The growing use of data mining software in online education has great potential to support student success by identifying and reaching out to struggling students and streamlining the path to graduation. This can be a challenge for institutions that are using a variety of technology systems that are not integrated with each other. As institutions implement learning management systems, degree planning technologies, early alert systems, and tutor scheduling that promote increased interactions among various stakeholders, there is a need for centralized aggregation of these data to provide students with holistic support that improves learning outcomes. Join us to hear from an institutional exemplar who is building solutions that integrate student data across platforms. Then work with peers to address challenges and develop solutions of your own.
continued practice, clear goals and immediate feedback
project-based learning, Minecraft and SimCity EDU
Gamification of learning versus learning with games
organizations to promote gaming and gamification in education (p. 6 http://scsu.mn/1F008Re)
the “chocolate-covered broccoli” problem
Discussion: why gaming and gamification is not accepted in a higher rate? what are the hurdles to enable greater faster acceptance? What do you think, you can do to accelerate this process?
Gaming in an academic library
why the academic library? sandbox for experimentation
the connection between digital literacy and gaming and gamificiation
Gilchrist and Zald’s model for instruction design through assessment
Discussion: based on the example (http://web.stcloudstate.edu/pmiltenoff/bi/), how do you see transforming academic library services to meet the demands of 21st century education?
Gaming, gamification and assessment (badges)
inability of current assessments to evaluate games as part of the learning process
“microcredentialing” through digital badges
Mozilla Open Badges and Badgestack
leaderboards
Discussion: How do you see a transition from the traditional assessment to a new and more flexible academic assessment?
Asynchronous eCourse beginning November 14, 2016 and continuing for 5 weeks (includes an extension of 1 week for Thanksgiving)
Estimated Hours of Learning: 24 Certificate of Completion available upon request
Learning outcomes
After participating in this course, you will be able to:
incorporate ever-evolving definitions of digital literacy into learning opportunities
draw upon a variety of digital resources to create digital-learning opportunities
seek additional resources that you can use in your continuing efforts to keep up with new developments in digital literacy in libraries and other learning organizations
What is digital literacy? Do you know how you can foster digital literacy through formal and informal learning opportunities for your library staff and users?
Supporting digital literacy still remains an important part of library staff members’ work, but sometimes we struggle to agree on a simple, meaningful definition of the term. In this four-week eCourse, training/learning specialist Paul Signorelli will begin by exploring a variety of definitions, focusing on work by a few leading proponents of the need to foster digital literacy among people of all ages and backgrounds. He will explore a variety of digital-literacy resources – including case studies of how we creatively approach digital-literacy learning opportunities for library staff and users, and will explore a variety of digital tools that will help to encourage further understanding of this topic.
Now, who is ready to build their digital-literacy skills and help their users become digital literate as well?
eCourse Outline
Part 1: Digital Literacy: Initial Definitions and Explorations
An overview of various definitions of digital literacy
Several components of digital literacy
Exploring Doug Belshaw’s extensive work on defining and fostering digital literacy
Part 2: Digital Literacy: Crap Detection and Other Skills and Tools
Exploring Howard Rheingold’s approach to crap detection and other digital literacy/net literacy skills
Participation, collaboration, creativity, and experimentation as digital-literacy skills
Building our digital-literacy toolkit
Part 3: Digital Literacy in Learning
The varying digital literacy needs of our youngest students, of teens, and of adults
Exploring various online resources supporting our digital-literacy training-teaching-learning efforts
The myth of the digital native
Part 4: Fostering Digital Literacy: Creating Within a Digital Environment
Creating a framework to promote digital literacy
Designing workshops and other learning opportunities
Keeping up in an evolving digital literacy landscape
How this eCourse Works
The eCourse begins on Monday, November 14, 2016. Your participation will require approximately six hours a week, at times that fit your schedule. All activities take place on the website, and you will be expected to:
Read, listen to or view online content
Post to online discussion boards
Complete weekly assignments or activities
Instructor Paul Signorelli will monitor discussion boards regularly during the four-week period, lead group discussions, and will also answer individual questions. All interaction will take place on the eCourse site, which will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s recommended that students log into the site on the first day of class or within a few days for an overview of the content and to begin the first lesson.
User Requirements
Participants will need regular access to a computer with an internet connection for online message boards participation, viewing online video, listening to streaming audio (mp3 files), and downloading and viewing PDFs and PowerPoint files. ALA Editions eCourses are fully compatible with Windows and MacOs.
About the Instructor
Paul Signorelli, co-author of Workplace Learning & Leadership with Lori Reed, is a San Francisco-based writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant exploring, fostering, and documenting innovations in learning. Having earned an MLIS through the University of North Texas (with an emphasis on online learning), he remains active in the American Library Association, the New Media Consortium (educational technology), and the Association for Talent Development (formerly the American Society for Training & Development).
My note: Finally ALA is addressing a huge gap. Namely, letting conservative librarians dress information literacy with the appearance of “digital literacy.”
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more on digital literacy in this IMS blog:
For years educators have leveraged curation tools such as Scoop.it, Storify, and Pinterest to help students critically evaluate online resources.
(my bold to emphasize the difference between the definition of digital literacy, which I am fighting to establish at SCSU LRS and the continuous “information literacy” trend of the reference librarians )
Mapping Digital Literacy Policy and Practice in the Canadian Landscape
A well-rounded digital literacy incorporates print literacy but adds new capacities, competencies and comportments into the mix. Now included is the technical know-how to create a website, produce and upload a video, edit an image, design a functional information architecture for accessing or sharing knowledge – as well as many “soft skills” such as critical thinking and ethical behaviour. One of the primary transformations of the digital era in the 21st Century has been the introduction of end-users as actors in the world of communication, autonomous (producers and consumers of information) who can access and disseminate content in Web 2.0 domains without the regulatory controls of traditional filters and gatekeepers. Given this development, end-users now need greater critical thinking capacities to manage content: to decide what is valid and truthful and be able to incorporate multiple perspectives and voices into expanding worldviews. Additionally, exhibiting ethical behaviour in what may be said or posted online is essential to contemporary civic mindedness whether in a local context or the broader global village.
Like the millennials before them, Generation Z grew up as digital natives, with devices a fixture in the learning experience. According to the survey results, these students want “engaging, interactive learning experiences” and want to be “empowered to make their own decisions.” In addition, the students “expect technology to play an instrumental role in their educational experience.”
to cater to the digital appetites of tomorrow’s higher education learners, technology in education will need to play a bit of catch-up, states the New Media Consortium’s 2015 Course Apps report. According to NMC’s analysts, digital-textbook adoption was one of the leading trends helping to reinvent how higher education students learn. But publishers have not captured the innovations happening elsewhere in the digital marketplace.
The Generation Z report ranked the effectiveness of 11 education technology tools:
In November 2015, the Open University released the latest edition of its ‘Innovating Pedagogy’ report, the fourth rendition of an annual educational technology and teaching techniques forecast. While the timelines and publishing interval may remind you of the Horizon Report, the methodology for gathering the trends is different.
The NMC Horizon Team uses a modified Delphi survey approach with a panel of experts.
10 Innovative Pedagogy Trends from the 2015 Edition:
Crossover Learning: recognition of diverse, informal achievements with badges.
Learning through Argumentation: To fully understand scientific ideas and effectively participate in public debates students should practice the kinds of inquiry and communication processes that scientists use, and pursue questions without known answers, rather than reproducing facts.
Incidental Learning: A subset of informal learning, incidental learning occurs through unstructured exploration, play and discovery. Mobile technologies can support incidental learning. An example is the app and website Ispot Nature.
Context-based Learning:Mobile applications and augmented reality can enrich the learners’ context. An example is the open source mobile game platform ARIS.
Computational Thinking: The skills that programmers apply to analyze and solve problems are seen as an emerging trend . An example is the programming environment SCRATCH.
Learning by Doing Science with Remote Labs: A collection of accessible labs is ilab
Embodied learning:involving the body is essential for some forms of learning, how physical activities can influence cognitive processes.
Adaptive Teaching:intelligent tutoring systems – computer applications that analyse data from learning activities to provide learners with relevant content and sequence learning activities based on prior knowledge.
Analytics of Emotions: As techniques for tracking eye movements, emotions and engagement have matured over the past decade, the trend prognoses opportunities for emotionally adaptive learning environments.
Stealth Assessment: In computer games the player’s progress gradually changes the game world, setting increasingly difficult problems through unobtrusive, continuous assessment.
6 Themes of Pedagogical Innovation
Based upon a review of previous editions, the report tries to categorize pedagogical innovation into six overarching themes:
“What started as a small set of basic teaching methods (instruction, discovery, inquiry) has been extended to become a profusion of pedagogies and their interactions. So, to try to restore some order, we have examined the previous reports and identified six overarching themes: scale, connectivity, reflection, extension, embodiment, and personalisation.”
Delivering education at massive scale.
Connecting learners from different nations, cultures and perspectives.
Fostering reflection and contemplation.
Extending traditional teaching methods and settings.
Recognizing embodied learning (explore, create, craft, and construct).
Creating a personalized path through educational content.
Further Reading
Follow these links to blog posts and EdITLib resources to further explore selected trends:
Interested in the Innovating Pedagogy report? Read our review of the 2014 edition, and reflect which trends are closer to becoming common practice.
the power of VR goes beyond simply recruiting. The University of Michigan uses the technology as a learning tool, and by instituting a virtual reality “cave” they’ve allowed engineering students to interact with virtual structures as they “come together, buckle and collapse.” Instead of relying on physical models—which tend to be large, expensive, and slow to build—a student using the MIDEN VR cave can fly around a virtual structure to study mechanical connections.
The bigger problem, however, is our mental limitations in both teaching and thinking visually. Most classes that “teach” PowerPoint gloss over the narrative changes that it imposes on us through its transition from a linear textual narrative to a nonlinear visual one. They also fail to examine the information transfer capacities of various media. PowerPoint is software that complements a performance and often fails as a container for information. It needs to be augmented by more persistent visual and textual media. I’ve worked around this by creating websites as a mechanism to gloss my presentation; provide background linkages; and to create a persistent, living complement to what happens live. Slideshare fails to do this because it only gives you half of the presentation, the visual part, which may or may not stand on its own. Part of visual literacy is understanding how visual media complements other media, such as audio and text.
Finally, we need to start embedding design thinking into our processes. Design thinking is, by its very nature, closely tied to the visual.
