digital literacy

Technology and the student journey: introducing phase two of LSE 2020

Written by Emma Wilson (@MindfulEm), Research and Evaluation Graduate Intern for LTI.

This blog post is one in a series of articles that will catalogue the process of, and findings from, phase two of our student-centred project, LSE 2020.

About LSE 2020

Launched in 2016, the LSE 2020 project seeks to discuss, debate and engage with students about what teaching and learning with technology could look like at LSE in 2020. Phase one used a multi-methodological approach that began to uncover the views, experiences and expectations of students. Building upon this work, phase two aims to look more closely at how students use specific pieces of technology in their personal, educational and working lives. From smartphones to iPads, phase two aims to fully investigate the relationship of technology as it integrates itself into all aspects of a student’s journey. By better understanding how students currently view and use technology, future policy can be guided by the voice of the student.

As a recent MSc graduate at LSE, I have experienced first-hand the important role of technology in teaching and learning. Having undertaken an undergraduate degree in 2010-2013, I have already seen how much has changed in a relatively short period of time. This project provided an exciting opportunity to gain a better understanding into how today’s students navigate our technology-rich world, and the beliefs and values in which they hold around its use.

What have we done so far? 

LSE 2020 places the student voice at its heart and several interesting findings have been uncovered so far. Data collection has involved interviews around campus with 88 studentsan interactive workshop and an online survey which has collected the views of over 350 students. So far, three short videos have been developed and a report is due for release later this year. We have presented early findings to delegates at the Change Agents’ Network (CAN) Conference 2017; the PowerPoint presentation can be found here.

Finally, we are going to work with two filmmakers in designing a creative interpretation of the findings that will truly document what it is like to be a student living in the digital age.

What are students telling us about their use of technology..?

We have divided our research findings into three categories:

  1. Digital Ownership, Collaboration, Communication and Usage
  2. Digital Wellbeing and Identity
  3. Digital Literacy

The following videos provide an initial insight into some of the views held by those students who took part in the 88 interviews around campus.

Ultimately, technology is not going to disappear any time soon. Rather than resisting the changing landscape in which we live, study and work, it is an exciting opportunity to embrace the many opportunities that technology affords us in teaching and learning. It is hoped that LSE 2020 will bring to light an insight into students of today, and we can continue to have these conversations in years to come.

Further analysis, theories and conclusions will be presented in future blog posts. Stay tuned for our next blog post, where we will begin to look at the emerging findings in more detail and discuss what this will mean for Higher Education.

May 12th, 2017|innovation, LSE 2020, Projects, Social Media, Surveys|Comments Off on Technology and the student journey: introducing phase two of LSE 2020|

Research in the age of Wikipedia

Copyright and Digital literacy advisor Jane Secker reports live from Prague on her recent work on information and digital literacy.

I’m really excited to be prejane-in-praguesenting at the European Conference on Information Literacy which this year is being held in Prague from 10th -14th October. This is the fourth conference and I’ve been lucky enough to attend every year since the conference started in 2013 in Istanbul. I went to Dubrovnik in 2014, Tallinn in 2015 and this year I am in Prague. The focus of the conference is information literacy, and many papers address issues related to digital literacy as well. It’s a European conference but in fact people come from all over the world, so it’s a fantastic place to get a global perspective on the work I do at LSE to support staff and students develop their digital literacy. The conference also has a strong link with the work I do to provide support and education in copyright matters. This year there are nearly 300 delegates from over 50 countries with just 19 from the UK. The conference theme is about information literacy in the inclusive society and we’ve had keynotes from Tara Brabazon and Jan Van Dijk.

I am presenting twice at the conference, firstly in a panel session that was held on Monday, based on outreach and advocacy work I do as Chair of the CILIP Information Literacy Group (ILG). My co-presenters were Sharon Wagg from the Tinder Foundation, who are a charity who work to promote digital inclusion, and Stephane Goldstein, who as well as being a freelance consultant, is the Advocacy and Outreach Officer for the ILG. In our panel we discussed some recent collaborations between librarians in academic sector with those in public libraries, to share their experiences of helping to develop digital literacies and promote digital inclusion. The TeachMeet events ILG and Tinder Foundation organised earlier in the year were a great way that academic and public librarians could share ideas and experience. I was delighted that two colleagues from LSE Library, Andra Fry and Sonia Gomes, attended one of these events in February to share our experiences from the Student Ambassadors for Digital Literacy (SADL) programme we were running for three years, to support LSE undergraduates.  The panel discussion encouraged participants to share any digital inclusion initiatives they were involved in around the world.  We also discussed what made these collaborations successful and why there might be problems and challenges working in this space. Sharon highlighted the Tinder Foundation’s work with libraries through their digital inclusion fund and it was inspiring to hear about work to support the most vulnerable in society, such as the elderly, job seekers and refugees develop basic and more advanced digital skills.

ECIL is also the spiritual home of copyright literacy, as this was where I first heard about the work of Tania Todorova and her colleagues to survey librarians on a country basis about their knowledge of copyright and requirements for education in this field. This was back in 2014 in Dubrovnik and last year Chris Morrison from the University of Kent and I presented the UK survey results in Tallinn. This year I’m returning to present our latest research, exploring the experiences of UK librarians of copyright, using a research method used in education and information literacy called phenomenography. It’s still early days – we carried out 3 focus groups in higher education and have been juggling work and some pretty intensive data analysis. As neither of us had used phenomenography before we are grateful to the help and advice we received from Emma Coonan and Lauren Smith, as well as several very useful articles they pointed us to. I’m sharing our slides from the ECIL presentation which I delivered on Tuesday morning. It has also been great to catch up with Tania, Serap, Joumana and several of the people who undertook the copyright literacy survey in their own country. Part of what motivated Chris and I to do this research was to understand the fear and anxiety that copyright can create, to look at why it’s a topic many in higher education shy away from learning more about, and use this data to better inform how we develop copyright education. I was struck once again by how important it is to get an international perspective on the work we do, and to see in many cases there are so many things we can learn from others experiences and so much that unites us in our work.

The research and collaboration with Chris has informed my thinking about the best way to provide support for others with copyright queries at LSE. For example, I now use a Copyright Card Game in my workshops, which are a fun and engaging way to learn about copyright. However, being seen as ‘the copyright expert’ can be quite a lonely place, and for me it is important that everyone learns a bit about copyright. This is partly what has motivated me to set up a Copyright Community of Practice at LSE (admittedly I did borrow this idea from Chris who set one up at Kent over the summer). The next session is going to be on the 4th November and it is open to any member of staff at LSE! Meanwhile I will enjoy a few more days in beautiful Prague and return to LSE full of more ideas and possibilities to enhance the support that we provide!

 

Are you interested in developing students digital and information literacies on your courses?  Jane is co-running a workshop with TLC and the library on Thursday 20 October 14:00-15:30

 

information-literacy-by-ewa-rozkosz-on-flickr

Using good practice and examples from the LSE and elsewhere, this session will focus on how to integrate digital and information literacies into the courses and programmes that you teach.

Book a place via the training and develop system:
https://apps.lse.ac.uk/training-system/userBooking/course/7591852

See our website for more information and guides on digital and information literacy

How at home are you online?

How do you use digital tools? Are you constantly online and using social media or management tools to record your every action, or do you just dip in and out of online resources using them as and when you need?

Visitor by Bill Smith on Flickr

 

LSE students who have recently taken part in the Students Ambassadors for Digital Literacy project were asked to map their digital footprint to find out more about how they fitted on the Digital Visitors and Residents model (V&R).

 

 

 

Sofa

The students found significant difference in their use of institutional tools, such as Moodle, LSEforYou, LSE email and their library accounts and personal tools such as Google, Skype and Dropbox.

The exercise encouraged students to think about the overlap with these tools and perhaps how they could utilise them more effectively.

 

“Drawing a pair of axis, one ranging from Visitor to Resident and the other outlining the nature- Personal or Institutional, we populated the graph with various tools- social media, organisational, entertainment and fitness- from all realms of our being and analysing where we stand for each of them. This method of analysis offers a refreshing way of looking at digital engagement- capturing both the extent and the nature. It allows for subjective interpretation of each tool and hence is not limited by strict definitions. For example, I could put in Microsoft OneNote which I exclusively use for work related documentation.”

Simran map
However, it may still be too simplistic since it does not account for overlaps well and does not factor in the nature of some tools that are only meant for visitor purposes- eg Moodle. No tool could be on two extremes of a dimension without sketching it in twice- making the chart less succinct. Furthermore, there are other characteristics of engagement that could be factored in with more dimensions: regulated use, open source, within the personal space (entertainment or personal development). These are things we take as banalities and its not until we stop, think and categorise that we can alter and optimise our use of these tools and this would be the biggest takeaway for me from the task”

Simran Masand

 

“This process was stimulating as it was good to take a step back from our normal online activities and to understand the extent to which we personally interact with these services.  By creating the map, it was significant for me as I noted how we do not always need to act either as a “Visitor” or “Resident”, but rather, this model should be viewed as a continuum. For instance, in my map, I noted how Facebook, even as used as a residential tool, both was within the personal and institutional category due to the fact that I have joined LSE specific groups whilst also having a personal interaction with it.

Alex map

One point that I came away with from this task was the questioning the extent to which it is possible to be off the scale on the map (i.e. is it possible to be anonymous). However, thinking about this, even for users who may not login to services at all, they will still be classed as a “Visitor” on this model. Therefore, perhaps it is not possible to be completely anonymous whilst we are using online services.”

Alex D’Arcy

Most of the maps showed that students were more likely to act in a visitor mode when accessing institutional tools and behave as residents when using tools to manage their personal lives.  This indicates something about how students are engaging and learning at the LSE but also how these tools are presented to them by the School.  There is a wider debate about the place of personal tools such as social media in teaching, but perhaps some of the institutional tools are not being used to their full potential.  For example Simran mentions in her post that Moodle is “only meant for visitor purposes” yet in fact Moodle is designed using social constructionist pedagogy with the idea that learning is a collaborative cultural event which would encourage ‘resident’ use.  Moodle supports the use of discussion forums, peer assessment and feedback, collaborative writing, group submissions, anonymous Q&A, Wiki’s, blogs, and many more activities.  If designed well a Moodle course can encourage an online community which supports and extends beyond face to face work carried out in the classroom.

The maps raise several questions about how we separate out our behaviours and identities online.  LSE students appeared to leaving a large digital footprint with their use of external applications in their personal life but did not seem as comfortable in creating a professional persona on apps like Linked In or Twitter.  One of the aims of the SADL project is to work with students in order to discuss strategies to build a positive online presence and expand their networks.  Workshops involve sharing and testing online tools to see how they can be adapted from personal use to manage their academic work.

The student blogs about the workshop and more information about the SADL project can be found on the SADL blog.

Weekly Roundup in Education Technology: Action Games and Learning, Openwashing and more

Open data or openwashing? – Audrey Watters

Open data is undoubtedly a hot topic, raising issues that go beyond just technology and stretch to education, privacy, human rights, transparency and many other topics. Our event with Marieke Guy today (livestream available; see also our Q&A on open data) will be touching upon some of the relevant issues when discussing open data in education.

In a timely intervention, Audrey Watters criticises the ambiguity attached to the word “open” and highlights the frequent abuse of this ambiguity for business purposes (“openwashing”):

We use “open” as though it is free of ideology, ignoring how much “openness,” particularly as it’s used by technologists, is closely intertwined with “meritocracy” — this notion, a false one, that “open” wipes away inequalities, institutions, biases, history, that “open” “levels the playing field.”

If we believe in equality, if we believe in participatory democracy and participatory culture, if we believe in people and progressive social change, if we believe in sustainability in all its environmental and economic and psychological manifestations, then we need to do better than slap that adjective “open” onto our projects and act as though that’s sufficient or — and this is hard, I know — even sound.

Is it time to start the debate about what we mean by “open” with the larger picture in mind?

Mapping Change: Case Studies on Technology Enhanced Learning – UCISA

This report (the full version of which is available here) presents case studies of institutional approaches towards technology enhanced learning across the United Kingdom. One of the themes emerging is the increasing importance of assessment with technology; an area that we will be covering in more detail on this blog in the weeks to come. Rather than just streamlining procedures and reducing administrative efforts, technology can support new pedagogic approaches and assist in improving the quality of assessment significantly. For a first glimpse into the efforts undertaken by LSE in this field have a look at our summary on LTI’s latest Show&Tell on assessment with technology.

Innovating Pedagogy 2014 – Open University

This year’s report by the Open University highlights ten trends in education for many of which technology is either an integral aspect or can enhance the learning experience. Whether learning through storytelling, massive open social learning (post the MOOC-hype), flipped classroom or any of the other trends address, the report makes for interesting reading and offers plenty of topics for further discussion and analysis.

Information and digital literacy: It’s not all about technology – CILIP Information Literacy Group

Responding to the interim report on “Digital Skills for Tomorrow’s World” by the UK Digital Skills Taskforce, LTI’s Jane Secker and Stephane Goldstein from InformAll pose a perhaps somewhat unexpected criticism. While generally praising the report and its intention, they criticise it for focusing too heavily on technological skills:

We feel that this suggests too narrow an approach to the relationship that individuals, in a knowledge-based society and economy, need to develop with information. 

Instead, they argue for a broader definition of digital and information literacies, which encompasses the skills needed to survive in the digital world:

Equipping people with the knowledge, understanding, skills and confidence that they need to search for, discover, access, retrieve, sift, interpret, analyse, manage, create, communicate and preserve ever-increasing volumes of information, whether digital, printed or oral

Headshot: Action video games and learning – Gizmag

Few of us would think of action video games as improving our learning. Perhaps even too few of us? This recent study suggests a link between action games and the development of learning capabilities. It will be interesting to observe when (and if) education seizes the potential offered by games for both learning and learning capabilities on a larger scale.

* Education technology is rapidly moving, sometimes divisive and always interesting, especially to us working in Higher Education. Every week, we share and comment upon a selection of interesting articles, posts and websites relating to education and technology we stumbled upon during the week. Do comment, recommend and share!

November 26th, 2014|innovation, Roundup, TEL Trends|Comments Off on Weekly Roundup in Education Technology: Action Games and Learning, Openwashing and more|

Watch Josie Fraser’s NetworkED seminar online

A big thanks to all of those that joined us for our NetworkED seminar with Josie Fraser, whether in person or online. For those of you who missed out or would like to revisit some of her points we are happy to provide a recording of her talk below:


LTI NetworkED Seminar Series – Josie Fraser ‘Digital Literacy in Practice: Making Change Happen’

JosieFraserTitle

Josie Fraser spoke about her experiences of working on the Digi Lit project.
As the 10th largest city in the UK, Leicester is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Europe, with huge amounts of children living in relative poverty.  Josie has had to deal with issues of access and what it means to provide education that is available for all and works for everyone in the community.  Set up as a partnership between the council, De Montford University and 23 secondary schools the Digi Lit project is an attempt to work within existing power structures while making sure that learners are not being left out.

November 6th, 2014|Announcements, NetworkED|Comments Off on Watch Josie Fraser’s NetworkED seminar online|

LTI NetworkED seminar series – Josie Fraser 22/10/14

LTI NetworkED Seminar series
Josie Fraser ‘Digital Literacy in Practice: Making Change Happen’
Wednesday 22 October 5:00pm – 7:00pm, NAB2.06

JosieFraserTitle

Josie Fraser will be talking about her experiences of working on the Digi Lit project.
As the 10th largest city in the UK Leicester is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Europe, with huge amounts of children living in relative poverty.  Josie has had to deal with issues of access and what it means to provide education that is available for all and works for everyone in the community.  Set up as a partnership between the council, De Montford University and 23 secondary schools the Digi Lit project is an attempt to work within existing power structures while making sure that learners are not being left out.

See our events page for more details: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lti/lti-events/

The event is free to attend and places can be reserved on the staff via the training and development system:  https://apps.lse.ac.uk/training-system/userBooking/course/7419982

The seminar series is open to all at LSE, but will also be live streamed to enable an audience from around the world to listen to the talk and to participate using a variety of technologies.  To view the live stream and for more details about the NetworkED events go to the LTI website: http://lti.lse.ac.uk/events/networkED-seminar-series-18.php

October 20th, 2014|Announcements, Events & Workshops (LTI), NetworkED, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off on LTI NetworkED seminar series – Josie Fraser 22/10/14|

Copyright briefing: report from event

I attended the CILIP Executive Briefing on copyright this week to get a heads up on the proposed changes to copyright exceptions that we hope will come into force on 1st June 2014. If you would like to read the longer report on my blog, you can find out more about the day. CLT will ensure that staff are made aware of the changes and how they might affect copying they do for private study and research, for teaching and other purposes. However the Statutory Instruments and guidance is available on the Intellectual Property Office’s website.

April 3rd, 2014|copyright|Comments Off on Copyright briefing: report from event|

The LSE SADL Project is now recruiting!

Digital and Information literacies are knowing how to find, evaluate, use and manage information using digital technology appropriately. They are part of lifelong learning and an important skill for all students.The Student Ambassadors for Digital Literacy project is looking at how we can best embed these skills into undergraduate teaching. We are look for plugged-in, enthusiastic undergraduates studying in the Department of Statistics and Social Policy to help develop digital and information literacy skills relevant to their courses, and tell us how we can better embed digital literacies into undergraduate teaching at the LSE.

In return, students will receive training for skills such as writing for blogs, maintaining a social media presence and managing research resources; skills which will be vital in their future careers. Participation in this project will be recognised in students’ LSE Personal Development Aide Memoir (PDAM), and students will also receive vouchers to spend online.

The deadline for applications is 27 November (Friday Week 8). For more information, please visit http://lsesadl.wordpress.com, follow the project on Twitter @LSESADL, or email Arun Karnad at a.r.karnad@lse.ac.uk.

If you think you can be the face of digital literacy, apply now!

November 14th, 2013|Uncategorized|Comments Off on The LSE SADL Project is now recruiting!|

Embedding Digital and Information Literacy in Undergraduate Teaching report

The latest piece of research by CLT on Embedding Digital and Information Literacy in Undergraduate Teaching compared strategies being used by three projects that are part of the JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme and the opportunities and threats for adopting some of these strategies as part of the work to embed the ANCIL framework into undergraduate teaching.

The report recommends a dual approach for Information Literacy and Digital Literacy skills to be successfully embedded into undergraduate teaching at the LSE. As explored in the CASCADE programme, student change agents provide contextualised, peer-to-peer support, but also important feedback on the kinds of issues faced by students, and the tools and technologies being used to overcome them and gain IL skills.

The ‘top down’ approach advocated by McGuinness (2007) is also needed to complement and support change agents. There needs to be increasing communication between academic faculty, academic support staff and librarians to better understand each others roles and remits, and find areas for effective collaboration.

We have already starting to explore some of the recommendations of this report, and have got the ball rolling through the ‘Student Ambassadors for Digital Literacy project’ (SADL), which will be looking at the role of student ambassadors to support digital literacies, and provide vital feedback to the project team on the embedded approach.

The report is now available via LSE Research Online.

References:

McGuinness, C. (2007). Exploring Strategies for Integrated Information Literacy: From “ Academic Champions ” to Institution-Wide Change. Communications in Information Literacy, 1(1), 26–38. Retrieved from http://www.comminfolit.org/index.php?journal=cil&page=article&op=view&path[]=Spring2007AR3&path[]=14. Accessed 26 July 2013.

July 26th, 2013|Reports & Papers, Research Skills, Teaching & Learning|Comments Off on Embedding Digital and Information Literacy in Undergraduate Teaching report|