Digital literacies in HE : constructive dialogue between teachers and students

Digital literacies are relevant to anyone who works, learns and plays in the digital media landscape – most of us want to do all those things as well as we can. It’s quite difficult to some up with a simple definition of digital literacies – in fact Doug Belshaw has come up with a whole thesis that moves from What is Digital Literacy? to What are Digital Literacies? (thanks for pluralising me Doug)  Much of the discussion is framed around the place of digital literacies in formal education, generating questions (for me) such as:

Should digital literacies be embedded in the subject curriculum or be the province of librarians or learning developers?

What are relevant digital literacies for teachers and how do they acquire them?

How can students leverage their existing digital practices to benefit their studies?

Putting my cards on the table, I led the development and delivery of  Year 1 UG module called Emerging Technologies whose curriculum includes the contexts of  study (developing personal learning networks) and work (the impact of social media on organisations) with lots of practice and critique for the students. I have for a long time been interested in the relationship between students’ and teachers’ learning practices, particularly with respect to emerging technologies. Of course, these learning practices could take place in formal education or in any area of everyday life.  More recently, I have been thinking about the ongoing development of digital literacies as a dynamic process since new technologies will emerge, and existing technologies will change (eg Facebook’s privacy).  It may be more useful to use Schon’s work on the reflective practitioner to look at practice across work, study and play contexts – everyday life- and how learning can cross these contexts via reflection.

Considering the practice of ‘teachers’ and ‘students’ I came up with this diagram for a session with colleagues at Salford. I, like Jeff Swain and Abhay Adhikari, am interested in the role of conversation in learning about ‘doing’ emerging technologies.

First attempt at modelling digital literacies as a conversation

However, I wasn’t completely satisfied with it: I seemed to be getting bound up between the ‘roles’ of teacher and student and the ‘activities’ of teaching and learning so I have had another go and here is version2.

What I am trying to say  that for all of us in our everyday life in the digital media landscape, we engage (at different times and with varying degrees of effectiveness) in innovating, learning, modelling and reflecting.  Teachers (or librarians or learning developers) who want to have a constructive conversation with students about digital literacies (that I am characterising as effective practice in the digital media landscape) will need to achieve sufficient learning via innovation and reflection to do their key role activity of modelling (and encouraging reflection).    Students (and their listening teachers) can benefit from this constructive conversation by reflecting on their everyday practices, helping them bring what they have learned in an everyday context to their context of study in HE.

Although I did get this positive response to my lecture that covered personal (learning) networks, I tend to think that effective practice in personal learning networks comes via doing it then reflecting on it. Maybe my lectures are about marketing the ideas.

Tweet from student during lecture

Anyway, I would love your feedback on these ideas so I can reflect on them before my contribution to the JISC online conference next month.

Comment for Kevin Stranack

I just tried (twice) to post a comment on Kevin Stranack’s blog  but failed twice.

His post is at http://stranack.ca/2011/09/25/transitioning-journals-to-open/
My comments was:

Already we have a connection Kevin.  I am co-editor of Research in Learning technology – journal for Association Learning Technology that will be Open Access from Jan 1 2012.
ALT’s Chief Exec Seb Schmoller was presenting with our new publishers Co-Action at the Tallinn workshop on the process of procuring a publisher to meet society’s aims.  As editor I am hoping to increase readership and submissions – exciting times!

Orienting myself to the Change 11 MOOC

I have signed up to the Change11 MOOC and feeling a little bit wary as day job is intensely busy and I am not sure I can make the commitment.  Of course, the reason that I have signed up is that I had such an interesting experience at CCK08 (and a few interesting moments at CCK09,CCK11). So let me start by thanking the organisers George Siemen and Stephen Downes for giving that opportunity.  This week is orientation week, facilitated by George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier and I am so keen that I am posting my first blog post before the course has properly started (this keenness could wear off, I have to say).  One of the things that I have really loved about engaging with the CCK MOOCs is that they have really challenged me and made me think, and being the pedant academic that I am, I am keen to engage with that challenge now.

Jenny Mackness posted about the Change11 MOOC, and in the replies Heli Nurmi (a valued member of my network encountered in CCK08) alerted us to an exchange on Jeff Lebow’s blog about some MOOC-related activity to which Stephen Downes.  This really did make me think!

Stephen Downes replied to the post that referred to Collaborative Open Online Learning as follows:

I resisted commenting when I first saw the alternative ‘Collaborative’ name mentioned, but now I regret that.

But I do feel it worth mentioning here that the structure and nature of a MOOC is exactly not ‘collaborative’. Let me explain.

Most definitions of ‘collaborate’ focus on the idea that a group of people are working on something in common – shared aims, shared objectives, shared project, etc. and very often they result in becoming a group, a team or a cohesive community.

MOOCs and the connectivist approach to learning, as I have argued elsewhere, is by contrast ‘cooperative’. There is no presumption of unity, order, shared goals or coherence. There’s no sense of being ‘in the group’ or its opposite. If teams or groups form, they are tangential to the course, and not the core or essence of it.

So, if you are discussing ‘Collaborative Open Online Learning’, you are not discussing MOOCs. Perhaps you are discussing things like WikiEducator or OERu, where everybody is pulling the same way. I don’t know.

For more on this, see my stuff on ‘groups and networks’:

- http://www.downes.ca/post/42521

- http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_downes/252157734/

- http://www.slideshare.net/Downes/groups-vs-networks-the-class-struggle-c…

- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4126240905912531540

- http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2006/10/that-group-feeling.html

My first thought was that Stephen had appointed himself as the MOOC definition policeman. The discourse about who ‘owns’ a term is slightly incestuous and I have already commented on this with respect to MOOCs.

However, Stephen’s next comment really fascinated me:

Either way, whatever Google says, the aim of a MOOC is *not* to “Act jointly; work toward the same end.”

I replied:

That is an interesting approach Stephen. You seem to suggest that there is one aim for a MOOC.  Of course in any human organisation (i.e. involving more than one person) there may be multiple aims, possibly overlapping but distinct.  What would you do if a number of people decided to work jointly towards a common end on your MOOC?  Would you ban them for disobeying your network principles or your MOOC definition?

The picture below is the England Cricket team winning a game in the Ashes tournament in 2009.

England mob Swanny, a photo by RNLJC&M on Flickr.

This team had a common goal – to win- and worked together to achieve it – they collaborated, even if only temporarily.  By Stephen Downes’ definitions they were a group at that point in time. However,they may have had individual, overlapping goals: to get better job offers, to increase their merchandising and advertising revenue.  Such is the complexity of human activity!

So are George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier a team, a group or a network?  If they are a network, can they have a common aim for Change 11, and where is it?  I couldn’t find it though Stephen contends  that the aim of a MOOC is not to be collaborative, or to act jointly toward the same end.  Well that lets George and Dave off the hook if they disagree with that aim, but then it rather dents the ‘aim of a MOOC’.

So where am I going with all of this?

If a MOOC, particularly a CHANGE MOOC is about being open, promoting knowledge as a network of people and things, how can it proscribe forms of human organisation?

Bring it on #change11

An informations systems perspective on learning technologies

I had to prepare a short contribution(it’s under two minutes) to our Research Awayday -I’d love to hear any comments http://www.screenr.com/embed/Leps

A political joke from Steven Lukes

Five citizens of the Reich were sitting in a railway waiting room.  One of them sighed, another clasped his head in his hands, the third one groaned loudly and the fourth sat with tears streaming down his face.

The fifth one looked at them, and shook his head.

‘Be careful , gentlemen.  It’s not wise to discuss politics in public.’

Lukes, Steven; Galnoor, Itzhak; illustrations by Michael Heath. (1986) No Laughing Matter: A Collection of Political Jokes. Routledge Kegan & Paul.

In our ALT-C 2011 symposium last week I referred to Lukes’ 1,2 and 3 dimensional views of power and whilst reading more by him, came across his wonderful gift of a book of political jokes (see link in caption above).  This joke (that I told in our session) neatly demonstrates “the third dimension of such power, where the power consists, not in prevailing over the opposition of others, nor in imposing an agenda on them, but in influencing their desires, beliefs and judgments in ways that work against their interests.” (Steven Lukes with Clarissa Hayward) ‘Nobody to shoot? Power, structure, and agency: A dialogue‘ Journal of Power, Vol. 1, No. 1, April 2008, pp. 5–20

My contention in my contribution to our symposium was that it’s really important to keep asking the awkward and uncomfortable questions, resisting the third dimension of power. In my Twitter stream I have come across Jennifer Jones’ fascinating narrative of her engagement with seminars about the Olympics, see her blog post and Twitter stream.  To me, this is a classic case of resistance to the third dimension of power.  This blog post, and more importantly the joke above, are offered in your honour Jennifer.

Let’s all keep asking the questions.

What can’t we say? What don’t we say?

At our ALT-C 2011 Symposium tomorrow The Paradox of Openness: The High Costs of Giving Josie Fraser, Helen Keegan Richard Hall and I will speak briefly about different aspects of openness and online in relation to education and learning, in order to open up discussion amongst participants.  We are also keen to extend dialogue beyond the conference and over time.

One of my interests in being involved in this symposium is that I suspect that there are questions that are not being asked about openness online.  I am keen to explore what openness means and what we can’t or don’t ask about online sharing and communicating.  18 years ago, when I first started thinking about processes of enquiry in relation to information technology, I came across the idea that surfacing assumptions could be useful.  I was intrigued by the idea that  what we thought and talked about could be constrained by things that we took for granted to the extent that we were neither aware of them or discussed them.

Today, I was at pre-ALTC 2011 Conference workshop that was timed to coincide with the launch of Technology Outlook: UK Tertiary Education 2011-2016, the first report in a new series of NMC Horizon Report Regional Analyses.  One thing I will carry from that workshop to our symposium was part of the definition of ‘open content’ as something that embraces not only the sharing of information, but also the sharing of pedagogies and experiences.

Tomorrow, I’ll be using some ideas from Steven Lukes well-established work on 1,2 and 3 dimensional views of power to help think about examples of the exercise of power in online ‘openness’. I’ll report back on the outcome and continue the discussion here.

A comment on George Siemens post plus a few more comments

I just tried to post this comment on George Siemen’s http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2011/09/01/the-narrowness-of-thought-in-higher-education-reform/ blog post but not sure it ‘took’ so I am posting it here.

Thanks for this George (I also made a comment over at your slideshow).  One of the reasons that I came into the field of Learning Technology (if indeed it is a field) was to play a part in letting lessons learned in earlier organisational applications of technology benefit what is happening in education.  This requires us to reference disciplines such as Information Systems (my home discipline), Business and Management, as well as Computer Science and Education.
Last year I was the commissioning editor, facilitating a Special Issue of ALT-J edited by 3 significant figures in education and you can see the articles here  
http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet26/ajet26.html.
You could say that the articles mainly cover additive change but that issue and the whole wealth of research into transforming institutions within a huge business and societal sector like education is a huge challenge.  I agree, we need to broaden our thought (and read around), but also ‘go canny’ as they say in Scotland.  Whatever the future will be, we are unlikely to predict it with accuracy, and will need to nudge our visions along the way.

We at ALT-J are experiencing change, with our name having changed from what sounds a bit like a keyboard shortcut to ‘Research in Learning Technology’, and Research in Learning Technology moving to Open Access publication (without author charges!) from January 2012.  This has been a process of change, with reflection, consideration of options along the way, including publishing back issues in ALT Repository (within copyright agreement) see http://www.alt.ac.uk/publications-and-resources/publications/alt-journal-research-learning-technology