Becoming e-literate: practices and requirements of effective e-learners

1. Becoming e-literate: practices and requirements of effective e-learners Helen Beetham e-learning consultant

2. becoming pervasive

3. Confirmed by Great Expectations From thema, jisc/mori/lead

4. Academic use of technology? Many arriving students are relatively conservative in their approach to study, preferring to work at home or in the library and to use books and lecture notes as the primary resource (LEAD) Many students, but by no means all, make extensive use of social networking sites for recreational use. However, there appears to be a clear separation between online learning and online social activities. (LEAD, e4L and STROLL) 54% regularly or sometimes use wikis, blogs or online networks, but only 28% maintain their own (Great Expectations) Students report an increased use of technology as they mature in their studies and a broader use of available technology (STROLL)

5. Some myths exposed by the GoogleGen report we can’t organise technology for learning on the assumption that (young) learners will lead the way... or that where they lead, academic institutions must follow Recent research by Ofcom21 shows that the over-65s spend four hours a week longer online than 18-24s. From undergraduates to professors, people exhibit a strong tendency towards shallow, horizontal,`flicking’ behaviour in digital libraries. A careful look at the literature over the past 25 years finds no improvement (or deterioration) in young people’s information skills. Research [into] the information resources that children prefer and value in a secondary school setting shows that teachers, relatives and textbooks are consistently valued above the internet. Consultations carried out with children, parents and citizen juries to determine preferred scenarios for education in 2025 and beyond (‘Beyond Current Horizons’) find a strong preference for ‘relationships with teachers’ to remain at the heart of the learning experience. (FutureLab, verbal report, February 2008)

6. Themes emerging Access Preferences, choices, patterns of use Personalisation Beliefs and expectations Effective e-learners • Social software • Change and transition • Specific learners and contexts • Institution level practices • Course level practices

7. Habits of ‘effective’ e-learners? (Tentative, provisional findings) • Use what they know and have to hand, e.g. mobile phones, ipods • Use their personal knowledge and networks to enhance the institutional learning environment • Manage their time and attention • Set up alternative forums to discuss and collaborate • …

8. Practices of ‘effective’ e-learners? • Many learners use ready-to-hand devices and services to help fit learning into their lives • Some learners are blending their own formal and informal, online and face-to-face, collaborative and individual learning experiences • Some learners are using sophisticated strategies for finding, evaluating and repurposing information • Some learners are skilled in contentcreation and sharing (wikis, blogs, tagging, rating, podcasting, authoring…) • Some are prepared to explore less ‘ready-to-hand’ software and services to suit their personal needs

9. Learners’ experience… • across the curriculum • across the learning lifecycle/lifepath • how learners make sense of their experience • enabling/empowering them as learners? literacies

10. Digitally literate? multi-medialiteracy Academic literacies ‘Learning to learn’ meta-cognitiveskills Information literacy communication skills

11. What is ‘literacy’ in a digital age? situated socio-technical practices information representation media knowledge interpreting understanding manipulating analysing creating sharing learning (how to…) values Criticality Awareness Agency Value Purpose

12. Developing effective e-learners attributes/identities strategies skills access Beetham and Sharpe: future learners, future learning

13. Learners have access to relevant tools, resources and services. Barriers to access minimised.. Issues of cost, convenience, reliability and technical support are addressed. Developing effective e-learners Academic content E-portfolios Task and assessment management systems Creativity tools E-research tools Collaborative spaces Wikis, blogs, social tagging, file sharing… Available via personally-owned and portabledevices e.g. mobile phone, pda, mp3 player, digital camera… attributes/identities strategies skills access Beetham and Sharpe: future learners, future learning

14. Learners have opportunities to develop technical skills and to practice them in learning contexts; increasing learner confidence and control over use of technologies for learning Developing effective e-learners e-create e-collate e-collaborate e-investigate attributes/identities • Recognise a need for information • Distinguish ways in which the information ‘gap’ may be addressed • Construct strategies for locating information • Locate and access information • Compare and evaluate information • Synthesise and build upon existing information strategies skills access Beetham and Sharpe: future learners, future learning

15. Learners are making informed choices about how they use technologies for learning, and developing flexible strategies that utilise a range of tools and skills in response to situational needs. Developing effective e-learners Systemic thinking Multiple ways of knowing Judgment Social entrepreneurialism Managing career paths Communication and collaboration skills (Seely Brown 2005) attributes/identities strategies skills access Beetham and Sharpe: future learners, future learning

16. Learners are creating their own learning environments and contexts. Personal styles of learning/ technology use come to the fore. They are active participants in communities of knowledge building and sharing. Developing effective e-learners Digital pioneers Creative producers Everyday communicators Information gatherers(Green and Hannon 2007) attributes/identities strategies ReadinessResourcefulnessResilienceRememberingReflecting(Higgins et al 2005) skills access Attention Creativity Social participation Developing and projecting identities (based on Owens et al 2007)

17. Where is your intervention? attributes/identities strategies skills access Beetham and Sharpe: future learners, future learning

18. Less ‘story’ in the artefact

19. These ‘new’ users need new skills and agilities • act in different roles and move between them • engage critically with ideas in multiple media • accumulate personal and public knowledge • re-purpose what they know for different contexts • record their journeys • reflect and plan purposefully Tell their own stories

20. plagiarism‘cut and paste’ mandated collaboration ‘critical thinking’ Web 2.0 / academic learning: a clash of cultures? • modularity vs disciplinarity? • modular ‘memes’ (learning objects, video clips, datasets, widgets) • versus rationales, contexts, unifying narratives • personalisation vs qualification? • personal learning goals, information on a need-to-know basis • versus values embodied in education ‘system’ • Mode 2 vs Mode 1 knowledge? • knowledge as locally useful, cross-disciplinary, ‘cool’, ‘linked in’, the eternal present of web information • vs academic knowledge as having a history, a community, established processes and authorities, long-term trajectories and values (often ‘truth’ or larger social usefulness) • multiple identities vs learning as self-actualisation? • identities as resources to be playfully managed • vs deep personal development? Learning as self-actualisation?

21. attributes strategies skills access Requirements of effective e-learners Enabling learners to access and integrate own technologies, services, and learning communities; supporting the development of socio-technical practice; supporting achievement of personal goals and learning journeys. enhancementexpression of difference Ensuring all learners have functional access to core technologies, services and devices; developing core literacies; building capacity to learn across the lifecourse. entitlementequality of access Beetham and Sharpe: future learners, future learning

22. Over to you Should we respond to learners’ own personaltechnology practices? How? Should we actively develop learners’technology practices and digital literacies? How? How can we ensureequality of access?How can we ensure enhancement andexpression of difference?

24. Institutional requirements Institutions and their staff understand what work, life and community participation entail in the digital age, and prepare learners to be capable in all those spheres. Institutions and course teams articulate their own unique vision and values for learning, and explore how technologies can support and enhance them. How can we keep telling ‘traditional’ stories we value, for example about disciplinary ways of knowing? Higher learning is about learners as creative, critical actors in a web 2.0 knowledge environment. What role can technologies play?The focus is on embedding learning literacies for a digital age into all curricula.

25. Paradigm 1: developing effective e-learners • Universities/colleges understand what literacies learners will need to be effective in their personal futures • University/college is a place where learners develop and practice those literacies

26. HEA project ‘UK academics' conceptions of, and pedagogy for, information literacy ‘ (http://dis.shef.ac.uk/literacy/project/) found a common perception that supporting literacies was ‘someone else’s job’! Challenges to this paradigm: capacity ‘I think our teachers have IT lessons, I think maybe once a year’ ‘The teachers don’t know how to use them – their understanding of computers is behind ours’ [Students’] experiences in commercial contexts led them to see the university VLE as unimaginative and the tutors’ use of it as lacking in vision. SEEL project, Greenwich Learners are developing and practicing these outside of formal learning contexts Attention Creativity Social participation Developing and projecting identities

27. knowledge practice is increasingly mediated by technology beyond the mandate and provision of the institution • attempts to keep ahead of learners’ specific technologies and knowledge practices may fail • Many of today’s learners use technology primarily for social networking. • Learners often find asynchronous discussion forums (such as those within VLEs) problematic, and they are used less frequently and enthusiastically than other forms of communication. Learners suggest this is due to the lower frequency and promptness of contributions compared with other technologies learners use to support their own social networking. • The studies found that learners share work with each other at previously unsuspected levels. Informal learning, facilitated by technology, is also commonplace. (From LXP report)

28. knowledge practices of the academy may be at odds with the values, beliefs and expectations learners bring from their knowledge practices in other spaces Challenges to this paradigm: cultures GoogleGen knowledge culture • Style- and usage-based • Justification-in-use • Issue-based methods and explanations • Peer review (open community) • Rapid response to change • Pro-sumer cultures (cut-and-paste, re-edit, repurpose) • Personal identity, reflection • Circulation, connection Academic knowledge culture • Evidence-based • Historical justification • Discipline-based methods and explanations • Peer review (closed community) • Evolutionary development (paradigm shifts every 10 yrs?) • Culture of production • Objectivity, critique • Publication, reputation

29. Some counter-evidence • ‘While the students expect to be able to set themselves up, technologically… they will not expect … the technology to encroach on what they see as the key benefits from university – interaction and learning.’ • ‘I prefer to learn face to face with a teacher helping me understand any problems that I have.’ • ‘Traditional teacher/pupil learning methods are preferred as the backbone for everyday learning. Technology needs to be used as a tool to complement this way of learning.’ (JISC Student Expectations study, November 2007) • Consultations carried out with children, parents and other citizen juries to determine preferred scenarios for education in 2025 and beyond (‘Beyond Current Horizons’) find a strong preference for ‘relationships with teachers’ to remain at the heart of the learning experience. (FutureLab, verbal report, February 2008)

30. An alternative paradigm • Universities and colleges rethink themselves as communities in which learners’ skills are valued and recognised • Learners receive credit for developing their own and other people’s skills: this is an explicit part of the contract between learners and the institution • Universities and colleges focus on what learners value in higher learning, recognising that this is different from what they value in other social and cultural spaces. • Technology is used to support core academic values and practices such as problem solving, creativity, critique depth of attention, scholarly collaboration and research. These uses of technology form the core of institutions’ ICT offering to learners.

31. Some alternative research questions ‘What do learners value of the experience they get through formal higher/further education?’ ‘How can technologies support those values and empower individuals and institutions to uphold them?’ ‘When do learners experience themselves as being ‘effective’ agents in this environment, and what role can/does technology play? ‘What alternative futures are we bringing about (as well as preparing learners for) in our approach to developing digital literacies?