The European project Improving Transliteracy Skills through Serious Games – TLIT4U has been implemented since 2021 by three higher educational institutions (University of Library Studies and Information Technology – ULSIT, University of Parma, University of Lapland) and one non-governmental organization (Fondazione Politecnico di Milano – FPM) based in Bulgaria, Italy, and Finland. The project follows the European Union agenda to foster all types of literacy as a factor for the well-being and success of citizens in their active participation in the social, cultural, and public life striving for sustainable development. Henceforth, transliteracy needs to be established as a priority of educational institutions.
As most accessed institutions for European citizens, libraries are the natural partners of universities in this process. TLIT4U identifies serious games as the approach to engage students with transliteracy thus expanding the collaboration between teachers and librarians. Therefore, TLIT4U seeks foremostly a development of critical information skills by going beyond the traditional approach of information literacy as the ability to search textual and bibliographic sources and asserts the urgent necessity of teaching transliteracy.
Transliteracy involves skills, thinking, and actions that allow for overflow and interaction in a way that is predetermined by the situational, social, cultural, and technological context. This concept is based on the transfer of knowledge and skills to achieve in-depth learning and creativity, as well as to avoid fake content. The main components of transliteracy include critical thinking, creativity, ICT/digital skills, collaboration, and information skills (i.e. a combination of information, digital, media, data literacy, etc.), which are in the priorities of the EC, set in several strategic documents. Information and communication technologies are changing the way information interacts as a whole. It provides an integrative framework for the unification and convergence of familiar literacy. It also provides a framework for connecting rational-emotional, analytical-creative, and theoretical-practical ways of thinking and working.