These data were generated from Professional Doctorate research set within two UK universities that explored how university lecturers construct their knowledge of information and digital literacy. Workshops were convened with an expert group of librarians, learning technologists, and lecturers with the aim of forming a multi-professional understanding of the digital competencies relevant to university lecturers through an information literacy lens. Workshop materials and completed worksheets are included in the dataset. A further interview phase of the research was conducted with eight lecturers. Pseudonymised interview transcripts are provided along with codes I generated from the data.Utilising a contextual constructionism methodology (Nichols, 2015), my Professional Doctorate research aimed to explore the competencies that university lecturers require to be digitally competent. I began by investigating how digital competence is associated to information literacy, as related to university lecturers, by using a framework as a lens. I then convened workshops with an expert group of librarians, learning technologists, and lecturers, key stakeholders in information and digital literacy, and curricula and lecturer development. The workshops aimed to form a multi-professional understanding of the digital competencies relevant to university lecturers through an information literacy lens. To further my understanding of how university lecturers construct their knowledge of information and digital literacy, I undertook in-depth interviews with eight lecturers with the aim of better understanding the workshop data. Using a thematic analysis method, I concluded that lecturer construction of digital competence is still at an embryonic stage. Most lecturers struggled with the language of digital competence and information literacy as described in frameworks.

Data were generated through workshops and interviews in two UK universities. One of the universities is a Million+ university (University A), and the other a Russell Group university (University B). In-person workshops were convened with an expert group of librarians, learning technologists, and lecturers. Librarians and learning technologists were selected using a purposive sampling technique. In the case of librarians and learning technologists, the purposive sampling was also a near-complete sample. Learning technologists and librarians were recruited in order of those who worked in closest proximity to the workshop location. Lecturers were chosen by searching for the word “digital” in each university’s research repository. The results were then cross-checked against the staff directories at each university and filtered to the relevant sample populations i.e., not research-only staff, students, or where the author was no longer working at the university. Finally, the exported results were filtered to lecturers whose research described digital literacy frameworks (n=0 across both universities) or the employment of digital technology within the curriculum (n=14 University B, n=11 University A), filtering out lecturers whose research was on computer hardware and software i.e., digital computation or computer chips. Lecturers were then scored on whether their research discussed the embedding of technology in the curricula (two points) and where the use of technology was a secondary intervention or outcome (one point). The scoring allowed a priority order to be established for recruitment purposes. Across both universities a total of six librarians, four learning technologists, and eight lecturers attended the workshops. Characteristics of the workshop participants are provided. The interviews were conducted via Zoom with an additional sample of expert group of lecturers. Lecturers were sampled using the same purposive sampling method employed for the workshops. Additional searches of the institution research repositories were made in June 2020 and respective learning and teaching conference programmes, and this led to a further nine potential participants from University B and a further three from University A. When combined with lecturers from the workshop phase who expressed an interest in participating, but could not make the workshop dates, this made a sample of potential participants of 13 from University B and 4 from University A. As a result of the small sample and low response rate, a gatekeeper on a digital learning project at University A offered to recruit lecturers on the project on my behalf. An email was sent from the gatekeeper to six lecturers on the project introducing me and the research toward the end of June 2020. A further three participants were recruited from this group. In total, eight participants were recruited for interviews that commenced on 22 June 2020 and ran until 4 August 2020. The participant pseudonyms and disciplinary breakdown can be seen in the documentation section.