This document summarizes a presentation on shaping information literacy education for refugees. It discusses how digital skills and job orientation programs for refugees in Germany currently fail to provide targeted skills for the job market. It then presents results from studies on refugees' digital skills, including that they have high internet affinity but struggle with tasks like searching in a second language. It outlines a curriculum developed to integrate digital skills training into job orientation programs, with modules on basics, job searching, applications and work. The goal is to provide applicable skills and increase awareness of information needs for successful job searching. Future work will include diagnostic tools and digital learning modules.

1. Shaping Information Literacy Education for
the Empowerment of Refugees
Dr. Violeta Trkulja & Dr. Juliane Stiller
Berlin School of Library and Information Science, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
April 24th 2019, LILAC: The Information Literacy Conference
Photo from Marco Verch (CC BY 2.0)

2. Agenda
○ Motivation
○ Information literacy for the integration process
○ Studies on digital skills of refugees and four results
○ Curriculum and learnings
2

3. 3Welcome refugees balloons by Takver (CC BY-SA 2.0)

4. 4Southwest von brettr13 (CC BY-SA 2.0) Flickr.com

5. Job-seeking increasingly moves
online
5
60% of unemployed adults use the
Internet to search and apply for a job
Weitzel, 2015
of job offers are offered online

6. Untapped potential of refugees
qualifications
o they work more often than other migrants in
low-paid sectors,
o usually well below their actual qualification
level
6

7. Integration activities in Germany
○ are not designed for job orientation
○ fail to impart people with Digital Information
Literacy Skills
○ lack of targeted information about the German
job market and the application processes
7

8. 8
of the EU population had
inadequate digital competencies in
2017
DESI Report, 2018
43%

9. 9(v. Deursen, 2010; v. Dijk & v. Deursen, 2014; v. Deursen u.a., 2015)
Internet Skill Scale

10. 10
Studies on digital
skills during job
orientation
Studies on digital
skills during job
orientation

11. 11
Results in Stiller & Trkulja, 2018
2017: Measuring of digital skills and anchoring
them on a reference framework
2018: Understanding deficencies in finding,
processing and analyzing information

12. Results
4
4 by Alysha Koby (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

13. #1
13
High Internet affinity

14. #2
14
Searching in a second
language is more
difficult

15. #3
15
All digital skills are
important

16. #4
16
Information literacy in context
Applicable to real-world situations

17. Curriculum &
Learnings
The path by ilirjan rrumbullaku (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

18. Skills Training
Support with finding (local) employment
Process-oriented individual
coaching
18

19. Digital Skills during job search
Basics
Job orientation
Application
Work

20. Cross-cutting themes
Digital CommunicationDigital Communication
Research & Source
Competencies
Research & Source
Competencies
Privacy & SecurityPrivacy & Security
Digital Content CreationDigital Content Creation

21. Basics Job orientation Application Work
Digital CommunicationDigital Communication
Research & Source
Competencies
Research & Source
Competencies
Privacy & SecurityPrivacy & Security
Digital Content CreationDigital Content Creation

22. 22

23. Teaching the digital with analog
methods
23

24. Learnings from the course
• Perceived skills are always higher than demonstrated
ones
• Become aware of their information needs -> this is a time
consuming process
• To efficiently orient in the German job market you need
to be aware of its structure
24

25. Future work
Teaching
Digital learning workshop
for refugees
25
Diagnostic instruments
For digital skills
Digital learning
Digitize modules

26. Dr. Juliane Stiller
juliane.stiller (at) ibi.hu-berlin.de
Dr. Violeta Trkulja
violeta.trkulja (at) ibi.hu-berlin.de
@stillinsky@viokeka
This slide deck is licensed
under CC BY 4.0 License
The studies were supported by
OCLC/ALISE Library and Information Science Research Grant 2018
26
More on our project for measuring and teaching digital skills on
our blog:
https://www.you-we-digital.com/

27. References
van Deursen, A. J. A. M., & van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2009). Improving digital skills for the use of online public
information and services. Government Information Quarterly, 26(2), 333–340. https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2008.11.002
van Deursen, A. J. A. M., & van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2014). Digital Skills - Unlocking the Information Society. Palgrave
Macmillan US. Abgerufen von http://www.palgrave.com/br/book/9781137437020
van Deursen, A. J. A. M., Helsper, E. J., & Eynon, R. (2015). Development and validation of the Internet Skills Scale
(ISS). Information, Communication & Society, 19(6), 804–823. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1078834
DESI Report 2018: Digital Economy and Society Index Report 2018. Human Capital Digital Inclusion and Skills.
Available online: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/image/document/2018-
20/2_desi_report_humancapital_B5DC055D-DD1E-51CD-229138BE55F9AE8A_52247.pdf
Deursen, A. J. A. M. van. (2010). Internet skills : vital assets in an information society.
https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036530866
Iordache, C., Mariën, I., & Baelden, D. (2017). Developing Digital Skills and Competences: A Quick-Scan Analysis
of 13 Digital Literacy Models. Italian Journal of Sociology of Education, 9 (1), 6-30, doi:10.14658/pupj-ijse-2017-
1-2
OECD (2016), "Skills for a Digital World: 2016 Ministerial Meeting on the Digital Economy Background Report",
OECD Digital Economy Papers, No. 250, OECD Publishing, Paris.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5jlwz83z3wnw-en
Stiller, J., Trkulja, V., Chowdhury, G., McLeod, J., Gillet, V., & Willet, P. (2018). Assessing Digital Skills of Refugee
Migrants During Job Orientation in Germany. In Transforming Digital Works, iConference 2018, Lecture Notes in
Computer Science (Vol. 10766, p. S. 527-536). Cham: Springer.
Weitzel, T., Eckhardt, A., Laumer, S., Maier, C., von Stetten, A., Weinert, C., & Wirth, J. (2015). Recruiting Trends
2015 - Eine empirische Untersuchung mit den Top-1.000-Unternehmen aus Deutschland sowie den Top-300-
Unternehmen aus den Branchen Finanzdienstleistung, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg. Retrieved from
https://www.uni-bamberg.de/isdl/transfer/e-recruiting/recruiting-trends/recruiting-trends-2015/
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