Learning in a digital age/LiDA Course specification - Microcourse 4

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Note: Course specification is based on Kanban board for micro-course 4.

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  1. Working micro-course title: Media literacy and digital practices in Higher Education and the workplace
  2. Notional learning hours: 40 notional learning hours
  3. Format: To be offered as cohort based open online learning course comprising approximately 25 hours and 15 hours for preparing the assessment. Course will be designed to support the open boundary delivery model where OERu learners can participate in parallel with full-fee registered students on campus.
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Course aims

On successful completion of this course students will be able to:

  • Develop critical media literacy skills and use multimodal communication to express outputs of learning effectively in a digital online environment .



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Outcomes
  • Contrast and compare definitions of media literacy and new media literacy in the context of the history of mass media and newer forms of social media and citizen journalism.
  • Provide examples of how media literacies can be used in Higher Education and the workplace.
  • Demonstrate critical media literacy skills to access, analyse, evaluate and create media in different forms information being conveyed
  • Demonstrate an understanding of how the medium and publisher influences the message regardless of the form.
  • Assess the authority and reliability of a range of mass media including how social media influences behaviour and attitudes in contemporary society.
  • Apply skills in using digital media for visual and multi-modal presentation to support learning.



Micro course topics

  • A definition of media literacies.
  • Examples of how media literacies can be used in Higher Education and the workplace.
  • Examples of theories underpinning the concept of media literacies

Proposed learning pathways

  1. Introduction to media literacies (Compare definitions, JISC, What difference between digital literacies / media literacies)
  2. Definitions this generation of learners (Generation stuff)
  3. Affordances of digital technology
  4. Media in a digital age (understanding of how the medium and publisher influences the message regardless of the form. Assess the authority and reliability of a range of mass media including how social media influences behaviour and attitudes in contemporary society.)
  5. Preparing for the assignment (Building blocks for multimodal assignment)

Learning pathways

Introduction to media literacies

Learning outcomes

  • Have an understanding of the different definitions associated with media literacies
  • Be able to critique how media literacies can be used to support learning
  • Reflect on your own level of competences with media literacies

Overview

This link show a model of digital literacies. It shows that digital literacies range from basic access, awareness and training to to highly sophisticated, and more complex creative and critical literacies and outcomes. Digital literacies can be classified into three types of purposes: use, understand and create. Use represents the technical fluency that’s needed to engage with digital technologies. This includes basic technical know-how –  using computer programmess such as word processors, web browsers, email, and other communication tools – to the more sophisticated abilities for accessing and using knowledge resources, such as search engines and online databases, and emerging technologies such as cloud computing. Understand is the set of skills that help us comprehend, contextualize, and critically evaluate digital media, so that we can make informed decisions about what we do and encounter online. Create is the ability to produce content and effectively communicate through a variety of digital media tools. Creation with digital media is more than knowing how to use a word processor or write an email: it includes being able to adapt what we produce for various contexts and audiences; to create and communicate using rich media such as images, video and sound; and to effectively and responsibly engage with Web 2.0 user-generated content such as blogs and discussion forums, video and photo sharing, social gaming and other forms of social media.

Jenkins argues that the following digital literacies are need to be part of what he refers to as today's participatory culture:

  • Play – the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
  • Performance – the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
  • Simulation – the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
  • Appropriation – the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
  • Multitasking – the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details
  • Distributed Cognition – the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
  • Collective Intelligence – the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
  • Judgment – the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
  • Transmedia Navigation – the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple platforms (understanding a storyline that’s told both on a TV show and a website, for instance, or following a news story through various different outlets)
  • Networking – the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
  • Negotiation – the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

JISC (https://www.jisc.ac.uk/full-guide/developing-digital-literacies) argue that digital literacies are much more than basic understanding of Information and Communication Technology, instead they are more about the set of rich digital behaviours, practices and identities. JISC suggested that there are seven elements of digital literacies:

  • Media literacy: Critical read and creatively produce academic and professional communications in a range of media.
  • Communications and collaboration: Participate in digital networks for learning and research.
  • Career and identity management: Managed digital reputation and online identity.
  • ICT literacy: Adopt, adapt and use digital devices, applications and services.
  • Learning skills: Study and learn effectively in technology-rich environments, both formal and informal.
  • Digital scholarship: Participate in emerging academic, professional and research practices that depend on digital systems.
  • Information literacy: Find, interpret, evaluate, manage and share information.

Beetham and Sharpe (http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/page/46740204/Digital%20literacy%20framework) describe digital literacies as a developmental process from access and awareness, through development of skills, then practices and finally identity.

Learning Challenge

  • Write a blog post reflecting on your own digital literacies based on Jenkin's digital literacy list. Consider how you have developed these literacies and in particular how you use them to support your learning.
  • Read at least two other blog posts written by your peers and leave comments.

Suggested resources

Definitions associated with today's learners

Learning outcomes

  • Be aware of the different terms used to describe today's learners
  • Adopt a critical stance to the literature associated with today's learners
  • Reflect on your own perceptions of and use of digital technologies to support your learning

Overview

Many argue that today's learners are different because of the ways in which they interact with digital technologies. In their book "Educating the net generation' Oblinger and Oblinger

There are many definitions of media literacy. Prensky (http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf) developed the concept of digital natives and digital immigrants. He argues that today's learners are digital natives because they have grown up in a world of computers and the Internet. He believes that todays' students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. He even goes so far as to suggest that today's learners are digital wired differently. However this concept has been since challenged by other researchers.

More recently David White (http://daveowhite.com/vandr/) proposed an alternative, namely the concept of digital visitors and digital residence. Similar in many respects to Prensky's concept but perhaps more nuanced. Rather than two distinct categories, White see it more as a continium. He argues that "Visitors and Residents is a simple way of describing a wide range, or continuum of, modes of online engagement. It has proved to be a useful way to come to an understanding of individuals’ motivations when they use the web in differing contexts. We are not proposing that one mode of engagement is better than the other, simply that different modes are employed depending on the individual’s motivation and context at the time."

Learning outcomes

  • To critique the concept of digital natives and digital immigrants
  • To compare the concept of digital visitors and digital residents to the concept of digital natives and digital immigrants.

Learning challenge

  • Explore the literature around the concept of digital natives and digital immigrants and the concept of digital visitors and digital residents.
  • Watch the short video by Prensky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRR76Mz9NII
  • Watch the short video by David White [TOO ADD]
  • Write a blog post summarising the main arguments for and against the two concepts.
  • Read some other blog posts written by your peers and leave at least two comments
  • Collectively share the resources you have found, include a summarise of the main points from each article.

Suggested resources

Affordances of digital technology

Learning outcomes

  • To have an understanding of the concept of affordances
  • To have an understanding of the affordances of digital technologies and their relevance for learning
  • To critique the relationship between the affordances of digital technologies and individual learners
  • To reflect on your own interactions with digital technologies for learning

Overview

Gibson (1977, 1979) defined the term affordances, in an ecological context, in relation to visual perception. He argued that affordances in an environment always lead to some course of action. Affordances are perceived by an individual and are culturally based. Gaver (1991) argues that the actual perception of affordances will be in part determined by the observer’s culture, social setting, experience and intentions. For example a button has an affordance of pushing, a knob is for turning and handles are for pushing. Gibson (1977) defined affordances as:

All "action possibilities" latent in the environment, objectively measurable and independent of the individual's ability to recognize them, but always in relation to the actor and therefore dependent on their capabilities (Gibson, 1977, pg. 67-82).

For example, a tall tree has the affordance of food for a giraffe because it has a long neck, but not for a sheep, or a set of stairs has an affordance of climbing for a walking adult, but not for a crawling infant. Therefore affordances are always in relation to individuals and their capabilities; this includes the individual’s past experience, values, beliefs, skills and perceptions. Therefore a button may not have the affordance of pushing if an individual has no cultural context or understanding of the notion of buttons or related objects and what they are for. Gibson also argued that:

The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill (Gibson, 1979, p. 127).

He goes on to argue that it implies a complementarity between the animal and the environment. Salomon describes Gibson’s concept of affordances as follows:

‘Affordance’ refers to the perceived and actual properties of a thing, primarily those functional properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used. (Salomon, 1993, p. 51).

Therefore affordances are properties of the world that are compatible with and relevant for people’s actions (Gaver, 1991). Weiser and Seely Brown (1995) offer the following definition:

An affordance is a relationship between an object in the world and the intentions, perceptions, and capabilities of a person. The side of a door that only pushes out affords this action by offering a flat pushplate. The idea of affordance, powerful as it is, tends to describe the surface of a design. For us the term ‘affordance’ does not reach far enough into the periphery where a design must be attuned to but not attended to.

McGrenere and Ho identify three properties of affordances (McGrenere and Ho, 2000): 1. An affordance exists relative to the action capabilities of a particular actor. 2. The existence of an affordance is independent of the actor’s ability to perceive it. 3. An affordance does not change as the needs and goals of the actor change.


Learning outcomes

  • To reflect on digital practices in the work place, for learning and for social activities through the use of social media.
  • To develop multimodal presentation skills for communicating ideas.

Learning challenge

  • Write down the social media tools you use on a regular basis, consider what you use each one for, and consider how you use of technologies has changed in the last ten years or so.
  • Write a blog post summarising your digital practice and use of social media tools {TOO.
  • Choose two social media tools (facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) one that you really like and one that you don't. Write a blog post summarising your thoughts. Look at and comment on at least two blog posts from your peers.
  • Create a multimedia presentation (consisting of text, images, audio and video) on social media in general and how it influences behaviour and attitudes.
  • Write a blog post summarising how social media can be used in the work place, for learning, and for social activities.

Links

Possible micro-course assessment

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