Category: digital literacy

Learning Development takes centre stage

Sue Watling / / digital literacy

The 8th ALDinHE Conference (the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education) ‘Engaging Students – Engaging Learning’ took place at Queen’s University Belfast 18-20 April 2011. ALDinHE is the organization for professionals engaged in the development of learning within the higher education sector. The provision of Learning Development varies across institutions; some have teams of variously named coordinators, supporters or advisers, both in central positions or placed in Faculties, others have less or none. For the latter, that may be about to change because Learning Development is about to take centre stage. No longer the Cinderella of higher education – with rising fees and increasing focus on the student experience – the ways in which learning can be supported and developed are about to be revisited.

The main problem with Learning Development is a linguistic one. Most people refer to it as Skills – learning skills, academic skills, literacy skills – whatever the prefix there’s no getting away from the subsequent association with deficit or lack and from there it’s a short step to that dreadful word ‘remedial’ – when it isn’t about any of those things. Learning Development is about the qualities which make the higher education experience so unique; critical thinking, reflective practice, independent learning, problem solving, time organisation, motivation, transferable skills – oops there’s that word again – it has to go! 

There’s another driver for revisiting and rethinking institutional provision of Learning Development and that’s digital literacy. A colleague has recently asked for a context free description of what is meant by digital literacy. I would suggest analysis, synthesis and evaluation with regard to digital data would be a reasonable start and that Learning Development is ideally placed to support the digital literacy of students (and staff) alongside more traditional higher education requirements. In an uncertain world, one thing we can be sure of is the increasing influence of the Internet and universities need to be at the forefront in making sure the Internet is seen for what it is – a chaos of information with no controls over content and with every day that chaos increases. We need to learn to pick our way through it with care and that requires the sort of critical thinking which lies at the heart of the higher education experience.

Digital literacy will be the making of Learning Development. It’s the opportunity for the profession to stand at the front of the stage and be recognised as a foundation of university education.  If you want to engage students – do it digitally. Learning Development is about to have an identity make-over and ALDinHE will be leading the way. http://www.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.htm

What’s in a name?

Sue Watling / / digital literacy, equality and diversity, inclusive design

Quite a lot actually.  Juliet may have said ‘That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’* but you need to choose its substitute with care. Dogwort is the prettiest of spring flowers but would you recognise it? Exactly! Whereas everyone knows a rose even if your only experience is modern hybrids which are all colour and no scent.  

Fancy fonts are a bit like todays roses; all style and no substance. Fonts are like people; they have their own characters and personalities. The problem starts when  the font you choose says more about you than the message you want to put across. A disaster in the art of communication.  Naming is a tricky art; a conundrum which lies at the heart of marketing – how best to deliver the message succinctly and with style?

How best to name a staff development workshop where it needs to convey the message that attending is worth an hour or two of your time. I’ve developed a session which looks at working with digital data and ensuring the information we put online can be accessed by everyone, regardless of the ways in which they use their computers. It’s about recognising difference and diversity but in relation to operating within digital environments. Take-up on the sessions isn’t great. Paul Stainthorp has suggested this could be symptomatic of the lack of importance placed on accessibility, usability and access issues in general. I think Paul is right – but public institutions have a responsibility to ensure digital content follows inclusive practice guidelines. Which is why a little awareness raising is not a bad thing. But how best to get the message across?

With hindsight maybe the title Promoting Inclusive Practice with Digital Data isn’t the best of choices. I like the phrase Digital Literacy but first responses suggest it’s making the same mistakes. The meaning is clear to me but I’m not standing outside the box. I like Know your Fonts but it’s not much better – I know what I mean but how can I be sure that meaning is explicit? Maybe there isn’t a title with universal appeal. Maybe we’ve all become too set in our digital ways. I don’t yet have the answer. But you have to appreciate the subtle irony that a workshop about getting the digital message across successfully has a title which is failing to get that message across in the first place!

* Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Beware the Internet, it’s rotting our brains…

Sue Watling / / digital literacy

Beware the Internet, its rotting our brains, or at least reprogramming our neural pathways to work in different ways. So say writers like Nicholas Carr, Andrew Keen and Clay Shirky. The concept isn’t that difficult to believe. As a species we’re designed to evolve and the societies in which we live don’t stand still either – they evolve and morph – as evidenced by changes from oral to print traditions – from agriculture to industry. There’s an inevitability about the digital challenge to the printed page – and whether it’s academic research like the CIBER report or writers like the above named – I can’t help but agree – the Internet is changing the way I work and the way I think and the way I live my life. I’m permanently online and if I’m not I miss it. I’ve become accustomed to Internet access. My mobile technology means I can be on the move and still in touch with email, facebook, twitter, bbc news, igoogle, itunes, local traffic updates, the list is endless. I don’t use Google Latitude but it’s a prime example of digital lifestyle meets social media equals Wow! The only time I’m free of the Internet is when I’m travelling and then I deliberately cut the link; otherwise I can’t absorb the strangeness of different places, I can’t leave behind the problems and the daily grind. I can’t feel a different country and its culture. But the minute I’m home the laptop is on and I’m reconnected.  

There is something about the mass of information on the Internet that’s addictive; the continual process of linking, the search for the next bit of content which will have exactly the answer I’m looking. It encourages surface browsing with the resultant sore eyes from too many hours at the screen and a dull headache from a surfeit of mental stimulation and resultant ideas. At least, that’s how it is for me. But at least I know the Internet is a machine. It has no morals or values or empathy. They are our responsibility; it’s up to us to ensure our digital experiences are for the better and not the worse. 

We’ve come a long way from the weekly trip to the public library. I’m not suggesting we should go back; revisiting the past is never a good idea. We need to stay in a forward trajectory but we also need to remember our analogue roots. People matter, health and relationships matter, the Internet is no substitute for family and friends.

It’s Friday night and it really is time to open the wine and close down my browser – now where did I put my phone???

Deja vou

Sue Watling / / digital divide, digital literacy, equality and diversity, inclusive design

As part of the Digital Britain campaign,  Online Basics has been launched, designed to create confidence with using the Internet. Peter Mandelson  says:

Everyone should be a confident user of the internet if they are to participate fully in today’s digital society. Being online brings a range of personal benefits, including financial savings, educational attainment, improved salary prospects and independent living for older people.

Déjà vou! In the 1990s I worked in adult and community education when much the same things were being said about computers. I set up computer courses for the ‘terrified’ (no longer allowed under pc rules) and for teaching literacy and numeracy.  Our software was MS Works, Adobe Pagemaker and Paint and we had multimedia cd-roms. No Internet. You learned the basics about using a computer. Today, as a volunteer support worker, I’m frequently asked to visit a service user who is ‘really good with computers’ to find someone can send and receive emails through a learned sequence of steps; they have no holistic knowledge with which to troubleshoot and may have to wait days or even weeks for someone to sort out a problem.

How realistic is the expectation that you can learn to use the Internet effectively when you have never used a computer? Or is it merely like learning to use a library without really understanding the Dewey classification system (which I don’t). Maybe times are changing and I need to change with them.

But one thing remains the same; digital exclusion is still about access. It would take too much space to list all my criticisms of the site but I would suggest it was designed by an ME-user (Mouse and Eyes) and not tested with alternative users. Why isn’t this site a leading example of digital inclusion? Changing text size fails to alter the menu text, links are indicated with mouse-over and new windows open without warning. Aside from DDA requirements, the typos show a lack of proofreading and an exercise on searching has you keying in tesco.com with a further screen advertising Virgin Atlantic – mmm…neat piece of advertising.

Digital Britain is about digital inclusion and the reports make explicit the links between social and digital exclusions. But unless digital data is provided in formats that enable flexible delivery and content customisation, exclusion will continue across all social strata. We have the technology to enable access; what is needed now is to flip the coin and ensure that content is accessible too. Déjà vou again.

Digital Christmas

Sue Watling / / digital divide, digital literacy

How many will spend Christmas attached to laptop or mobile phone? If Christmas is about tradition then it’s worth remembering the ghost of Christmas Past was an analogue one; family, friends and social activities like board games. Playing Trivial Pursuit without the Internet was not that far back in time. Today, the memory required for such pastimes is being challenged. Is Google Making us Stupid?  and Is Google Killing General Knowledge? suggest real changes in the human brain. Should we be afraid? The ability to adapt to external change is at the core of evolution. As Nietzsche’s  experience with a typewriter changed his writing style so instant digital access to communication and information is  changing how we process thought.  We’re no longer reading in depth. We skim and flit through pages, continually changing topics. The Stumbleupon Syndrome has us addicted to the unexpected. Google ensures we can always find what we are looking for. The Internet has taken the pressure off memorising facts as stand-alone pieces of information. Potentially the next decade should see us all with access to the tools of learning. Assessment will be less about recall and more about critical evaluation, application and reflection. Student Future carries a laptop in the way Student Past had a dictionary. In a similar vein, Christmas Future is digital. The 24/7 virtual world has us all connected. Our traditional analogue customs and habits are at stake unless we make a stand and turn off the connections. Return to family, friends and board games and stick the invitation to Google (and Facebook and Twitter etc)  up the chimney. It might be harder than you think and that in itself is something we should really be afraid of.

rethinking eportfolios

Sue Watling / / digital divide, digital literacy

Sometimes I think you have to get back to basics. The common digital denominator of everyone at the university has to be some form of PC or Mac, propriety or open source, Office suite.  So why not look at how an eportfolio could be created using Office? Then you could focus on the benefits of creating electronic profiles rather than the digital learning curve required to produce them. Criteria such as portability and interoperability have value but if engagement is a key issue then familiarity with the software must be more important. Eportfolio documents could be uploaded to Google but does a URL have to be a crucial component? There are still cd-roms or data sticks. Storage is cheap. Employers wanting electronic profiles will prefer digital data in a format they’re familiar rather than not at all.

We’re not getting there with e-portfolios. Even if they were part of the assessment process or of CPD you’d still have a digital divide with the software. Give someone a tool they’re familiar with and they’ll use it. Give them one they’ve never seen before and you drastically cut the chances of it being utilized.  At the end of the day the prime purpose of an e-porfolio is an electronic record of who you are, and what you have to offer, so surely it’s the content that matters rather than the packaging.

Teaching in Public

Sue Watling / / CERD, digital divide, digital literacy, equality and diversity

I’ve been reflecting on the concept of Teaching in Public; the proposed theme of the second CERD book. Googling it only returned the C-SAP 2007 Conference Teaching in Public, the Future of HE . It looks like CERD have identified a gap in the market.  So what does Teaching in Public mean? With so little out there then this is an opportunity to offer our own interpretations. Suggested strands are Education as a Public Good, The Student/Teacher Nexus and Teaching as a Public Activity; all retaining the student/teacher dichotomy. 

My interest is the impact of the Internet and the development of OER. For example the Open University’s OpenLearn which includes a course on Creating OER  and an OER wiki Other examples of what I would call Teaching in Public are MIT Open Courseware, TED Talks , Wiki Educator  and Connextions.  Add the P2P virtual university and there’s a lot out there. There are issues around assessment and accreditation but no doubt that the future of higher education is digital. Like it or not we live in a Web 2.0 world. Teaching in Public is a move from pedagogy to folksomony. Traditional educationalists should be feeling afraid. Those yet to engage with the technology should be feeling very afraid.

OER (via the Internet) does more than challenge the status quo of HEIs as the gatekeepers of knowledge. OER (and the Internet) open up communication and access to information; the keys to educational opportunities. The primary issues then become digital divides (ensuring equality of access) and digital controls (transmission via cables rather than humans). Is this where the future of HE lies? If the themes include ‘public good’ and ‘public activity’ then access issues are paramount. Digital data not only requires good bandwidth it’s notoriously inaccessible to anyone with sensory, motor and cognitive impairment.  Along with the employability agenda, will the primary role of the HEI shift from the transmission of knowledge to the critical evaluation and correct acknowledgment of sources that are already freely available?  

I’ve few political bones and even less economic ones so will leave those implications of OER on teaching in public to others more qualified, but will offer this; the move to a digital platform, as envisaged by Digital Britain  is a mass imposition of change in practice, something notorious for creating resistance. If there should develop an underground movement of analogue protestors, what impact would that have on the future of higher education?

resurrecting the ‘should they shouldn’t they’ debate

Sue Watling / / digital divide, digital literacy

 Why offline? It’s very personal in the THES by Janet Hanson, head of education enhancement at Bournemouth University, resurrects the ‘should they shouldn’t they’ debate over teacher engagement with technology. In 2007 Karl Fisch  suggested that digital literacy was the responsibility of the individual and that refusal to engage with technology was on a par with refusing to learn to read or write;

The article “Displaced but not replaced: the impact of e-learning on academic identities in higher education” in the journal Teaching in Higher Education, appears to suggest that some staff are threatened by technology to a degree where one describes feeling “out of control” when she started to use PowerPoint in her lectures, with her academic presence “reduced to a mechanical process of pressing a key on the PC to change the slides”. Comments from readers pick up and challenge this resistance to technology; one of which links to David Warlick’s online article ‘If you can’t use technology get out of teaching!’  Harsh words but I remain convinced that rather than pushing virtual boundaries forwards, it’s non-engagement that is the key issue  I suspect that the more the label Web 2.0 is used to influence institutional practice then the more those who are not yet blogging or tweeting will switch off.  The debate is far from being over. We are quick to praise pockets of good practice but it’s the pockets of resistance that need addressing.

 p.s. never mind PowerPoint; take a look at Prezi instead!

Camfed – ‘where the water meets the sky’

Sue Watling / / digital divide, digital literacy

Camfed www.camfed.org is a charity that provides computer training for young women in Africa. Here education is too expensive for many families and if choices have to be made then sons are chosen over daughters. The project is an example of the value of free Web 2.0 tools in particular the Google family that enable virtual communication to take place. The original digital divide still exists in so many places across the world and Camfed is not only a bridge but an opportunity to remind us of the privileges the western world affords.

A documentary film, Where the Water Meets the Sky, narrated by Morgan Freeman, has been made about the project and should be made available to everyone involved in education in the west, both both staff and students. http://www.watermeetssky.com/ 

The BBC have a page and a video clip about the project here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8302294.stm

Scratching Blackboard

Sue Watling / / Blackboard, digital divide, digital literacy

I agree  with its detractors that Blackboard is in the money making business.  Like the publishers of educational journals, access is restricted through prohibitively expensive licences. But I also don’t agree that Blackboard is dead so to paraphase Julian’s comment  here’s a scratch. While the Web 2.0 revolutionaries are plotting on one corner of the square then those getting on with daily life have to make the best of it. Educational opportunities shouldn’t be denied on the grounds of cost but the reality for many educators is they are caught in the middle. If Blackboard is the tool of choice of your institution then knocking it vociferously doesn’t help. If the future of higher education is digital then we should be encouraging engagement and there are worse places than Blackboard for the cutting of technical teeth. It’s easy to be critical about Blackboard; it may well be closed rather than open, be clunky and not visually appealing but it’s a tool and if it’s the only one you have then it’s what you do with it that counts. Better to have active engagement with Blackboard than no engagement with digital learning at all.