Digital Literacy in my Work

I am not sure that I support the premise that these are 8 “essential” skills required to be a successful student in higher education in the digital age.  For a start, the source article was considering the skills that students of digital marketing .  To extrapolate that the same skills are “essential” for all students in higher education strikes me more as cheer leading than academically sound thought.

I can fully understand how a passion for digital literacy may be essential for a student who is studying digital marketing.  In the same way that a passion for cars might help if you want to work in Formula 1.  But I am less certain that the same passion is required for all disciplines.  I also didn’t really buy what was written about accountability and the bigger picture.  Mainly because I couldn’t find that it actually said anything.  At all.

I did find the video of Howard Rheingold interesting.  He talks about the importance of literacy which is the ability to communicate with others.   I think some of the factors  he lists (such as collaboration) are true in whatever forum we are working in, but the skill set required is different.  In the project my students were completing I would say the focus was on developing their technological participation, communication and collaboration skills.

I think the higher level skills such as critical consumption (Rheingold’s phrase) is unrealistic for Year 1 students learning in a second language.  And this leads me on to how to go about preventing plagiarism and “proper academic practise” (I hate that phrase).

The whole point about plagiarism is that in universities years ago it was absolutely vital to cite your sources for 2 separate reasons.  Firstly in scientific research, it would be very important to be able to verify where your data came from so that facts could be checked and theories tested (think of the MMR vaccine trials in the UK which were subsequently found to be based on tainted research).  In other disciplines citing was important so that you could demonstrate the ideas as being your own.

Today,  most teachers I come into contact with are concerned about 2 separate types of plagiarism.  Firstly, straightforward copying from the internet. But with tools like safe assign and turn it in available, that should be more difficult.  Additionally, if a student can complete any project using Wikipedia as a main referencing source, the teacher is doing something wrong.  In the economics project my students completed they were required to meet with a local business manager and apply basic economic principles to that business.  Obviously they could obtain information about the Law of Demand from the internet but they could not obtain information about that businesses cost curves without speaking to the business manager.

 The second most common form of plagiarism is where a student relies on another student to completed  the project but gets the grades for it.  Again, where this happens it is the fault of whoever constructed the assessment tool.  If 1 person could complete a project set for 4 people, then why set it for 4?  Unless you are grading them for collaboration.  But that is not usually one of the Learning Outcomes.  How we handled this in economics was that 30% of the grade came from the project.  But only 10% came from the final written report.  The other 20% came from the student’s own individual performance in an oral Q&A session based on drafts of the project.  This proved to be an excellent way of identifying the students that had worked on the project and understood it and the students who had taken a back seat.

Teaching 21st centruy learners

In my class this semester students were tasked with completing a project understanding how economic principles apply for a small business.  Technology enables them to complete this project in a much more authentic way.  From their ability to interact and receive information from the small business man, to watching a range of short videos explaining Price Elasticity of Demand, which they can watch over and over until they get it, technology can help them understand things more deeply.   

I have to say write off the bat that I got really irritated reading the article by Rodgers et al.  To me it seemed to be full of generalisations and opinion dressed up as fact.  For example, it claims that the 21^st century learner has short attention span because of multi tasking.  Short compared to what?  What evidence is there that learners from previous generations had a longer attention span?  My son and daughter (like countless millions of children of the current generation read all 7 of the Harry Potter books.  My generation didn’t show that sort of commitment to reading!  The writers also state that today’s learners prefer acronyms instead of text.  That’s like saying journalists prefer shorthand. It also states that we process more information in 24 hours than the average person 500 years ago would process in a lifetime.  I have absolutely no idea what that means. 

I also disagree fundamentally with the statement that in the past the primary challenge facing students was to “absorb a vast array of specific information”   I do not know what institutions the authors attended but that was not my experience 30 years ago.

But the real reason I didn’t like this article was that in its conclusions it focusses on the changes need in course design (how to learn) rather than considering if new technology should change what we expect students to show they can do. And that is the big question, which cannot be answered at faculty level.  That’s institutional and governmental.