Group items tagged

digital literacy - which she defines as "those capabilities that equip an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society"

While it was still around, Becta defined digital literacy as  “…the skills, knowledge and understanding learners need to participate fully and safely in our increasingly digital world. 

For me, the main characteristics of the many of the available definitions of digital literacy are that: it supports and helps develop traditional literacies – it isn’t about the use of technology for it’s own sake or ICT as an isolated practice it's a life long practice – developing and continuing to maintain skills in the context of continual development of technologies and practices it's about skills and competencies, and critical reflection on how these skills and competencies are applied it's about social engagement – collaboration, communication, and creation within social contexts

The findings are troubling. College students think of information seeking as a rote process and tend to use the same small set of information resources no matter what question they have: The primary sources they use for course work are course readings and Google. They rely on professors to be "research coaches" for identifying additional sources. They use Google and Wikipedia for research about everyday life topics. They tend not to use library services that require interacting with librarians.

The Association of American Colleges and Universities identified information literacy as one of the essential learning outcomes that prepare students for 21st century challenges.2 The"2010 Horizon Report," a collaboration between the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative and the New Media Consortium, indicated that the need for training in the related digital media literacy is a critical challenge in education for the next five years. The Council for Independent Colleges offers annual workshops for chief academic officers, librarians, and faculty on integrating information literacy at their campuses.3

Peer evaluation:  You must do your assignments satisfactorily to fulfill your contract.   Each week, two or three students will work as a peer group in charge of leading our joint education for two or three classes.  During that unit, the peer leaders will assign readings as well as writing or multimedia assignments--and they will be charged with determining if each student has satisfactorily completed the assignment.   They will be charged with providing written feedback on all assignments.  Their goal will be to ensure that each student satisfactorily completes the assignment and they will work with each student to make sure they succeed.

How to Crowdsource Grading, I described this method: http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/how-crowdsource-grading

SYLLABUS We will be co-creating a syllabus in this course.  Professor Davidson will begin, there will be several special guests or other events, but the remainder of the course content will be assigned by peer-leaders charged with offering a challenging, creative, informative, inspiring, participatory educational experience (No Talking Heads Please!) for the class.   Peer-led classes might that involve reading/seeing/listening to/experiencing imaginative works (including scientific papers,) attending lectures, visiting art museums and going to concerts together, or visiting businesses and community organizations to understand how these literacies are changing.  I will get us started with some readings and a museum visit and a collaborative public wiki-based writing assignment.   We have a number of exciting visitors coming this term.   The rest of the syllabus will be filled out by the peer leaders and will evolve over the course.

And every year, I become more and more convinced that having first-year students use peer-reviewed literature in their research is a terrible idea that takes the focus away from what is important for them to learn.

Expecting a first-year student to be able to grasp literary criticism and science articles written for other PhD’s seems crazy to me.

It becomes more about finding an article that is at least somewhat related to their topic than finding good evidence for their argument.

In simple terms students personal use of the internet is generally very effective for their education but they are nervous that their practices are not valid and don’t reveal them to their tutors.

The learning black market exists largely in the Personal area of the map. Our data from the Transitional education-stage (Late stage secondary school + first year undergraduate) is indicating that learning activity in this area has two main elements

I suspect that Facebook IM is used extensively for homework as it’s convenient and immediate. It’s also private and a very low risk way of collaborating with a fellow student.

Early last month Megan posted about recent research connecting academic libraries and student achievement. She mentioned that there are multiple projects in the U.S. currently underway to correlate library use and GPA, and I have results from just such a project to share with you all!

In a recently completed study at University of Wyoming I discovered a positive correlation between upper-division library instruction and higher GPA at graduation (by upper-division, I mean post-first-year). This is based on an analysis of 4,489 transcripts of graduating seniors at the University of Wyoming, and the transcript analysis was supplemented by focus groups with graduating seniors

Look for the article in the March or June 2012 issue of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice. Here’s the citation: Bowles-Terry, M. (2012). Library instruction and academic success: A mixed-methods assessment of a library instruction program. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice.

Each of the CIL tests has an online tutorial and a practice test so you can really test your CIL skills before taking the actual tests. Some students prefer to just come take the tests, and if they don't pass, they can see in which areas they did poorly, so they know what they need to study on the tutorials. You can also come in to one of our Tuesday or Thursday night Short Courses and have a CIL Technician review one of the tutorials with you.

Faculty (post-instruction and end of term) and student survey instruments are available online.

An important deliverable of this project is that it creates an lasting, annualized archive of the cumulative efforts, learning objects, and outcomes related to a given instruction program on both the course and aggregate level

Portfolio projects of this nature also streamline group efforts and produce ready programmatic evidence of instructional effectiveness and outcomes, crucial to the processes of accreditation, review, and value demonstration