How to promote digital literacies among faculty

In the recently published NMC Horizon Project Regional Analysis, Technology Outlook for Australian Tertiary Education 2013-18, it stated (p.3) that (shock, horror) there is a need for more faculty training to improve digital media literacy ‘before being asked to teach, and for more professional development opportunities once in the profession’. More significantly, though, the report points out that:

While a lack of adequate training opportunities is a part of the challenge, ultimately a change in the mind sets of disciplines and individual faculty will be required, along with cultural shifts within institutions, before emerging tools and technologies are routinely adopted and implemented as a matter of course.

One way of changing mindsets is for academics to to find some intrinsic motivation to leverage these emerging technologies. As Belshaw argues (slide 28), the trick is to identify an area where important issues overlap with personal interest. In other words, academics will upskill because they want to rather than because they have to. In these circumstances, the efficacy of preservice training/ professional development is likely to be enhanced.

Only after faculty have become au fait with the digital literacies (slides 24-27) and what they bring to their own personal learning environment (PLE), will they be able to respond to the increasing demand for personalised learning from their students. As the Horizon report notes (p.4):

More than ever, students are using ICT and new always-connected mobiles outside of the classroom to explore subjects that personally interest them. Institutions need to leverage and promote these informal learning experiences while integrating them with on-campus learning.

This is why it is important for institutional learning management systems (LMSs) to become more open and accommodate the PLEs of learners (slide 61).

 

The Digitally Connected Worker

Introverts: Why their time has come

I heard about this TED talk, and the first thought that came into my head was this (thanks to @shluthra) and I realised I didn’t have anything more to add!

I do have an anecdote, though, dating back to 2003 when @joannejacobs and me tried out a group blog for the first time with an MBA class (we published a paper on the subject in AJET the following year). In this class, one individual developed quite a following because of the high quality of their posts. The person in question had a Chinese name and I’m ashamed to say that — at this time — I did not know if they were male or female. It was quite a large class, and it only ran for six weeks, so I didn’t get to put a face to everybody’s name. At the end of the term, the mystery blogger — a mainland Chinese woman — stayed behind at the end of the last class to personally thank me for allowing her to participate! She was a very intelligent individual who had not been game enough enter into the verbal jousting with the group of extrovert Australian males that had tended to dominate proceeedings during in-class discussions.

The lesson I learnt from this is that, online, everyone has an equally loud voice. Importantly, people get to contribute who might otherwise not, and others in the group benefit considerably from their insights.

The Indian International University 2017: A Retrospective

The open education movement: What does it mean for your institution?

Image source: thechronicleherald.ca

I came across a nice post (via @catspyjamasnz) today that gathers together some of the themes I have been blogging about in recent weeks. Roland Sussex succinctly defines ‘open education’ and then goes on to contextualise what this now means in the wake of the new models of delivery that have been attracting a lot of attention of late. He refers, for example, to the founding of Udacity following the successful trial of a course in artificial intelligence delivered completely free online:

The course attracted 160,000 enrolments (roughly the total enrolment of the UK Open University) from 190 countries, and 23,000 completed it. It provided frequent feedback and tests, with two examinations (mid-semester and end-semester), all handled by software. Students who passed the course received a letter of completion. And all this was totally cost-free to the student.

The students also provided creative input. They established two large Facebook pages for course discussion and interaction, and nearly 2,000 of them translated the course materials into 44 languages. And the solutions to the very frequent quizzes, now on Youtube, provided feedback and commentary. The course designers implemented a version of problem-based learning and made it work online.

As Sussex goes on to point out, Udacity is an extension of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), where a university course is made available online to anyone free of charge, but only the paying students get feedback on assessment and certification.

The key question is whether a point will be reached where the monopoly power of formal education will be broken up because the market value of a course completed with the likes of Udacity will be equal (or close) to the value of a traditionally certified programme. As outrageous as this might sound to some, the longer educational institutions continue to resist change, the more likely it is that their service will become increasingly less valuable.

At the very least, I anticipate that some institutions will start reconsidering their business models along the lines of a ‘study now, pay later’ approach, offering MOOCs with fees being paid at the end of the course by students wishing to exercise the option of certification (assuming they believe it constitutes value for money).

The MITs of this world can continue to potter around experimenting without worrying too much about how it might impact on their ‘core business’. The same cannot be said, however, for those institutions facing competitive pressure because of funding cuts, the economic downturn, and dissatisfied clients.