Software literacies in the tertiary environment Craig Hight Screen and Media Studies University of Waikato Elaine Khoo Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research University of Waikato Bronwen Cowie Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research University of Waikato Rob Torrens Science and Engineering University of Waikato This paper reports on findings from a two-year funded research project exploring software literacy - how it is understood, developed and applied in tertiary teaching-learning contexts and how this understanding serves new learning. The project has looked at MS PowerPoint (a widely used application) and software specific to two disciplines (Media Studies and Engineering). Data was collected through online student surveys and focus groups. Findings revealed that students tend to rely upon informal learning strategies when learning to use all software, and to demonstrate variations in their understanding of software affordances and their ability in applying software to their learning. However, in all cases they were generally not able to critique applications beyond a superficial level, suggesting a need for formal recognition of software literacy as a means to empower students to more critically engage with a variety of / forms of software. Keywords: software, literacy, teaching and learning, university, New Zealand Introduction This paper reports on the initial findings from a two-year (2013-2014) Teaching and Learning Research Initiative funded project exploring how tertiary students develop the understandings and skills needed to use software as forms of software literacy. Our framework has been informed by the paradigm of software studies paradigm, our revision of notions of digital natives and digital literacy, and a recognition of the complexities of informal and formal strategies for the learning of new software. Software studies, a comparatively new field of enquiry that Manovich (2001, 2008, 2013) and others have championed (Johnson, 1997; Fuller, 2003; Fuller, 2008; Kitchin & Dodge, 2011), insists that ‘software’, operating at the levels of individual applications, platforms and infrastructures, is the dominant cultural technology of our time, an actor integral to many of the social, political and economic practices within contemporary society. A core premise of software studies is the need to move away from seeing software as neutral tools. Instead software users need to develop a critical awareness of how software operates to both ‘empower and discipline’ us (Kitchin & Dodge, 2011, p. 10-11), contextualising and framing our agency within human-machine assemblages. As we increasingly operate within software culture, our social, economic, political and cultural practices are 'coded'; inseparable from the logics embedded within programming code. Within this paradigm, there is a vital need for detailed empirical research into how software is understood, interpreted, and actually ‘performed’ by individuals and groups in specific contexts. This project focuses on the literacies associated with software within a tertiary education context. How do both lecturers and students learn, understand and perform different kinds of software, and what are the implications of this for their teaching and learning? We define software literacy as the expertise involved in selecting, using and critiquing software applications where these are being used to achieve particular goals. Our notion of software literacy is a practice-based schema which anticipates that users can scaffold from acquiring a basic skills in using an application, to appreciating its affordances, and then on to develop an understanding of how software operates to shape and frame knowledge and knowledge generation, and communication and creativity within disciplinary practices.