Thursday 20 August 2015

Motivation, Challenge and Ways forward

Motivation: To promote digital literacies in teaching and learning.

Challenge: Many Web 2.0 tools used to promote digital literacies are not designed by educationalists or developed specifically for teaching and learning, but there is an increasing demand and call for teachers to use them to share content, support learners and for inter-institution collaboration.

Ways forward: As well as traditional forms of best practice dissemination, such as lunchtime seminars and planned workshops, this blog is a space to share findings and case studies aimed at enhancing digital literacies. On the home page you will find updates from the Digital Literacy project team who are working to scope and develop staff and students' awareness of digital literacy. The School tabs/pages listed along the top allow an opportunity to share disciplines specific practices that have cross-disciplinary value in promoting ways to foster digital literacy.

Project Team
To get involved or for more information contact a member of the team:

Phil Barter, Associate Professor in Sport Science (Project Lead)
Tarek Zoubir, Academic Developer
Kirsteen Macdonald, Lead Academic Developer

A Couple of Quotes from the NMC Horizon Report 2015 Higher Education

The technology outlook report identifies digital literacy as a 'Solvable Challenge: Those that we understand and know how to solve' though the quotes below might be interpreted as painting a slightly different picture.

Download the full report on the NMC website

What does Digital Literacy mean to to you?
"Lack of consensus on what comprises digital literacy is impeding many colleges and universities from formulating adequate policies and programs that address this challenge. Discussions among educators have included the idea of digital literacy as equating to competence with a wide range of digital tools for varied educational purposes, or as an indicator of having the ability to critically evaluate resources available on the web. However, both definitions are broad and ambiguous. Compounding this issue is the notion that digital literacy encompasses skills that differ for educators and learners, as teaching with technology is inherently different from learning with it" (p.24).
Thinking about staff development?
"While universities and colleges around the world have launched a number of professional development programs and centers, not all of them are entirely effective. Campus Technology cautions that programs with one-size-fits-all training approaches that assume all faculty are at the same level of digital literacy pose a higher risk of failure. The Director of the Center for Academic Technology at the University of the District of Columbia asserts that university leaders must first comprehend the wide spectrum of faculty IT needs before designing professional development opportunities. A data-driven approach that depicts faculty use of the university’s technology can reveal patterns of their literacy and help leaders to identify areas for improvement" (p.24).



Digital Literacy Project Poster

An overview of the Digital Literacy project as a poster presented at Middlesex University's Annual Learning and Teaching Conference 2015 themed 'Revisiting Assessment':

Click for an expanded image
Click here for a PDF version of the poster

Digital Literacy Questionnaire

The questionnaire is part of our scoping of the awareness and practice of Digital Literacies across disciplines at Middlesex University. The intention is to follow this up with focus groups and interviews. Some preliminary results are available in the posts below.

This questionnaire is aimed at finding out, from your experience, which technologies are being used for teaching, learning and research, the ways in which these technologies are being used, for example, to consume or share content, and the reasons for use. Findings from the questionnaire will inform discussions about existing and potential uses of technology for encouraging digital literacy.

Complete our Digital Literacy Questionnaire - The survey is now closed - Thank you to all who took part.

Technology Use Grid

Below is an image of a grid developed and used in our survey to capture which Web 2.0 tools are being used and how (type of use as highlighted by the Cardiff University's Digidol Project in their Image Map and others) :


Click for an expanded image

Which of the listed technologies are you using for learning and teaching at Middlesex University and how?

The highest instance for "use not encountered" out of 69 responses was for Microblogging (31), Online office applications (26), Note-taking applications (37), blogging (29) and social networking (23). Interestingly these might be considered the types of technologies that require literacy development.

Other tech which had 5 or less counts of "use not encountered" were:
  • Video sharing 
  • Search engine
  • Microsoft office
  • storage sharing
  • Vle

Click for an expanded image

The ways in which some technolgoies are being used for teaching and learning at Middlesex University

The Digital Literacy group at Middlesex University carried out a survey to scope awareness and development needs of staff. Sixty nine responses were received. Below is a summary of one of the questions concerning ways in which technologies are currently being used.

Participants were asked to describe the way in which they use the 10 most popular Web 2.0 tools (Top 1oo tools for Learning as identified by Jane Hart) to enhance students' learning.

Responses were coded and grouped under three broad headings:
  • Teaching 
  • Research
  • Dissemination
Described uses of technologies for teaching can be sub-divided into use of tools as a repository of teaching content and uses that require student interaction. An example of repository use is the storage of PowerPoints for teachers and students to access later. Other techniques, which require more student interaction, where given. For example, in Media Production:
"Students use Photoshop and InDesign to create flyers and submit to Moodle assignment tool. Students make videos and submit to online platform of their choosing and provide link. Students create blogs. Facebook group with interesting links. MS Office for general use."
The example talks about use of discipline specific technologies, Photoshop and InDesign, as well as Moodle and social media as complimentary and integral to the learning design. Video appears to be adopted across disciplines with references to YouTube, Khan Academy and TED common to many responses:
  •  In Sport video is used “in slides to show good/bad sporting techniques.”
  • In Criminology YouTube is used to “reinforce discussion points [and to] introduce complex concepts through visual representation”.
  • And in other areas (not specified) Khan Academy videos are used to “summarize anatomy and physiology learning”. 
These instances need to be explored further to reveal how they are operationalised within the curriculum and how they may be transferred to other areas.

Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and linkedIn, are used in a variety of ways. Within Business modules, responses suggest these tools are being used for progress monitoring, project management and system deployment. Other technologies and ways in which they are used include the Moodle Assignment, Turnitin and Quiz tools to facilitate electronic assessment.

Ways in which technologies are being used for research include examples of interdisciplinary collaboration between the library and academic schools with references to electronic reading lists. In Law there is a YouTube library induction and the use of search engines is taught to all staff and students. The library also uses Facebook to promote its services and maintains a Blog.

Dissemination captures the content outputs that are a result of the ways in which technologies are used for teaching and research but some examples do mention tools such as “Twitter to publicise events”.

APT 2015 PowerPoint Presentation


Beyond Access and Skills: From Moodle Evaluation to Digital Literacies in Situated Practices

Below is the abstract for a presentation given by the Middlesex project team at the Academic Practice and Technology Conference 2015 themed 'Flipping the Institution: Higher Education in the Post Digital Age' co-hosted by the University of Greenwich and the London School of Economics.

Presented by Tarek Zoubir, Phil Barter and Kirsteen Macdonald

Abstract

Key words: Digital Literacy, Access, Skills, Situated Practice

This paper considers the ‘frame of reference’ for the discussion and evaluation of technologies for learning and teaching in Higher Education. As gaining access to existing and emerging technologies become easier to achieve, there is a need to upskill staff and consider ‘digital literacies’ as inherently interdisciplinary and situated practices.

“Digital literacies are those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society” (JISC, 2013). This definition acknowledges, albeit implicitly, that technical and pedagogical distinctions are blurred, open to interpretation and influenced by context.
  
Institutionally, an evaluation of digital literacies as an interdisciplinary and situated practice is multi-layered and includes an account of access and skills related issues. The extent to which these issues dominate the discourse will influence any proposed improvements. For example, a focus on providing access and skills training to use Moodle as a system will affect the design of staff development and possibly result in a technologically deterministic approach. Conversely, a focus on how course objectives can be better achieved through the use of technologies will encourage programme teams and learning technologists to think beyond the technology and more about learning design.

This tension between an access-skills (Epstein et al., 2011) and skills-situated practice (Hinrichsen and Coombs, 2014) discourse was partly observed when reflecting on data collected from a Moodle Evaluation of staff and students. The evaluation took place 6 months after the first phase of the implementation of Moodle and involved 50 members of staff and 600 students who took part from April 2013 to April 2014. Data from staff was predominantly gathered through structured conversations, focus groups and email feedback, whilst data from students was gathered via an online anonymous survey and focus groups.

Findings allowed for improvements to be made to the Moodle installation such as navigation (fewer clicks to arrive at course space), access (on mobile devices) and also resulted in a formal request for a new learning, teaching and assessment video solution.  However, the findings revealed a predominantly techno-centric focus with little information garnered about the complex and dynamic nature of negotiating digital practices alongside engagement with disciplinary content.  This was more consistent with transferring rather than transforming the curriculum as it had existed within the previously adopted system (Blackboard Vista). 

These observations paved the way for a working group of Teaching Fellows and Academic Developers to scope and understand how staff across services, schools, departments and in distinct roles, define and implement digital literacies in their practice. A questionnaire has been distributed to scope and collect definitions of digital literacy, example uses of technologies for teaching and learning, and to identify drivers and recommendations for enhancing digital literacies among staff and students. This has been followed up with interviews and focus groups aimed at exploring how identified themes and examples can be harnessed to enhance digital literacies through improved collaboration between academics, learning technologists/academic developers and students.

Executive summaries of analysed data will be made available. Equally important is the qualitative account of the journey and findings of one Higher Education Institute moving from an access, skills oriented discourse to one of digital literacies not limited to the ‘virtual’, but extended to the “learning environment” (Istance and Kools, 2013) more generally.

References

Epstein, D., Nisbet, E.C., Gillespie, T., 2011. Who’s Responsible for the Digital Divide? Public Perceptions and Policy Implications. The Information Society 27, 92–104. doi:10.1080/01972243.2011.548695

Hinrichsen, J., Coombs, A., 2014. The five resources of critical digital literacy: a framework for curriculum integration. Research in Learning Technology 21. doi:10.3402/rlt.v21.21334

Istance, D., Kools, M., 2013. OECD Work on Technology and Education: innovative learning environments as an integrating framework. European Journal of Education 48, 43–57. doi:10.1111/ejed.12017

Jisc., 2013. Developing digital literacies infoKit. [online]. Available at: http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/whole-infokit/?infokit=11013 Accessed: 03/12/14.