Copy, Cut, and Paste: How Does This Shape What We Know?

Copy, cut, and paste are functions naturalised and embedded across different software applications but are poorly understood as tools that shape our engagement with knowledge, culture and society in the 21st century. Educators often assume that students already possess the necessary skills and conceptual frameworks to learn with and through generic software packages, and tend to neglect how the affordances of different software shape the ways students "perform" the software (Adams, 2006). Emerging evidence internationally and locally indicates a dearth in this digital generation's basic academic literacy skills for successful learning despite their technological competency (Kvavik, 2005). Given the political, technological, financial, staff workload, and student learning implications that come with the adoption of ICTs in the education sector, it is imperative for universities to understand how to close the gap for students and ensure that technology is equitably and effectively used to support learning. The authors propose the following model for software literacy as the repertoires of skills and understandings needed for students to be critical and creative users of software packages and systems in a software saturated culture. The authors hypothesise that there are three progressive tiers of development towards software literacy: (1) a basic skill level where a learner can use a particular software; (2) an ability to independently troubleshoot and problem-solve issues faced when using the software; and finally, (3) the ability to critique the software, including being able to apply such critique to a range of software designed for a similar purpose and to use these understandings for new software learning. This research aimed to explore, examine, and theorise on how the notion of software literacy is understood, developed, and applied in tertiary teaching and learning contexts, and the extent to which this understanding is useful when translated into new contexts of learning with and through software. This research is important in its investigation of how students develop the knowledge and skills to use software and the extent to which they are able to apply and extend these to successfully learn and act in formal tertiary learning contexts.