skills required by faculty and students to function effectively and safely in digitally mediated environments, in relation to both the macrocontext of education policy and the microcontext of practice initiatives. Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) offers a multidimensional conceptual toolkit to examine digital information literacy from an academic content perspective (Maton 2013). LCT introduces the concept of ‘semantic waves’ as an effective means to analyse teaching and learning practices in relation to recurrent movements between simpler and more complex, and concrete and abstract forms of academic content and information (Maton, 2013). These movements are conceptualized as semantic codes, comprising strengths of semantic gravity (SG) and semantic density (SD). SG refers to the degree to which the meaning relates to a context. The more meaning relies on its local reference, the stronger it is. The more decontextualised and universal the meaning, the weaker it becomes. SD refers to the complexity of meaning. Stronger SD conveys more complex, condensed meaning. Weaker SD implies more general, less complex, less condensed meaning (Maton, 2013). Although several studies (e.g., Clarence, 2017; Macnaught, 2020; Mouton, 2020) have explored this concept within academic content and information literacy, few studies have extended this approach to digital content and information literacy (DCIL) at university level. This study uses Maton’s scale to examine semantic codes in DCIL and interaction during EMI lectures at the University of Oviedo. 36 lectures are examined qualitatively from nine undergraduate subjects across four disciplines. Preliminary results show that the degree of semantic gravity and density varies across disciplines, and how these trends extend to students’ summative assessment grades. Last but not least, some pedagogical implications based on these results will be drawn.