Slides: Media and Information Literacy: creative and critical engagement across the curriculum and beyond #RBE2019

Today I delivered a workshop Media and Information Literacy: creative and critical engagement across the curriculum and beyond university life at the Research-Based Education conference at the University of Adelaide, Australia, together with Bill Johnston. These are the slides

Media and Information Literacy: creative and critical engagement across the curriculum and beyond university life from Sheila Webber

This was the abstract: The aims of this workshop are: to unpack UNESCO’s “composite concept” of Media and Information Literacy (MIL) and its relationship to research-based learning (RBL), and to stimulate participants to reflect on how MIL could enhance learning for citizenship.
Literature already links Information Literacy (IL) and IBL/RBL e.g. Lupton (2017), McKinney (2013): Levy & Petrulis’ (2012) framework for students’ IBL can be used to scaffold development of both disciplinary understanding and IL. However, MIL adds an extra dimension to IL, enfolding concepts of intercultural awareness, social justice and critical engagement with media. These aspects are vital at a time when misinformation challenges democratic society by promoting false knowledge claims and underpinning populism and hate speech (European Commission, 2018). Johnston, MacNeil & Smyth (2018) also identify that a Freirian critical pedagogy is a necessary component of the concept of an inclusive, open, information literate, digital university. A rich discourse is developing around the MIL concept (e.g. via GAPMIL and Global MIL week), but focused primarily on schools (e.g. Wilson et al., 2011) and opportunity exists to explore MIL in the Higher Education context.
References:
Johnston, B. MacNeill, S. & Smyth, K. (2018). Conceptualising the Digital University: intersecting policy, pedagogy and practice. Palgrave Macmillan.
European Commission. (2018). A multi-dimensional approach to disinformation: Report of the independent High level Group on fake news and online disinformation. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/final-report-high-level-expert-group-fake-news-and-online-disinformation
GAPMIL: Global Alliance of Partnerships on Media and Information Literacy. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/media-development/media-literacy/global-alliance-for-partnerships-on-media-and-information-literacy/
Levy, P. & Petrulis, R. (2012). How do first-year university students experience inquiry and research, and what are the implications for the practice of inquiry-based learning? Studies in Higher Education, 37(1), 85-101.
Lupton, M. (2017) Inquiry learning: A pedagogical and curriculum framework for information literacy. In D. Sales & M. Pinto. (Eds.) Pathways into information literacy and communities of practice: Teaching approaches and case studies. (pp.29-51). Chandos Publishing.
McKinney PA (2013) Information literacy and inquiry-based learning: evaluation of a 5 year programme of curriculum development. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 46(2), 148-166.
UNESCO. (no date). Media and Information Literacy: a composite concept. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/media-development/media-literacy/mil-as-composite-concept
Wilson, C. et al. (2011). Media and Information Literacy curriculum for teachers. UNESCO. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/001929/192971e.pdf

Cocreating using Echo360; Group drama to develop intercultural competence; Researchers in residence #RBE2019

My last liveblog today from the Research-Based Education conference at the University of Adelaide, Australia.
Harrison Lees and Dalestair Kidd talked about employing students to co-create learning material with Echo360, in modules that they had already taken. The student creators gave feedback that they had benefited with having the additional interaction with lecturers, and it helped them understand the subject more. The students who were using the student-co-created Echo360 activities gave mainly positive feedback, appreciating actitivities like quizzes. Echo360 has inbuilt note taking software, and one message was to make students aware of this, also to introduce the activities early on so they get used to using them. This was part of the University of Adelaide's Students as Partners initiative, and students get paid: this was seen as important, so students did not feel exploited. The student presenters also urged academics to be receptive to students' new ideas and to follow up with the student.
Kayoko Enomoto and Richard Warner (University of Adelaide) presented on Living the language: an innovative group drama project for students to step into the shoes of others. They were talking about a group project designed to develop employability skills in an undergraduate module in a Japanese programme. They were aiming to develop discipline specific skills, intercultural competence, teamwork/ communication skills and critical thinking and research skills. Intercultural competence is seen as important to enrich linguistuc competence (although it was highlighted that the concept of IC is the subject of debate).The speakers identified the difficulty of "selling" group work to students (something that has come up in most of the sessions at the conference so far!). A four stage loop model of intercultural competence by Deardorff was used.
In this project, groups of 4-5 students (in a class of about 60, with different disciplinary backgrounds) had to write a drama scenario in Japanese, which focused on a selected socio-cultural issue. A list of issues was given, from which the students chose; examples are shut-ins, maternity harassment (forcing women to resign when they get pregnant), the ageing population. The students have to do searches for evidence for their dramas, using search skills and critical thinking. The drama format enables the "shoes of others" element.
Students are not necessarily interested in socio-cultural issues when they start the module (they might just want to learn the language). Bringing in Japanese exchange students was one strategy to motivate interest, and video presentations from previous cohorts were shown. The groups had to draw up a group contract, and do a storyboard (using a template), and these counted towards the final mark, as did the final drama (which they had to perform). There was an element of peer assessment. Student feedback indicated that the exercise did contribute to the development the tutors wanted, and also that some quieter students performed enthusiastically in the drama element.
Finally, Brendan Bentley (University of Adelaide) talked about Researchers in residence. This is an initiative in a Masters of Teaching degree. The student, who has to produce a 20,000 word dissertation, is placed with an employer (school) to undertake context-relevant research. This may be the same school as where the student does a placement, but not always. Bentley stressed the importance of having a programme coordinator who can main good connections with employers and understands the needs of the schools and thus the research questions that need to be pursued. It was also important to understand the skills that the preservice teachers do (and do not) have. The data that is analysed by students in usually secondary data. An executive summary of the research is given to the host school, and findings are presented at a conference of fellow students and other stakeholders.

Beyond books and articles: designing digital capabilities for the future #RBE2019

More liveblogging (so, instant impressions) from the Research-Based Education conference at the University of Adelaide. Fiona Mariner (University of Adelaide, Digital Learning Coordinator in the library) talked about Beyond books and articles: designing digital capabilities for the future. They had taken a face to face course in the Faculty of Arts, and turned it into an online module. It was a colaborative effort with the library, the course coordinators and the Learning Enhancement and Innovation team.
It "started as a problem of numbers" with not enough librarian-hours available, but also there seemed to be opportunities when going online. The team wanted to do more in terms of developing digital capabilities, and an online module gave a more flexible format. The university has developed a digital capabilities model (based on JISC's work). The underpinning concepts were metaliteracy (as mentioned before at various times on this blog, developed by Jacobson and Mackey); transferable skills in terms of scaling up, or transfering from one context to another (important on the Arts foundation course that this was targeted at); learner-centred design.
The students themselves are diverse, since it includes mature students, distance and oncampus students, and students from different faculties. The team aimed at backwards design, and identified a variety of learning outcomes. Based on those, they developed an assessment sheet, which aimed to encourage scaffold students progress towards carrying out a research/essay assignment and also get them to reflect on their progress and activities. The learning material included videos, activities and supporting material.
The topics covered went from finding and discovering existing knowledge, through critically evaluating, referencing and presenting in different ways. Although there was positive feedback from academics, the online module did not get systematically integrated into the class.
They have got some feedback from a separate group of students. There was positive feedback on a number of aspects, but the team got useful feedback e.g. that the students didn't navigate in the way expected, and they wanted more activities. Next time, they will involve students in the process a lot earlier. They also want to offer more support and liaison with academics. They would like to work more closely e.g. with the writing centre. They also feel they may need to have two online modules: one to be integrated into class, and the other self-paced.
Photo by Sheila Webber: catching thr tram from Glenelg this morning (apologies, I wasn't in a good place to take photos during the session)

A large scale capstone research course connecting students to researchers and careers #RBE2019

I'm going to do a bit of liveblogging from the Research-Based Education conference I'm attending at the University of Adelaide, Australia. As usual, these are my instant impressions of what was said. Nichola Thompson talked about development of a capstone research placement course in the final year of an undergraduate Health and Medical Sciences degree. The course has about I think) 300 students per year. The capstone course involves joining a research group in a research topic relevant to their major interest. They had 55 projects in the last year. The projects vary e.g. they may be lab based, systematic reviews, using existing data sets. The research is supported by core modules (online) concerning research methods, ethics etc., and support in areas such as using the research literature. In semester 2, activities include a journal club. There are multiple modes of assessment e.g. recording a presentation about the research, and presenting a final poster on the research, as well as reports and marks associated with the core modules. The students have been very positive about this initiative, but there are challenges. These include finding enough projects and willing researchers to lead them, costs of the lab projects, perception that some of the projects are more challenging/interesting than others, the marking load (and quality assurance of marking). Some students are uncomfortable with projects with no "right" answer, or don't want to commit enough time, or don't see the relevance of research to their future careers. The researchers may not be used to engaging with undergrad students, so expect a higher a level of skills and may not be used to engaging with unmotivated students, and might also expect that they only get the "top" students, and workload. I asked, and they did involve the librarians!