Assessing New Media Literacy: The Singapore Case
Thursday, June 26 10:00-10:30 AM
This project is part of a large scale survey study aiming at: (a) assessing the level of new media literacy and competencies of Singapore school students; and (b) exploring factors that may affect the new media literacy of students. Prior to the pilot study, a critical review of the literature was conducted. The review synthesized ten fine-grained indicators for new media literacy. A set of items were then designed to measure these ten indicators. Item analysis and reliability/validity analysis were performed to the data collected from the pilot study. Only those items validated were retained for the main study. For this paper two major findings are reported: (a) Singapore students seemed to be already well equipped with new media skills and consuming media literacy; and (b) Singapore students’ new media literacy does not seemed to be related to their gender. However, relationships to their grade level, social-economic-status, parents’ education qualification, and parents’ ethnicity are more pronounced. Implications and future directions are discussed.