Becoming Digital: whos eliterate now

1
Becoming Digital whos e-literate now?
Helen Beetham e-learning consultant
2
Learners experience
literacies

• across the curriculum
• across the learning lifecycle/lifepath
• how learners make sense of their experience
• empowering them as learners?

3
What characterises an effective e-learner?
What does it mean to be digitally literate?
4
multi-media literacy
Academic literacies
Learning to learn
meta-cognitive skills
Information literacy
communication skills
5
socially situated practices
interpreting understanding manipulating analysing
creating sharing learning (how to)
what kind of society?
social value

• information
• representation
• media
• knowledge

Criticality Awareness Agency Value Purpose
6
What characterises an effective e-learner?
What does it mean to be digitally literate?
What will the answers to those questions look
like in 10 years time? In 20 years time?
7
Technology is not the only shaper of future
social contexts but

• New forms of knowledge and knowledge work
• New kinds of problems (crisis or continuity?)
• New modes of exchange (digital marketplace or
  digital commons?)
• Information noise, overload, harm
• Non-geographically co-present communities
• Fusion of content and communications
• etc

8
A vision of students today

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vdGCJ46vyR9o
• I will read 8 books this year, 2300 web pages and
  1281 facebook profiles
• I will write 42 pages for class this semester and
  over 500 pages of emails
• Every day I spend 3 hours online, 2.5 hours
  listening to music, 2 hours on my cellphone

9
Ross
Technology plays a big part in my learning
Id never heard of web 2.0 until today Ive
always done this stuff
The first thing I tend to do in the morning is
check my e-mails
My ipod is for my music
I like to discuss my course online
Oh yeah, I use that (I think) but mostly we use
face book and MSN
The V L what?
10
(No Transcript)
11
The learners of the future today

• Many learners already use wireless and mobile
  devices, communication technologies, social
  software and online information services to help
  fit learning into their lives
• Some learners are effectively blending formal and
  informal, online and face-to-face, collaborative
  and individual learning
• Some learners are using sophisticated strategies
  for finding, evaluating and re-using information
• Some learners are skilled in content creation and
  sharing (wikis, blogging, tagging and rating,
  podcasting, web authoring)
• We anticipate these learners will be the majority
  in future (even without our help?)

12
Paradigm 1 developing effective e-learners

• Universities/colleges understand what literacies
  learners will need to be effective in their
  personal futures
• University/college is a place where learners
  develop and practice those literacies

13
Developing effective e-learners
attributes/identities
strategies
skills
access
Beetham and Sharpe future learners, future
learning
14
Developing effective e-learners
Academic content E-portfolios Task and assessment
management systems Creativity tools E-research
tools Collaborative spaces Wikis, blogs, social
tagging, file sharing Available via
personally-owned and portabledevices e.g. mobile
phone, pda, mp3 player, digital camera
attributes/identities
strategies
skills
access
Beetham and Sharpe future learners, future
learning
15
Developing effective e-learners
e-create e-collate e-collaborate e-investigate
attributes/identities

• Recognise a need for information
• Distinguish ways in which the information gap
  may be addressed
• Construct strategies for locating information
• Locate and access information
• Compare and evaluate information
• Synthesise and build upon existing information

strategies
skills
access
Beetham and Sharpe future learners, future
learning
16
Developing effective e-learners
Systemic thinking Multiple ways of
knowing Judgment Social entrepreneurialism Managi
ng career paths Communication and collaboration
skills (Seely Brown 2005)
attributes/identities
strategies
skills
access
Beetham and Sharpe future learners, future
learning
17
Developing effective e-learners
Digital pioneers Creative producers Everyday
communicators Information gatherers(Green and
Hannon 2007)
attributes/identities
strategies
ReadinessResourcefulnessResilienceRememberingR
eflecting(Higgins et al 2005)
skills
access
Attention Creativity Social participation
Developing and projecting identities (based on
Owens et al 2007)
18
Developing effective e-learners
Beetham and Sharpe future learners, future
learning
19
Developing effective e-learners
20
Classifying learners according to their access
and skills
21
Challenges to this paradigm capacity

• I think our teachers have IT lessons, I think
  maybe once a year
• The teachers dont know how to use them their
  understanding of computers is behind ours
• Students experiences in commercial contexts
  led them to see the university VLE as
  unimaginative and the tutors use of it as
  lacking in vision. SEEL project, Greenwich

Learners are developing and practicing these
outside of formal learning contexts
Attention Creativity Social participation
Developing and projecting identities
22

• Many of todays learners use technology primarily
  for social networking.
• Learners often find asynchronous discussion
  forums (such as those within VLEs) problematic,
  and they are used less frequently and
  enthusiastically than other forms of
  communication. Learners suggest this is due to
  the lower frequency and promptness of
  contributions compared with other technologies
  learners use to support their own social
  networking.
• The studies found that learners share work with
  each other at previously unsuspected levels.
  Informal learning, facilitated by technology, is
  also commonplace. (From LXP report)

23
Challenges to this paradigm cultures

• GoogleGen knowledge culture
• Style- and usage-based
• Justification-in-use
• Issue-based methods and explanations
• Peer review (open community)
• Rapid response to change
• Pro-sumer cultures (cut-and-paste, re-edit,
  repurpose)
• Personal identity, reflection
• Circulation, connection

• Academic knowledge culture
• Evidence-based
• Historical justification
• Discipline-based methods and explanations
• Peer review (closed community)
• Evolutionary development (paradigm shifts every
  10 yrs?)
• Culture of production
• Objectivity, critique
• Publication, reputation

24
Some counter-evidence

• While the students expect to be able to set
  themselves up, technologically they will not
  expect the technology to encroach on what they
  see as the key benefits from university
  interaction and learning.
• I prefer to learn face to face with a teacher
  helping me understand any problems that I have.
• Traditional teacher/pupil learning methods are
  preferred as the backbone for everyday learning.
  Technology needs to be used as a tool to
  complement this way of learning.
• (JISC Student Expectations study, November 2007)
• Consultations carried out with children, parents
  and other citizen juries to determine preferred
  scenarios for education in 2025 and beyond
  (Beyond Current Horizons) find a strong
  preference for relationships with teachers to
  remain at the heart of the learning experience.
  (FutureLab, verbal report, February 2008)

25
An alternative paradigm

• Universities and colleges rethink themselves as
  communities in which learners skills are valued
  and recognised
• Learners receive credit for developing their own
  and other peoples skills this is an explicit
  part of the contract between learners and the
  institution
• Universities and colleges focus on what learners
  value in higher learning, recognising that this
  is different from what they value in other social
  and cultural spaces.
• Technology is used to support core academic
  values and practices such as problem solving,
  creativity, critique depth of attention,
  scholarly collaboration and research. These uses
  of technology form the core of institutions ICT
  offering to learners.

26
Common to both paradigms

• Institutions and their staff understand what
  work and community participation entail in the
  digital age, and prepare learners to be active
  participants in those spheres
• The focus is on embedding skills for a digital
  age into all curricula.

27
Some alternative research questions

• What do learners value of the experience they
  get through formal higher/further education?
• How can technologies support those values and
  empower individuals and institutions to uphold
  them?
• When do learners experience themselves as being
  effective agents in this environment, and what
  role can/does technology play?
• What alternative futures are we bringing about
  (as well as preparing learners for) in our
  approach to developing digital literacies?