New Learners@UPEI Research Collaborations around Literacies, Technologies, and Learning

1. New Learners@UPEIResearch Collaborations around Literacies, Technologies, and Learning Martha Gabriel, Ron MacDonald, Sean Wiebe, Ray Doiron, Sandy McAuley, Barb Campbell & Angela Larter

2. “Today’s students are no longer the people our education system was designed to teach”. Prensky, 2001

3. Web 2.0 Technologies + Net Generation Students= Learning 2.0? • Who are the new learners? • What are their expectations re digital technologies, global issues and writing?

4. New Learners@UPEI • Exploring needs, interests and skills of new learners entering the university • Conceptual framework: • New literacies • Net generation learners • Globalization as societal force

5. Background of the Study • Digital literacies • Underlying connection with elearning • Position paper on elearning at UPEI

6. Global Issues • Innovative course • Designed to foster critical thinking/writing through engagement with global issues

7. The Pilot Study • Mixed methods • Phase 1: electronic survey of first year students • Phase 2: student focus groups

8. First Year Students’ Beliefs about Global Issues • “What I understand about the term global issues is that it’s more a question of awareness.” • “You know, maybe even though we’re a small island, we could make some kind of difference or contribution or change…” • “We’re a global community- and everything that happens in the world reflects and resonates all across the globe.”

10. Matching University Teaching with Net Generation Learning Ronald J. MacDonald, PhD University of Prince Edward Island

11. Introduction New Learners --embracing different learning styles social networking and wikis. Faculty -- new technology important -- few are using

12. Introduction • Teaching and learning collaborators Students as teachers • Sharing skills with teachers • Differences between personal and educative technologies • Study of past & current technology usage, university expectations Students as judges • Do they want their personal technologies to enter their academic world?

13. Survey • Mixed Methods – Quantitative data here • 688 first year university students, 19% (127 of 688) volunteered to complete the survey.

14. Students’ ICT Use • Three Contexts • Current: Social use outside university • Past: School use in high school • Future: Expectations for university academics • 82% own laptop; 68% spend 2 hours + using computer

15. Findings Outside of school 1. E-communication (e.g. email) 2. Cell phones 3. Social networking (e.g. facebook) 4. Internet for information 5. Instant messaging 6. Word processing While more traditional uses of technologies, like email and internet for information are prevalent, it appears that some Web 2.0 technologies are also important.

16. Findings Inside High school 1. Cell phone 2. E-communication (such as e-mail) 3. Use the internet for gathering information 4. Word processing 5. Computer use for school work 6. Create essays/assignments. Expected use for University 1. E-communication (such as e-mail) 2. Computer use for school work 3. Use the internet for gathering information 4. Word processing 5. Create essays/assignments. 6. Internet to collaborate for school

17. Gender Similarities and Differences Outside of School: • M = F : Rating top 6 ICT uses in all contexts • F > M:Use of social networking • (M = 4.3, SD = 1.1) than males (M = 3.4, SD = 1.8) for using social networking (e.g. facebook), t(125) = 3.62, p < 0.001, d = 0.71 • F > M: Use of instant messaging • F > M: Upload video, audio • F > M: Use of digital camera • M > F: Download software • M > F: Use of video games Inside High School Technology Use: • F > M: Computers for electronic communication • F > M: Library databases Expected University Technology Use: • F > M: Use cell phones for educative purposes

18. Discussion • Data source -- most recent high school graduates • Close to the potential use of technology in education • BUT infrequently compared to the potential • Use technologies every day – most own laptop

19. Discussion • Gender and Technology • Only by working to the preferences of all students, including different genders, can students gain from various technologies

20. Discussion THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY DON’T KNOW • Traditional expectations • Innovative daily usages • Students may have not made connection • Students may not realize potential for Web 2.0 technologies • New collaborations for students and teachers in New Learners learning environment

22. New Teaching in a Technological Society Sean Wiebe, PhD and Sandy McAuley, PhD University of Prince Edward Island

23. Introductory Note • In this article we inquire more deeply into our experiences as instructors and we investigate first year university students’ experiences of taking our course. • This course, “Global Issues 151” replaced “English 101” at the University of Prince Edward Island as an attempt to keep up with the technological changes in an increasingly global world. • While still being a student’s first introduction to and preparation for academic writing at the university level, the global issues course also set out to expand student’s conceptions of what counted as writing in an increasingly interconnected web 2.0 world.

24. Methods • The method of inquiry is informed by 15 classroom visits and subsequent observations, followup conversations, course design sessions, daily lesson planning, and frequent emails. • Our interpretations also include the conversations about our readings, those texts which have been layered through our experiences, themselves always a new experience of re-reading, and taken together a means to interpret and reinterpret our classroom experiences. • While it is our similar openness to change and an eagerness to experiment which brought about this collaboration, perhaps not unexpectedly, it was noting and interpreting our differences which lead to the most promising insights.

25. Complicated Conversation • Through the process of conversation, we hope to explore and render more visible those daily educational activities which comprise a practice, but also, by the unique unfolding of our dialogue (which is not the technique of dialogue) we are summoned by the other’s interpretations and experiences which change the nature of the stories we might have told as a singular author. • This discursive approach situates our conversations in the classroom, while also deliberately opening up that space for the kind of interpretation that rigorously and creatively imagines what future iterations of teaching this course might look like.

26. Structures & Philosophy • If we were to develop a new writing course for first year students, what advice would you give us? • The university class size of 60 versus a high school class size of 24, often pulled me toward a lecture style of transmitting information. By contrast, in high school I worked with tables, and often within the first few minutes they were pushed together and "work" of writing began. • As is often the case, structure reflects philosophies of learning. At the university, I am structured as expert transmitting information.

27. Initial Findings • With the structural and philosophical differences noted, I would offer to the interviewer the following advice: • Interrogate the academic paper as the defacto standard for assignments.  • Rigorously and vigorously contest standardized "outcomes" for each section. • Utilize the Web 2.0 technologies to both: • a. appeal to net generation learners who use this technology in their personal lives, • b. grow a sense of student agency by connecting their writing with real-time audiences.

28. Planning the G.I. 151 course • I was the one who posed the question to Sean during his interview. And for me as well the course began long before September, 2008. Over the fall and winter of 2006-2007 the Department of English at the University of PEI came to the conclusion that it was no longer able to administer and coordinate the English 101 program. • As the course would deal with students just out of high school and focus on their successful transition to university in general and academic writing in particular, I was curious about what ideas someone recently out of the high school classroom might have.  • Because Global Issues was to be mandatory for all undergraduates regardless of discipline, planning was undertaken by a cross-disciplinary working committee. We saw understanding of global issues as something fundamental to functioning as an educated citizen in the twenty-first century.

29. Professor autonomy / section consistency • Given the diverse nature of the planning committee in terms both of disciplines represented and pedagogical orientations, reaching a consensus on even this broad course framework was not without challenges. • Possibly the most contentious issue was the tension between professor autonomy and section consistency. Given a brand-new course and a range of professor interests, expertise, and experience, how could we insist that each section be the same? • Given that it was a single course and that students would be expecting consistency in terms of workloads and assignments, how could they not? Working through these issues, we developed a draft course syllabus which we felt achieved a reasonable balance between prescription and autonomy. We presented this draft for feedback to course instructors in August, 2008. One of those instructors was Sean. 

30. Course Dreaming & Course Outlines • This course dreaming is what excites me about being a teacher. I love ideas, imagining their implementation, imagining students engaged in work in ways that are deeply meaningful to them in their lived spaces. • With web 2.0 tools and environments, creating authentic writing communities seemed just that much more possible. The social orientation of composition and the possibility to reach a real audience in real time offered the kind of experience which only a few years ago was difficult to implement. • In addition to meeting the other instructors, the purpose of the meeting was to ratify a common course syllabus. Like most rookies, I went into the meeting wide-eyed, hopeful, and wanting to make a difference. I also went into the meeting naive and unprepared for its effect on me. Reflecting back, I see the obvious tensions, which weren't so obvious then. How did all my course dreaming fit into a common course outline?

31. Shaping & intersecting forces • Do the programs (media?) we use shatter the emergent texts of our experience, or provide the frameworks around which they coalesce? Or, in doing the former, do they then shape the latter?  • I had seen enough to feel that digital technologies could provide ways to engage students in new ways to engage, explore, and understand things in different ways, even if it was just the intersecting factors that make the difference between the success or failure of a child's lemonade stand. • It's less what the new technologies can do than their • pervasiveness that is revolutionary.

32. Ongoing Questions & Quandaries • Web 2.0 technologies might still yet act as a catalyst for change; however, why did my propensity and enthusiasm for course dreaming not have enough influence to actually propel me toward taking greater risks in my implementation of technology. • What changes was I able to make as the course unfolded? What was my experience of the course as it related to the students’ experiences in it, and in what ways was I able to respond to their needs as expressed while the course was happening? • Experientially then, after agreeing to a common course outline, I wonder not just "what happened" but what was happening? Implicit in this question is how these changes might affect the fluid and responsive nature of teacher planning, or the meeting of learning outcomes, or the student's expectations for what makes a "good" course.

34. Exploring a New Learning Landscape in Tertiary Education Ray Doiron, PhD University of Prince Edward Island And Marlene Asselin, PhD University of British Columbia

35. Setting the Context • New Learners@UPEI • Three tasks: • Synthesize the literature on new learners • Explore in-school/out-of-school experiences with ICTs • Raise questions, pose ideas – implications for tertiary education

36. New Learners • Millennials, Net Generation, digital natives…. • “new learners” (Hughes 2005) • Developed/minority world youth • Describing the ‘new learners’

37. Learning Processes Interactive participants Take action approach Early adopters Makers of personal landscapes Learn by doing  Multi-tasking, multi-modal  Constructed Identity Economic force Networked communities Passionately tolerant Force for social transformation (Asselin & Doiron, 2008, p.8) Describing New Learners

38. New learners using digital technologies • Access is not an issue • Used for e-communication, gaming, socializing, searching, & school work • They recognize need for help with information literacy

39. In-School Uses of Digital Technologies • Traditional text-based uses – word –processing • Slideshows, some video in presentations • Digital tools in science, math…. • Basically teacher/district controlled particularly with internet and Web 2.0 • New learners are forced to “leave at the door” the informal learning, expertise with ICTs, passiton for social environments and fit into a traditional print-based, transmissive model • Fear of the internet- protect youth from it rather than teach critical/information/multi-literacies

40. Teacher Uses of ICTs • Preparation and communication • Accessing interesting resources • Lectures with PP and SMARTboards • Course/assessment management • Reluctance to embrace learner-centred, knowledge construction, shared power……

41. Moving to New Learning Landscapes • Changes in the academic library as a model for new learning landscapes • If you build it they will come • Deliver library/services/programs to desktops • Establish Learning Commons • A community gathering point for teaching/learning

42. A Learning Commons is … • Learning oriented • Facilitates active, independent and collaborative learning. • Learner centred • Focuses on student needs, preferences and work patterns. • University wide • Part of university-wide development of learner autonomy. • Flexible • Responsive to the changing needs of learners for resources and support. • Collaborative • Based on collaboration between different learning support areas in the university. • Community building • Provides a hub for physical and virtual interaction for staff and students. (Keating & Gabb, 2007, p. 16)

43. Exploring Learning Landscapes in Tertiary Education • Shifting metaphors: ‘campus’ to ‘learning landscape’ • “total context for students’ learning experiences and the diverse landscape of learning settings available today—from specialized to multipurpose, from formal to informal, and from physical to virtual” (Dugale, 2009, ¶ 2).

44. A Tag Cloud for Building a New Learning Landscape

45. What do we think we have learned?What comes next? • The Net Generation expects to learn online. • Layering • Re-imagining traditional learning

46. A Tag Cloud for Building a New Learning Landscape