Hosted by the European Literacy Policy Network (ELINET), this seminar series explores how generative AI and algorithmic tools are fundamentally reshaping literacy, communication, and educational practice across diverse learning contexts.

This Autumn 2026 webinar series includes four sessions where participants will learn about recent research relating to AI and Literacy. Together, the presentations advocate for a relational, ethical, and participation-oriented framework for literacy in the AI era, highlighting how educators and learners can critically understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities relating to AI generated media, algorithmic mediation, and shifting notions of human authorship. Moving beyond a narrow view of technical skills, the sessions critically examine the intersections of technology, identity, and agency.
These webinars explore timely and pressing issues relating to: fostering meaningful digital inclusion in adult basic education; navigating hybrid authorship among international students; expanding core competencies in language teaching; and supporting educators to develop critical AI literacy.

Information about the Webinars can be found below

REGISTER HERE

Webinar 1
Date: 9 November, 2026
Time: 17:00-18:00 CET

Title: Beyond AI Skills: Rethinking Digital Inclusion in Adult Basic Education
Presenter: Sandra Reeder-Langer

Generative AI is increasingly shaping how people access information, communicate, learn
and participate in society. For adults with low literacy, AI-supported technologies may create new opportunities by reducing language barriers, supporting comprehension and providing more individualised forms of assistance. Yet access to AI does not automatically lead to digital inclusion, nor can meaningful participation be understood in terms of individual skills alone.

This webinar proposes a relational perspective on digital inclusion in adult basic education.
Drawing on research with adults with low literacy and the dimensions of ‘Access, Digital Taste
and Readiness’, it explores how meaningful engagement with digital technologies develops
through the interplay between people, technologies and the contexts in which they are used.

While ‘Access’ remains a necessary starting point, ‘Digital Taste’ draws attention to interests,
preferences and perceived relevance, and ‘Readiness’ encompasses confidence and
capability rather than skills alone.

This perspective is particularly relevant as generative AI becomes embedded in everyday
literacy practices. AI changes technological possibilities and introduces new uncertainties,
but fundamental questions of inclusion remain: Can people access and meaningfully engage
with these technologies? Do they support autonomy or create new dependencies? Under
under which conditions can they become resources for learning and participation?

Rather than treating AI literacy primarily as a new set of individual competencies, the webinar
argues for a relational, situated and participation-oriented understanding of literacy in the AI
age. This shifts attention from what individuals need to possess towards the conditions that
enable people to appropriate technologies meaningfully and participate on their own terms.

 

Webinar 2
Date: 17 November 2026
Time: 17:00-18:00 CET

Title: Towards Iterative Authorship: International Students’ Reimagined Writing Identities Through GenAI‑Assisted Writing
Presenters: Tianyi Wang, Jennifer Rowsell, Pei Liang

For this ELINET talk, three literacy researchers will present a research study undertaken at a UK university which focuses on international postgraduate students’ development of academic writing identity. With Generative AI’s (GenAI) widespread use and reliance, culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) students face key challenges in terms of cross-cultural thinking and linguistic expression as academic writers. There is a gap in research that provides critical frameworks to examine ways that GenAI enables and constrains writing practices and that identifies CALD students’ ambivalence about GenAI use. This presentation profiles ten international students’ reflections about GenAI enabled academic writing that offers key insights about critical ways to navigate GenA assisted academic writing. Applying Roz Ivanič’s research on writer identity (Ivanič et al, 1995) and Mollick’s concept of “iterative instinct” (Mollick, 2024), we examine how CALD students at a UK university perceive themselves, their culture and their identity within the context of Gen AIassisted writing practices. The research is ethnographic in nature, combining focus group data with a week of AI interactional data from each participant (Gillen et al, 2007). Findings reveal the gains and losses at stake for CALD as they grapple with developing an academic writing identity in the age of GenAI. In particular, the study shows that writers’ intuition and GenAI supported iteration become mutually constitutive, giving rise to hybrid forms of academic authorship and extending existing understandings of writer identity in the GenAI era.

Webinar 3
Date: 23 November 2026
Time: 17:00-18:00 CET

Title: Language Education in the AI Era: AI literacy as an additional key competency of literacy and literacy education.
Presenter: Jeroen Clemens

This seminar will explore what AI literacy is and how we can see it as an expansion of Literacy. We will clarify new AI literacy competencies, why it’s necessary to include AI-literacy in language education and how to do this.
Digital literacy was already a key competency addition to traditional literacy. Now generative AI plays an important role in reading, writing and communication. We can see AI literacy as an extension of digital literacy which we should include in language education.

The rise of generative AI is disrupting the way students find, evaluate and use information. Where language education used to revolve around critically approaching human-made texts, students now also have to deal with synthetic information: text, images and sound generated by AI that is often indistinguishable from “genuine” sources. They also have to reflect on what ‘thruth’ is.
Research shows that students are not very capable when dealing with this new situation, although most students think they are. This raises new urgent questions: ‘How do students recognise truth in a post-truth era?’; ‘How do students critically evaluate and use AI output?’ and ‘Which competencies are missing?’.
The last question to be discussed in this session relates to how we translate these insights into language teaching. We will look at four key strategies, which we shall discuss and give some examples of what this might look like in practice?

Webinar 4
Date: 1 December 2026
Time: 17:00-18:00 CET

Teaching Literacy in Algorithmic Times: Multiliteracies and Critical AI Literacy in Teacher Education
Presenters: Alicia Hernando and Aoife Ahern

This webinar will explore how literacy education at the university level, particularly within Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes, can respond to the transformations brought about by generative artificial intelligence (gen-AI) and algorithmic mediation. The emergence of gen-AI tools demands that educators and trainee teachers develop technical proficiency, and above all, critical and ethical awareness of how meaning, authorship, and creativity are being redefined.
Building on the frameworks of the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996; Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, 2024) and recent work on digital and algorithmic literacies (Jones & Hafner, 2021; Pangrazio & Sefton-Green, 2021), we advocate for critical AI literacy to be integrated as a core dimension of contemporary literacy education for student teachers. We will share experiences and reflections on work developed at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid with pre-service teachers of Early Childhood and Primary Education, involving collaborative tasks around creating and analysing hybrid multimodal texts with human and AI-generated language and images. Through this work, student teachers reflected on the tensions between human agency and algorithmic assistance, the biases and affordances embedded in digital tools, and on the socio-emotional aspects of authorship and pedagogical mediation. The webinar aims to:
Discuss pedagogical strategies for integrating critical AI literacy into university courses for future teachers. Reflect on the role of hybrid texts as spaces for creative experimentation with reading, composing texts and critical awareness. Dialogue on how digital and algorithmic literacies can be meaningfully connected in teacher education to foster agency, inclusion, and critical thinking.