Last week I attended a joint QAA / Jisc event at the University of Southampton about embedding digital literacies in higher education. It was a valuable event that offered plenty of opportunities to hear from learning and teaching experts, and network with colleagues from other UK HEIs.
The QAA hosted the event and kicked it off with a short introduction to parts of the The Quality Code that relate to digital literacies. They asked some thought provoking questions about how organisations support and lead the way in the development of student and staff digital literacies. How are they assessed? Are teaching staff equipped enough in their knowledge and skills to be confident in their use of technology in their teaching.
These are all questions that the Educational Technology team can help to answer. One of our main responsibilities and interests lay in researching good practice in these areas, and coming up with ways that Falmouth can tackle answering these questions. This event was part of that research; I heard case studies from Brighton, Southampton, Oxford Brookes and Trinity Laban about how they are promoting digital literacies at their institutions.
Mark touched on the Jisc digital capabilities project in his Lens on… series post about digital literacies the other week, and I also heard from Helen Beetham at this event about Jisc’s work. Helen spoke about how, first of all, they are trying to move away from the term ‘literacies’ towards ‘capabilities’ and I like that they’re doing this. It is more representative of what is being achieved through building digital skills. The project is running 2014-2016.
So far they have built a framework consisting of 6 elements that describe the skills needed by staff in a range of academic, administrative and professional roles. It is intended to provide a structure to help users understand what they’re aiming for, and the types of tools that can used or developed to support them.
Digital Capability Framework, Jisc
The case studies I then heard about helped to put the framework into context for me throughout the day.
First of all, we heard from Fiona Handley about the University of Brighton’s impressive Digital Literacies Framework which was built as a response to an institutional goal relating to ‘digital transformation’ in 2012 and has continually evolved since. It has been developed for staff and students at Brighton to guide them through a series of items on which they can reflect; including research, communication and collaboration, administration and learning and teaching specific skills. It is included as part of their PGCHE programme.
We then heard from Fiona Harvey from University of Southampton about the iChamps, or DigiChamps, project at Southampton. A network of multidisciplinary students from Undergraduates to Postgraduates who work with all staff, including academics at the University on initiatives relating to developing digital skills. They are guided and supported by a network of Student Champions who oversee how they work, and ensure academic rigour. Students can put themselves forward to become an iChamp, and staff can choose who they work with. iChamps build up a portfolio of evidence through their work with staff and can achieve digital badges to evidence their achievement through the iChamp scheme.
Next up was George Roberts from Oxford Brookes who gave an enlightening overview of their approach to developing digital literacies. They have combined Digital and Information Literacy skills into the Brookes Taxonomy of Digital and Information Literacies. Within this taxonomy there are three digital and three information literacy skills; some of which are centred around being confident in navigating your way around technology, and your engagement in activities involving digital tools for reflection, recording learning and collaborating. And some of which are centred around building confidence in your ability to choose appropriate actions and strategies to obtain information, assessing if it is actually what you’re looking for, and applying and/or communicating it effectively.
And last but not least Louise Jackson from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance gave us an overview of how the Arts focused institution has taken an effective approach to embedding digital literacies outside of the creative space, but maintained a more traditional approach within the studio. Dance students have been using blogs to reflect on their work and plan using post-its and transferring that to digital format. It sounds like it would be duplicating, but they find it effective. Louise described their approach as building trust through communities of practice with the students:
“Embodied experience of writing is different to digital upload: this matters to dance students”
Staff have been encouraged to develop their skills through the attainment of HEA fellowship and skills development is aligned to the UKPSF.
There was a discussion session at the end of the day and we talked about the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). I don’t think anyone would disagree with me when I say that the introduction of the TEF will impact the expectations that students and anyone else that should have an opinion will be arriving with. So it’s time to start thinking about how that impacts on our own skills and how they can be developed and/or re-purposed to create excellent learning experiences for the students… amongst other things.
Overall the day was a valuable learning experience, and it was great to see some old and new faces. I have come away from it with some ideas for Falmouth, so if you’re interested in getting involved in your own, your team’s or department’s development of digital skill/literacies/capabilities then do get in touch.
Educational Technology were recently invited to host a session as part of the Lunch and Talk series. In this session we discussed current initiatives we are working on as well as a brief summary of the last academic year.
We finished the session with a mapping activity. We wanted to get participants thinking about learning technology from different perspectives and using post-it’s asked them to make contributions to these areas. We included examples of the types of comments we’d like to see to give an idea.
We asked all to map the following:
Experience – Your experiences of teaching and technology, within Falmouth and external to it. Courses you’ve attended, things you’ve seen implemented or discussed at conferences.
Example: I’ve seen lists of tweets at HEA conference and I’d like to use it. Tagboard
Expectation – Your expectations on the students for the ways they should be using technology, i/e – assessment methods, resources accessed. Students expectations, what technologies do you feel they expect to be using at University.
Example: Many of my students have mobiles, I’d like to help them utilise them. Digital Student project.
CPD – What opportunities are out there for supporting use of learning technologies, what would you like to have made available for you.
Example: I find it difficult to attend scheduled sessions, but I’d like to broaden my skill-set. Video resources/10 min CPD.
We had a positive response to the session and would definitely suggest it as a method to gauge staff and student opinions. A selection of the responses include:
Experience:
“Need easier ways of sharing information on Learning Space (VLE) – e.g share button”
“Mixed…different courses use it (VLE) more or less effectively.”
Expectation:
“An assumption that all students are tech savvy”
“That staff are current”
“Face to face contact with academics and peers”
CPD:
“Windows 10 – students are arriving with laptops with this on”
“How to create interactive flowcharts”
Taking these responses into account we can aim to ensure that staff have the resources and tools to meet expectation, experience and CPD demands.
If you would like us to come and run a similar session with your course team, please get in touch.
In this series of articles, the Educational Technology team will be providing an insight into existing practice using technology for learning and teaching at Falmouth University and also at projects being undertaken within the wider HE sector.Our previous articles have looked at Assessment, Feedback and Open Education.
Henry Jenkins describes it as the ability to effectively and critically navigate, evaluate and create information using a range of digital technologies. It requires one “to recognize and use that power, to manipulate and transform digital media, to distribute pervasively, and to easily adapt them to new forms”. One of the best definitions in my opinion comes from Josie Fraser who describes it in terms of function and socio-cultural development:
Digital Literacy = digital tool knowledge + critical thinking + social engagement
Fraser’s work with the DigiLit Leicester project presents an excellent framework of reference for educators in understanding how we support these literacies. It has led to the local council driving forward use of OER and giving express permission to schools and colleges to make use of open materials in the physical and virtual classroom.
From 2011-2013 Jisc ran a project around digital literacies, which built on a Digital Literacy framework developed by Beetham and Sharpe (2010) to describe 7 elements that combine to form our digital literacies (Fig.1). A further ongoing project looks at the digital capabilities our institutions need to scaffold the development of these literacies.
Figure 1 – Seven elements of digital literacies from the JISC Digital Literacy project.
Online, Mozilla continues to encourage people by using an experiential approach to learning, with Teach The Web and Code Club partners volunteering with community groups to teach coding to kids.
At Falmouth, the ET team organises a range of drop in events aimed at sharing practice, trying out new tools and discussing the ever evolving world of Educational Technology. Last year we ran a series of 10 workshops ranging in theme and included a mobile learning speed geek/picnic, where staff got to move around the room discussing ‘mobile first’ design approaches to learning and new apps and technologies in the mobile environment.
We’re always up for doing more of this kind of stuff and talking about developing student literacies within taught courses, so get in touch if you have any thoughts/ideas around the subject.
We have two new members of staff, Adel Gordon and Adam Grice. Adel is a Learning Technologist and is part of the core Falmouth team, and Adam has joined as a Learning Technologist for Exeter.
Adel has moved from Northampton where she worked at the University, also as a Learning Technologist. She looked after the School of Science and Technology and worked closely with the teaching staff to design and enhance teaching with the use of technology. She has particular interests in technology for assessment, mobile, and learning systems integration. She has spent the last couple of weeks or so finding her way around Learning Space and contacting staff in the Schools that she will be the point of contact for at Falmouth. Those being: the School of Architecture, Design & Interiors; the School of Communication Design; the Fashion & Textiles Institute; The Games Academy, and the Business School.
If you’d like to see a list of Adel’s research output so far have a look at her ResearchGate profile.
Adam joins us from University of the Arts London where he worked as a specialist technician (learning and teaching) for learning technologies and as an associate lecturer (PGCHE) teaching design software for a number of access, BA and MA courses. His role focused on supporting students and staff across a range of technology enhanced learning and e learning functions championing blended learning approaches. During his time at UAL he has developed an online resource for technical services information and the Universities video channel and lecture capture platform Replay.arts.ac.uk.
As Steph Comley’s maternity cover Adam will be taking on her responsibilities for supporting Exeter courses based at the Falmouth campus.
Students are now added to their modules on Learning Space automatically. Information is being fed through from SITS (the student information system) to identify students’ modules and add them to their accounts; they will see them listed on the My Modules tab after they login.
What this means:
Students are reliably added to the modules on Learning Space and are no longer required to self-subscribe to see and engage with activities online. It also means that any communication through the modules on Learning Space will be delivered to them as long as they are fully enrolled through SITS.
What this doesn’t mean:
Students will still need to add Course Pages and Technical Resource areas to their accounts by self-subscribing to them.
With increasing pressures on HEI’s to accomodate increasing student numbers and enabling wider access to learning, a fully online or blended delivery is becomming a popular means to manage this.
With reference to modern web design, we take a look at some considerations for appropriate online learning content.
Screen real estate
It’s really important to make content that meets the needs of our learners as quickly and efficiently as possible.
A recent survey suggests that our current cohort of students exist in a “a world that offers them instant access nearly everywhere to nearly the entirety of human knowledge, with incredible opportunities to connect, create and collaborate” and as such any content we produce must get our learners’ attention as quickly as possible, and hold it for as long as possible. We must make important information available up front, leaving lesser or secondary information until later; such as further down the page, or on secondary pages. We can also omit decorative or non-content elements, such as decorative images, allowing students to focus easily on the content that matters to them the most.
Here’s an example of how bookmarking tool Pocket takes article content from a site and re-fromats it without any additional ‘noise’ from the original post.
Writing for the web
We tend to be less comfortable reading online, so it’s important our writing communicates efficiently.
Keep texts short
Keeping word count to a minimum is a good way of increasing reading speeds, which tend to be around 25% slower online. Reduce by half, and then half again.
The guiding voice
Humour and attitude play an important role in information retention. By using our own voice, we can guide learners through our content in a personal and human way to help develop their understanding of the ideas and concepts we are presenting.
Writing in a language the audience understands
Avoid use of “eduspeak”, acronyms or unfamiliar terms when writing learning content. Learning outcomes or assessment criteria should be clear and easy to understand and may need to be translated from institutional lingo to modern language appropriate to the audience.
Scannable content
Around 79% of people scan web pages on the first visit and ascertain whether the content is relevant. By designing content that is easy to scan, we make it easier for learners to pick out, analyse and synthesise relevant information.
Be concise
When writing text, reducing word count by around half is known to increase a user’s ability to scan. You may be able to remove unnecessary words (often adjectives and adverbs) without the text losing meaning.
Scannable layout
A scannable layout can be achieved using properly formatted content, using elements such as headers, bullets and lists.
Headers, given appropriate titles, can aid readability by being informative and acting as a resting place for the eye whilst scanning.
Bullets can be used to clump important ideas together, whilst keeping the word count to a minimum.
Numbered lists can be used where the number of bullet points becomes excessive, aiding readability and information retention.
The online presence for the UK government is a good example of minimal content that is in a language that users understand.
Page titles
Page titles play an important role in the navigation of online content. Provided they are given an informative title, they explain what will be found of the page.
An optimal page title, designed for quick scanning, should include information-carrying terms towards the start, beginning with a word that meets the learner’s immediate needs. Page titles should also be around 40 – 60 characters in length, aiding scanning.
Page titles need not be grammatical sentences, and may read more like advertising slogans drawing people to the content and maximising impact.
Mobile-friendly content
It is important to consider the constraints as well as the affordances of mobile devices to make sure the content we produce is always available to, and consumable by, our learners.
Large and unnecessary images are one of the main culprits for a poor mobile reading experience. Due to slower mobile download speeds, it is important that images be information-carrying and of importance to the user, and optimised to allow them to be downloaded as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Screen size also affects our reading ability online. Secondary material should be linked to as ‘extended reading’ or omitted altogether.
The context of mobile use also means that learners expect content to be instantly available, so ensuring content is concise and scannable means learners can engage at a time and/or place suitable to them.
The process of making our content adaptable will benefit learners using a range of devices; phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, so the benefits outweigh the cost of designing mobile friendly content.
As mentioned, use of images should be minimised due to download speeds, especially on mobile.
Eye tracking studies have shown that images with little or no use are simply ignored by learners; therefore decorative or non-informative images should be omitted from your content. However, learners do want to see images containing important information; a course/module introduction might contain an image that represents the theme and engages the learner in the same way that a Title might.
Avatars or profile pictures are also known to positively affect user behaviour online, as they add a human touch that is often missing in online content. This is particularly relevant to fully online courses, who might make use of Forums for posting content.
Including meta-data, such as an image description within images posted on the web aids accessibility and means those with slower internet connections or who make use of screen readers get useful information about that image.
Video
Like images, internet bandwidth must be considered for use of video. Home based/Off campus learners may be relying on mobile internet speeds to access content and whilst they may be able to view a one minute introduction to the course/module, they may not be able to view an hour long lecture recording or interview.
Video is a good way of giving the learner a sense of personality and to introduce your voice. Avoid “talking heads” and opt for showing movement in video, as this adds to the user experience and gives context. A Screencast may be able to explain a concept much better than presenting it in a lecture and allow learners to follow along at their own pace.
[vimeo 75034342 w=540 h=338]
However, video may be more expensive and time-consuming to produce, compared to other content types, so consider whether another mode of delivery might do the same job. Also, due to the visual nature of video, audio quality is often overlooked, making for a frustrating experience; spoken word may be more difficult to understand and becomes a problem, particularly for those with impaired hearing or non-native speakers. Consider making use of closed-captioning to make the video more accessible.
Audio
Audio is a welcome and often overlooked alternative to text content on screen as it provides a separate channel to the visual information on the page.
Audio can often supplement commentary or help information, without obscuring any visual elements that the user may be interacting with.
Using voice overs, we can give a sense of personality to what might otherwise be monochrome text
As well as being an alternative to text, audio may be more favourable than video due to the lower production costs.
