Joelle Pitts is an Instructional Design Librarian and Associate Professor at Kansas State University Libraries. She is responsible for the creation and maintenance of web-based learning objects and environments aimed at improving the information literacy of the Kansas State University community. She leads the New Literacies Alliance, an inter-institutional information literacy consortium. Her research interests include distance education and e-learning theory and design, library user experience (UX), as well as the design and implementation of games-based learning environments.
New Literacies is relatively a new movement that appeared a couple of decades ago. Proponents of this movement include celebrated scholars in the calibre of James Paul Gee, Colin Lankshear, Gunther Kruss to mention but a few . These scholars study literacy from a sociolinguistic perspective arguing that culture and society take supremacy in any study of literacy.
industrial physical mindset and post industrial cyberspacial mindset.
Accordingly, ” the more a literacy practice privileges participation over publishing, distributed expertise over centralized expertise, collective intelligence over individual possessive intelligence, collaboration over individuated authorship, dispersion over scarcity, sharing over ownership, experimentation over normalization, innovation and evolution over stability and fixity…the more we should regard it as a new literacy.”
My note: an example of the generalization in red above: the calcitrated insistence of academic librarians to confine information in reference guides, where the librarians “locks” the information in h/er only ability to password access this information is an example of a “centralized expertise,” whereas a scoop.it curation is a distributed expertise. In the same fashion, the lecturing mode of the current SCSU information literacy is a 20th century methodology, which completely excludes the opportunity for collective intelligence and reaffirms the “individual possessive intelligence” of 40+ years old librarians, whose only idea of using social media is to mirror a Web 1.0 web page.
According to the KDG report, prospective students are not only used to reading short bits of information thanks to social media, but many incoming freshman read at a 7th grade level.
“This means your college website must be at the 7th grade level, especially the sections used to attract prospects and to guide them through the application process. No, we’re not kidding,
1. Reading like the New York Times.
2. Requiring Form Fills.
prospective students are often fatigued by long forms that they must complete in order to get the information they need and will quickly leave the website. “Not only will a live chat feature save students time, it can also save your admissions office time answering questions from prospects and applicants
3. Not Understanding What’s Important.
a delicate balance between static and antiquated, and being too interactive. “Don’t get so caught up in the design that there’s a disconnect between what your institution is and marketing gimmicks. You also don’t want super technical, information-filled pages.”
4. Using Fake Images.
images of students posed for the camera won’t do, either. They want to see students, like them, doing the things students do on campus—with exceptions, of course…Candid images, combined with some documentary-style photos from important events on campus, will go a long way toward creating a website that invites visitors to look deeper.
looked at sites like Airbnb.
5. Using Clichéd Statements about Passé Issues
They may read at a 7th grade level, but that doesn’t mean they can’t recognize a cliché.
boasting about unique accomplishments with current relevance for students in a down-to-earth way, such as mentioning a good acceptance rate or a special program for those with learning disabilities. Positive statistics about campus crime rates, successful career counseling efforts or facts about innovative STEM programs are also good talking points.
For more information on the KDG report and blog synopsis, click here.
During a Dec. 8 Future Trends Forum video chat hosted by futurist Bryan Alexander, several liberal arts technology leaders spoke about their efforts to define their colleges’ approach to digital innovation.
As an example of a more promising liberal arts partnership, Eshleman pointed to LACOL, the Liberal Arts Consortium for Online Learning. LACOL’s nine member institutions comprise Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Carleton, Haverford, Pomona, Swarthmore, Vassar, Washington and Lee and Williams. LACOL is an effort to create an experimental framework that supports project work across the nine campuses. There are interesting experiments happening on each campus, and LACOL provides opportunities to use a digital network to take those to a new level, said Elizabeth Evans, LACOL’s director, who joined Eshleman on the Future Trends Forum virtual stage to describe the consortium’s setup.
This involves a multi-campus team of faculty and instructional designers, all organized around a central project, which has its ups and downs, she added.
She said she has learned to keep the focus off of technology initially. She asks faculty members to think about what have they wanted to do around student learning and why. “It is about that first, and technology second,” she stressed, adding that she has moved away from quantitative evaluation of projects and more toward storytelling.
Topics of the Conference include (but not limited with) the following:
Information literacy in the workplace
Information literacy and employability
Information literacy and workforce development
Information literacy and career readiness
Information literacy and developing critical and creative workers
Information literacy and 21st century workplace
Information usage in the workplace
Information literacy and organisational success
Information literacy and competitiveness
Critical perspectives on workplace information literacy
Information literacy and the neoliberal agenda
Information literacy and digital empowerment
Information literacy and trans/inter/multiculturalism
Information literacy and community engagement
Information literacy and social change
Information literacy and democracy, citizenship, active participation
Information literacy, libraries, the public sphere
Information literacy and lifelong learning
Information literacy in theoretical context (models, standards, indicators)
literacy, visual literacy, health literacy, multi literacy)civic literacy, transliteracy, metaliteracy, e-literacy, digital literacy, computer literacy, scientific iteracy, lInformation literacy and related concepts (transversal competencies, media literacy, data
Information literacy research (research strategies, methodology and methods)
Information seeking and information behavior
Information literacy good practices
Information literacy policies and policy development
Information literacy and libraries Information literacy and LIS education
Information literacy and knowledge management
Information literacy across disciplines
Information literacy in different cultures and countries
Information literacy in different contexts (law, health, etc.)
Information literacy and education
Information literacy education in different sectors (K-12, higher education, vocational education)
Information literacy instruction
Information literacy for different groups (adults, children, young people, disadvantaged groups)
Content Curation, Not Content Aggregation
Scoop.it is not just another place to drop your RSS feed. It could be, but then it’s just another content aggregator.
curation online also has to demonstrate: mastery, passion, knowledge and expertise. Without such additional layers, a curated collection of links is just a collection of links.”
Using Scoop.it for Content Curation, Branding and Authority Building
Using Relative Keywords to Pull Content
When you read an article you think would do well for your Scoop.it topic, click the Scoop.it bookmarklet, enter the information you want, and publish. This is a handy feature to have when you’re reading or researching about your favorite topics.
Suggestion Engine for Sifting Through Content
Sometimes you don’t have time to search for content to curate. Scoop.it’s suggestion engine provides you with a list of suggested sites based on the keywords you enter. When you’re ready to add more content to your Scoop.it, simply scroll down the list of RSS feeds.
Adding Your Own Sources for Reliable Content
Everybody has their favorite reads and twitter users or lists to follow. Scoop.it allows you to add your own sources, making it easier to find good content – not quite so much crud to weed through. RSS feeds, Twitter users, Twitter lists, Twitter searches, a Facebook page, and Google News, Blogs, or Video search: these options give you a variety of ways to include your favorite sources in your “suggested sources” box.
Curation is not original content. There is a place for curation. It’s right between content creation and content syndication. It’s an approach, placed neatly under the whole “strategic content use” outline. I don’t cut and paste the whole story on my page (I’m not a douche bag); I give my readers the reason I chose a particular post. I ask them questions, and let them know why I agree or disagree. Not on every post, but on most.
10 Steps To Curate Your Social Media Content With Scoop.it for Increased Value
Social media curation is when you filter, select, review and reposition quality content on the web for a specific audience and/or topic.
Scoop.it is a semi-automated curation platform. Scoop.it crawls the web according to apre-determined criteria and then allows the curator to review and reposition the filtered material prior to publishing. This repositioning could be in the form of contextual reorganization and/or commentary of the material to provide an overall perspective. Once the material has been curated, Scoop.it allows the curator to publish the material in an attractive web-magazine by topic. This web-magazine organizes each curated article into “sticky posts” on a digital interactive interface as shown in the examples below.
do you fall into any of the following categories 1) struggling to provide fresh consistent quality content for your audience; 2) cannot invest the time to write your blog; 3) looking for ways to expand your audience; 4) want to increase your service offering to your customer base; 5) want to establish yourself as a thought leader on a specific topic; 6) want to increase your social media visibility; 7) looking for other distribution channels to spread your word; and/or 8 ) looking for a curation option that is not automated so you can leave “your finger print”. If the answer is “yes” to one of any of the above, you should consider this option.
Here is how to curate your social media content using Scoop.it
The 27-unit course will use 2U’s online learning platform for live, weekly meetings. Between sessions, students will have access to interactive content designed by MICS faculty. Students will also have the opportunity to visit campus to meet faculty and classmates and attend lectures and workshops curated specifically for students in the program.
But it gets even more interesting when virtual and augmented reality meet the Internet of Things
when Second Life began, there was a lot of interest, but the toolset was limited — just because of the timeframe, not that the toolset wasn’t a good one for that period. But, things matured. I think it was, in particular, the ability to work in HD that improved things a lot. Then came the ability to bring in datasets — creating dashboards and ways for people to access other data that they could bring into the virtual reality experiment. I think those two things were real forces for change.
A dashboard could pop up, and you could select among several tools, and you could get a feed from somewhere on the Internet — maybe a video or a presentation. And you can use these things as you move through this hyper reality: The datasets you select can be manipulated and be part of the entire experience.
So, the hyper reality experience became deeper, richer with tools and data via the IoT; and with HD it became more real.
We can’t deny the fact that curriculum and the way we teach is becoming unbundled. Some things are going to happen online and in the virtual space, and other things will happen in the classroom. And the expense of education is going to drive how we operate. Virtual reality tools, augmented reality tools, and visualization tools can offer experiences that can be mass-produced and sent out to lots of students, machine to machine, at a lower cost. Virtual field trips and other kinds of virtual learning experiences will become much more commonplace in the next 5 years.
Ungerer, L. M. (2016). Digital Curation as a Core Competency in Current Learning and Literacy: A Higher Education Perspective. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 17(5). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v17i5.2566
metaliteracy
Technology considerably impacts on current literacy requirements (Reinking, as cited in Sharma & Deschaine, 2016). Being literate in the 21st century requires being able to decode and comprehend multimodal texts and digital format and also engage with these texts in a purposeful manner. Literacy is not merely based on a specific skill, but consists of a process that embraces the dynamic, social, and collaborative facets of digital technology (Lewis & Fabos, as cited in Mills, 2013).
Mackey and Jacobson (2011) suggest reframing the concept of information literacy as metaliteracy (supporting multiple literacy types) because of a tremendous growth in social media and collaborative online communities. They propose that information literacy currently involves more than a set of discrete skills, since active knowledge production and distribution in collaborative online communities are also necessary.
Mackey and Jacobson (2011) position metaliteracy as an overarching and comprehensive framework that informs other literacy types. It serves as the basis for media literacy, digital literacy, ICT literacy, and visual literacy.
According to Mills (2013, p. 47), digital curation is the sifting and aggregation of internet and other digital resources into a manageable collection of what teachers and students find relevant, personalized and dynamic. It incorporates the vibrancy of components of the Internet and provides a repository that is easily accessible and usable.
Pedagogies of Abundance
According to Weller (2011), a pedagogy of abundance should consider a number of assumptions such as that content often is freely available and abundant. Content further takes on various forms and it is often easy and inexpensive to share information. Content is socially based and since people filter and share content, a social approach to learning is advisable. Further, establishing and preserving connections in a network is easy and they do not have to be maintained on a one-to-one basis. Successful informal groupings occur frequently, reducing the need to formally manage groups.
Resource-based learning. Ryan (as cited in Weller, 2011) defines resource-based learning as “an integrated set of strategies to promote student centred learning in a mass education context, through a combination of specially designed learning resources and interactive media and technologies.”
Problem-based learning. Problem-based learning takes place when learners experience the process of working toward resolving a problem encountered early in the learning process (Barrows & Tamblyn, as cited in Weller, 2011). Students often collaborate in small groups to identify solutions to ill-defined problems, while the teacher acts as facilitator and assists groups if they need help. Problem-based learning meets a number of important requirements such as being learner-directed, using diverse resources and taking an open-ended approach.
Communities of practice. Lave and Wenger’s (as cited in Weller, 2011) concept of situated learning and Wenger’s (as cited in Weller, 2011) idea of communities of practice highlight the importance of apprenticeship and the social role in learning.
My note: this article spells out what needs to be done and how. it is just flabeghasting that research guides are employed so religiously by librarians. They are exactly the opposite concept of the one presented in this article: they are closed, controlled by one or several librarians, without a constant and easy access of the instructor, not to mention the students’ participation
I absolutely echo Kimber’s notion that a team approach to course development can actually take longer, even when one of the team members is an instructional designer. Perhaps because faculty members are used to controlling all aspects of their course development and delivery, the division of labor concept may feel too foreign to them. An issue that is similar in nature and referred to as ‘unbundling the faculty role’ is discussed at length in the development of competency-based education (CBE) courses and it is not typically a concept that faculty embrace.
Robin
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I will also confirm that the team approach to course development can take longer. Indeed it does in my experience. It requires much more “back and forth”, negotiating of who is doing what, ensuring that the overall approach is congruent, etc. That’s not to say that it’s not a worthwhile endeavor in some cases where it makes pedagogical sense (in our case we are designing courses for 18-22 year-old campus-based learners and 22+ year-old fully online learners at the same time), but if time/cost savings is the goal, you will be sorely disappointed, in my experience. The “divide and conquer” approach requires a LOT of coordination and oversight. Without that you will likely have a cobbled together, hodgepodge of a course that doesn’t meet expectations.
Best, Carine Director, Office of Instructional Design & Academic Technology Ottawa University 1001 S. Cedar St. * Ottawa, KS 66067 carine.ullom@ottawa.edu * 785-248-2510
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Breaking up a course and coming up with a cohesive design and approach, could make the design process longer. At SSC, we generally work with our faculty over the course of a semester for each course. When we’ve worked with teams, we have not seen a shortened timeline.
The length of time it takes to develop a course depends on the content. Are there videos? If so, they have to be created, which is time-consuming, plus they either need to have a transcript created or they need subtitles. Both of those can be time-consuming. PowerPoint slides take time, plus, they need more content to make them relevant. We are working with our faculty to use the Universal Design for Learning model, which means we’re challenging them to create the content to benefit the most learners
I have a very small team whose sole focus is course design and it takes us 3-4 weeks to design a course and it’s our full-time job!
Linda
Linda C. Morosko, MA Director, eStarkState Division of Student Success 330-494-6170 ext. 4973 lmorosko@starkstate.edu
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Kelvin, we also use the 8-week development cycle, but do occasionally have to lengthen that cycle for particularly complex courses or in rare cases when the SME has had medical emergencies or other major life disruptions. I would be surprised if multiple faculty working on a course could develop it any more quickly than a single faculty member, though, because of the additional time required for them to agree and the dispersed sense of responsibility. Interesting idea.
-Kimber
Dr. Kimberly D. Barnett Gibson, Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and Online Learning Our Lady of the Lake University 411 SW 24th Street San Antonio, TX 78207 Kgibson@ollusa.edu210.431.5574 BlackBoard IM kimberly.gibson https://www.pinterest.com/drkdbgavpol/ @drkimberTweets
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Hello everyone. As a follow-up to the current thread, how long do you typically give hey course developer to develop a master course for your institution? We currently use an eight week model but some faculty have indicated that that is not enough time for them although we have teams of 2 to 4 faculty developing such content. Our current assumption is that with teams, there can be divisions of labor that can reduce the total amount time needed during the course development process.
Kelvin Bentley, PhD Vice President of Academic Affairs, TCC Connect Campus Tarrant County College District
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At Berkeley College, full-time faculty may develop online courses in conjunction with an instructional designer. The course is used as a master template for other sections to be assigned from. Once the course has been scheduled and taught, the faculty member receives a stipend. The faculty member would receive their normal pay to teach the developed course as part of their semester course load, with no additional royalties assigned for it or any additional sections that may be provided to students.
Regards, Gina Gina Okun Assistant Dean, Online Berkeley College 64 East Midland Avenue, Suite 2, Paramus, NJ 07652 (973)405-2111 x6309 gina-okun@berkeleycollege.edu
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We operate with nearly all adjunct faculty where >70% of enrollment credits are onlinez
With one exception that I can recall, the development contract includes the college’s outright ownership, with no royalty rights. One of the issues with a royalty based arrangement would be what to do when the course is revised (which happens nearly every term, to one degree or another). At what point does the course begin to take on the character of another person’s input?
What do you do if the course is adapted for a shorter summer term, or a between-term intensive? What if new media tools or a different LMS are used? Is the royalty arrangement based on the syllabus or the course content itself? What happens if the textbook goes out of print, or an Open resource becomes available? What happens if students evaluate the course poorly?
I’m not in position to set this policy — I’m only reporting it. I like the idea of a royalty arrangement but it seems like it could get pretty messy. It isn’t as if you are licensing a song or an image where the original product doesn’t change. Courses, the modes of delivery, and the means of communication change all the time. Seems like it would be hard to define what constitutes “the course” after a certain amount of time.
Steve Covello Rich Media Specialist/Instructional Designer/Online Instructor Chalk & Wire e-Portfolio Administrator Granite State College 603-513-1346 Video chat: https://appear.in/id.team Scheduling: http://meetme.so/stevecovello
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I’ve worked with many institutions that have used Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to develop or provide the online course content. Most often, the institutions also provide a resource in the form of an Instructional Designer (ID) to take the content and create the actual course environment.
The SME is paid on a contract basis for provision of the content. This is a one-time payment, and the institution then owns the course content (other than integrated published materials such as text books, licensed online lab products, etc.). The SME may be an existing faculty member at the institution or not, or the SME may go on to teach the course at the institution. In any event, whoever teaches the course would be paid the standard faculty rate for the course. If the course requires revisions to the extent that a person will need to be engaged for content updates, then that can be a negotiated contract. Typically it is some fraction of the original development cost. No royalties are involved.
Within SUNY, there is some variance regarding whether a stipend is paid for development or not. In either case, since we are unionized there is policy regarding IP. IP resides with the faculty developer unless both parties agree in writing in the form of a contract to assign or share rights.
Thank you for your feedback on this issue. Our institution does does not provide a royalty as we consider course development as a fee-for-service arrangement. We pay teams of 2-4 faculty $1000 each to develop master course shells for our high-enrollment courses. Instead of a royalty fee, I think an institution can simply provide course developers the perk of first right of refusal to teach the course when it offered as well as providing course developers with the first option to make revisions to the course shell over time.
Kelvin
Kelvin Bentley, Ph.D. Vice President of Academic Affairs, TCC Connect Campus Tarrant County College District
Once upon a time, and several positions ago, we set up a google doc for capturing all kinds of data points across institutions, like this. I’m sure it’s far out of date, but may still have some ideas or info in there – and could possibly be dusted off and oiled up for re-use… I present the Blend-Online Data Collector. This tab is for course development payment.
Kind regards,
Clark
Clark Shah-Nelson
Assistant Dean, Instructional Design and Technology
University of Maryland School of Social Work—Twitter … LinkedIn —voice/SMS: (646) 535-7272fax: 270.514.0112
Hi Jenn,
Just want to clarify…you say faculty “sign over all intellectual property rights of the course to the college.” but later in the email say “Faculty own all intellectual property and can take it with them to teach at another institution”, so is your policy changing to the former? Or, is it the later and that is what you are asking about?
I’ll send details on our policy directly to your email account.
I am tasked with finding out what the going rate is for the following model:
We pay an adjunct faculty member (“teaching faculty”) a set amount in order to develop an online course and sign over all intellectual property rights of the course to the college.
Is anyone doing this? I’ve heard of models that include royalties, but I personally don’t know of any that offer straight payment for IP. I know this can be a touchy subject, so feel free to respond directly to me and I will return and post a range of payment rates with no other identifying data.
For some comparison, we are currently paying full time faculty a $5000 stipend to spend a semester developing their very first online class, and then they get paid to teach the class. Subsequent online class developments are unpaid. Emerson owns the course description and course shell and is allowed to show the course to future faculty who will teach the online course. Faculty own all intellectual property and can take it with them to teach at another institution. More info: http://www.emerson.edu/itg/online-emerson/frequently-asked-questions
I asked this on another list, but wanted to get Blend_Online’s opinion as well. Thanks for any pointers!
Jenn Stevens
Director | Instructional Technology Group | 403A Walker Building | Emerson College | 120 Boylston St | Boston MA 02116 | (617) 824-3093
Ellen M. Murphy
Director of Program Development
Graduate Professional Studies
