Stitching it together - Embedding information, digital, and academic skills online at scale

Editor's Notes

• #2: In line with the University’s digital transformation goals and focus on broadening online and distance learning, improving the student digital experience, and aligning with the new City Deal to establish Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region as the data capital of Europe, ensuring a cohesive, strategic, and aligned approach to embedding information, digital, AND academic skills in our online, (and at scale), courses, to create digitally confident and literate graduates is an important priority for the University right now.
• #3: An overview of the areas I’m going to cover include curriculum mapping & collaboration, flexibility / choose your own adventure, re-usable OER learning object, the importance of accessibility, peer community and assessment, and playful engagement approaches.
• #4: So, to begin with, there’s no one right or wrong way to embed information literacy, academic or digital skills into online programs. I’ve been involved in providing all three during my time working in the University library and learning technology services. What is absolutely useful and from my perspective the best position to start is by engaging in curriculum mapping and collaboration with academic teaching staff, learning designers, learning technologists, and librarians in order to determine what literacies, and skills are to required and will provide the most benefit to learners on a particular programme.
• #5: Ziegler’s paper “I wanna be in the room where it happens” – any Hamilton fans? Found that curriculums mapping creates transparency and provides a framework for identifying where there’s a need for literacy / academic / digital instruction. It opens up avenues of communication and collaboration to build both instruction and assessment that align with literacy standards, tailored to support the varying needs, structures, and idiosyncrasies of each academic program.
• #6: Once the literacies and skills has been identified, we then need to look towards student needs. Market Analysis has confirmed that the profile of online students is different from that of campus students. They are older, in employment and want to continue working while they study. They are likely to be time pressed and have a variety of preferred learning styles.
• #7: Learning objects and instructional tools should be student-centered and considering the needs of those students in order to ensure active engagement. Providing multiple avenues for accessing and engaging with various formats of learning objects will be necessary to accommodate different student abilities and learning styles. My preference would be, and has been, to create a mixture of online resources including short videos, guidance documents, quizzes, and interactive tutorials.
• #8: Aligns with the aim of providing multiple formats and learning objects is the importance of ensuring that those materials are adaptable and accessible from both a physical and technological perspective. Ensuring that learning objects such as videos are captioned and include transcripts, that documents are presented according to accessible design standards (screen readable, alt tagged, colour independent, dyslexia and size adjustable). Additionally, that learning objects are technologically accessible on a variety of devices, and that objects are small in size and downloadable for offline learning
• #9: Learning objects should be created with an eye towards open licensing and re-usability. And consider the implications of copyright and licence implications when teaching in either closed (University authenticated) or Open – publicly accessible, spaces.
• #11: For the purposes of teaching in online environments in scale such as MOOCs, assessment is mainly through a combination of online quizzes and online exams (e.g., multiple choice questions) mostly marked automatically by the system. Research indicates that access to a community of peers increases motivation and helps reduce attrition. While social interaction should not be the entire pedagogy, the best predictor of retention online is student motivation (Bekele, 2010) which we know is built not only through good, responsive teaching methods, but also by building strong learning communities. This sense of community can be hard to achieve online. High attrition is partly because of a lack of learners’ sense of accountability to each other and to their institution. Teaching online and at scale will need to design community formation carefully and plan for a mixed ecology of contact which is not over-reliant on unmoderated asynchronous discussion forums. Quad blogging, small group blogging activities, and guided peer assessment activities have been identified as a successful configuration that can help students feel part of a learning community. This helps both reduce the online student’s sense of distance and increases the tutor’s opportunities for feedback when teaching at scale.
• #12: Recommendations for peer community building and assessment include: Ensuring that the activities and assessment criteria are simple and easy to understand. The tasks and assessment are efficient in execution without occupying too much time The peer assessed activities on literacy, academic, and digital skills are limited to Hurdle tasks – required for completion of the course, but not credit bearing. That peer assessment is not anonymised and that students are accountable and responsible to each other.
• #13: Finally, embedding information literacy, academic, and digital skills doesn’t always need to be serious. I’ve found success in using engaging and playful approaches to deliver and encourage participation in learning activities in my time working both in the library and learning technology services.
• #14: In summary, I don’t believe there’s one right or wrong way to embed information literacy, academic or digital skills into online programs. But I do firmly recommend that curriculum mapping collaboration with academic teaching staff, flexibility and choice of learning objects for students with varying needs, an open educational approach, with a focus on accessibility, peer engagement and assessment, and playful approaches, as an excellent recipe.