Digital Literacy/Literacies 101: Doug Belshaw and #etmooc

Let’s begin exploring our quickly changing ideas about digital literacy by noting the various skills required to engage in a contemporary online learning experience: a live session (now available in an online archived version) on digital literacy/literacies led by Doug Belshaw for #etmooc, the Educational Technology and Media MOOC (Massive/Massively Open Online Course) organized by University of Regina professor of educational technology and media Alec Couros and others.

If we really begin with the basics, we have to start by navigating time zones since the session starts and ends at different times depending on the time zone within which you’re living (noon, PT, on Presidents’ Day/Washington’s Birthday 2013 here in San Francisco, 8 pm in Northumberland, England, where Belshaw is facilitating the live session that initiates a two-week course of study on digital literacy). Then we have to find our way into the online session within Blackboard Collaborate—recognizing that we’ll need a desktop, laptop, or mobile device to access the session.

Once we’re there, choices abound. If we simply want to observe, we can stay within the Blackboard Collaborate platform, watch, and listen. (Watch out for that live chat stream flying past us on the left-hand side of the screen—another skill to master.) Or we can actively participate by using our skills to engage in that online chat. We can go a few steps further by using online tools to place symbols on the map at the beginning of the session to show where in the world we are while participating, or draw/type responses to questions posed on some of the slides displayed during Belshaw’s presentation, or use the live VoIP interface to actually ask questions.

If we’re having trouble seeing the slides through the Blackboard Collaborate presentation, we can hop over to SlideShare and view the slides there—knowing they will remain on SlideShare as a resource to us and to other learners long after the live session has ended.

But wait: we’re far from finished. Belshaw invites greater levels of interactivity through use of yet another bit of free software—Etherpad—if  we want to participate in a few live exercises, including the act of individually and then collaboratively defining digital literacy to show how our own ideas evolve during the hour-long learning opportunity. We can also return to Etherpad, after the session ends, to review what we’ve accomplished together within this #etmooc session and also view a variety of links to other resources that were mentioned during the live session. And there are even a few people out there carrying on yet another backchannel discussion on Twitter via the #etmooc hashtag; postings in our Google+ community and our blog hub can’t be far behind.

Because Belshaw and others in the session are sharing so many wonderful resources, we need to be able to grab some of those resources for later viewing, so another very useful skill is the one that allows us to click on some of those links to open them in other browser windows. That will allow us to review them in a more leisurely fashion once the live session ends and to bookmark those to which we want to return later for even more in-depth exploration—which means that having an account with Delicious, Diigo, or others and knowing how to use at least one of those accounts is going to be helpful to us in keeping track of and accessing session resources when we’re ready for them. We’re certainly also going to want to be able to view Belshaw’s TEDx Warwick session on “The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies”; or the web literacies white paper he, his colleagues at the Mozilla Foundation, and others have produced; or his “NeverEndingThesis” page with links to his other digital literacies presentations and his “What Is ‘Digital Literacy’?” Ph.D. thesis with its sections on new forms of literacy worldwide, ambiguities of digital literacy, new literacies, and a matrix of “the eight essential elements of digital literacies.”

Having mastered at least some of these skills, we’re now in a position to actually deal with the fabulous content and begin defining and understanding what digital literacy/literacies means to any of us involved in training-teaching-learning. At the heart of this one-hour session is Belshaw’s wonderful digital literacy version of a periodic table comprised of the eight essential elements of digital literacies he developed for his Ph.D. thesis publication: Cognitive (Cg),  Constructive (Cn), Communicative (Co), Civic (Ci), Critical (Ct), Creative (Cr), Confident (Cf), and Cultural (Cu).

If we now step back and take a long, deep breath, we see the bigger picture of digital literacy/literacies and learning. What we’re obviously dealing with in a session like this one is the challenge of processing the deluge of information and information resources coming our way—which means that a major skill to develop is how to focus on essentials while sifting through the huge number of claims on our attention documented in this article. Recognizing that an ability to multitask while engaged in complex cognitive endeavors (e.g., learning) is largely a myth, it seems to me that a basic element of digital literacy/literacies is recognizing and acknowledging what we are and are not capable of doing; compensating for what we cannot do; and finding ways to gain as much as we can from our digital experiences so that we can be successful rather than being overwhelmed.

And if this review of some of what happens during a dynamic and wonderfully rewarding one-hour learning experience leads us to a better understanding of what we (and our learners) face and how we can resolve some of our learning challenges, it has helped bring us one step closer to developing the sort of digital literacies #etmooc and its creators and facilitators are inspiring.

N.B.: This is the ninth in a series of posts responding to the assignments and explorations fostered through #etmooc.

MOOCed into Learning via #etmooc

I’ve been MOOCed. And it’s not as if I could have avoided it. I knew, as soon as I began exploring the topic of massive online open courses (MOOCs) in November 2012 with colleagues on the New Media Consortium (NMC) Advisory Board for the 2013 Higher Education Edition of the Horizon Report, that it would only be a matter of time before I stepped into the vortex and was completely immersed in learning more about the topic.

It’s not as if I fought it very hard; when Google recently announced its Advanced Power Searching MOOC, I registered for that course. But the increasingly frequent references I’ve been seeing to ETMOOC—the Education Technology and Media course organized by University of Regina professor of educational technology and media Alec Couros and several “co-conspirators”—made me curious enough to dip a virtual toe into the MOOC surf. And, as so often happens when we stand too close to the water, I’ve been swamped by an enormous wave of MOOC.

This is a community under development, a place where trainer-teacher-learners are working with each other to explore a variety of topics in two-week chunks: connected learning, digital storytelling, digital literacy, the open movement, and digital citizenship. The use of technology is not only at the heart of our learning explorations, but provides the tools for those explorations: live online sessions held in Blackboard and archived for those who can’t attend the live sessions; a network of blogs; a twitter hashtag (#etmooc); a Google+ community with connections via Google+ Hangouts; postings on YouTube; and content on social bookmarking sites including Delicious, Diigo, and Reddit.

And while Couros is clearly at the center of the process, his conspirators and the learners are, with his encouragement, very much building the course by developing content as we go, as Sue Waters did in a blog post that about working harder and staying connected in a learning community—her guide to how to use the various course tools to engage in effective learning opportunities.

Less than three weeks into ETMOOC, there already is a robust and still-growing archive of programs including a very lively 80-minute orientation session; introductions to Twitter, social bookmarking and content curation, and blogging; and an introduction to connected learning. The orientation itself included a wealth of resources, including links to online articles about how we can assist learners in building out “their digital presences in an environment made of the medium of the web itself” and how the development of open learning systems can “dramatically improve learning.”

There is also a “Dynamic Guide to Active Participation” that could serve as a primer for anyone interested in developing great contemporary learning habits, and a “Dynamic Guide for Facilitators” that will be a tremendously valuable resource for any trainer-teacher-learning working in online environments.

“Think of #etmooc as an experience situated somewhere between a course and a community,” the course developers tell us on the website and in that engaging introductory session. “While there will be scheduled webinars and information shared each week, we know that there is a lot more that we will collectively need to do if we want to create a truly collaborative and passionate community. We’re aiming to carry on those important conversations in many different spaces – through the use of social networks, collaborative tools, shared hashtags, and in personalized spaces. What #etmooc eventually becomes, and what it will mean to you, will depend upon the ways in which you participate and the participation and activities of all of its members. You may even establish and grow your personal and professional learning network (PLN).”

And by encouraging us to learn by participating, by creating content and establishing new online accounts in platforms including about.me, and by engaging in conversations that extend far beyond any formal onsite or online classroom walls, they are inspiring all of us to contribute our own learning objects—like this blog post—that extends the conversation and the learning even further.

N.B.: This is the first in a series of posts responding to the assignments and explorations fostered through #etmooc.

Reports from the Field: “Getting Started With e-Learning 2.0”

To move beyond the common practice of seeing e-learning as little more than a way to save money in workplace learning and performance (training) programs, we need go no further than Patti Shank’s “Getting Started with e-Learning 2.0,” a first-rate report published by the eLearning Guild in late 2010.

Drawing from survey responses submitted by more than 850 Guild members—professionals working in e-learning—the report provides an intriguing snapshot of how social media tools are—or aren’t—being used in online learning and, more importantly, provides information about the “top five strategies that respondents feel they need for success with e-Learning 2.0 approaches”: “good content, upper management endorsement, user assistance, piloting, and testimonials” (p. 4).

We know from the beginning of this Guild publication that we’re among colleagues interested in learning. In talking about the increasing tendency to incorporate social networking tools including wikis, blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Diigo, and others into online learning opportunities, the writer asks and answers a basic question—“Are these good learning opportunities? You betcha!” (p. 6)—and then delivers a cohesive and easy-to-follow summary of the eLearning Guild survey documentation supporting her conclusion.

The good news for trainers, teachers, and learners is that “social media has become a very big deal” and that its use is continuing to increase rapidly (p. 8). The not-so-good news is that most respondents “don’t feel a great deal of pressure to implement these approaches” (p. 14) and “more than 25% of respondents are making only limited use of e-Learning 2.0 approaches or researching how other organizations are using it” (p. 4).

This is hardly breaking news to those of us who enjoy and are involved in onsite and online education: there are still so many poorly organized and poorly presented workplace learning and performance offerings that it’s not surprising to find skeptical rather than enthusiastic presenters and learners. It also remains true that those trying their first webinar or online course are unlikely to give the medium a second chance if what they face is poorly designed PowerPoint presentations and sessions that lack the levels of engagement that lead to effective learning and the positive change that should follow.

Shank provides concise descriptions and suggested applications for blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, and other aspects of social networking that are becoming part of our online learning toolkit. She also offers useful sections on learning benefits (the fact that learning is socially grounded, so social networking tools are a natural match for the learning process—p. 26), challenges (managers and supervisors who see social networking tools as detracting from rather than adding to the value of their training programs and overall ability to conduct business—pp. 26-30), and results (sharing ideas across departments, improving team collaboration, increasing creativity and problem-solving—p. 31).

Three pages of online references and a two-page glossary round out this useful and learning-centric report, leaving us not only with encouragement about the positive impact e-learning is having, but also with sobering thoughts about how much more there is to accomplish before we have reached our—and its—full potential.

Next: ASTD’s Most Recent “State of the Industry” Report

Working With and For Each Other

Reading Huntsville-Madison County Public Library Staff Training and Development Coordinator Marianne Lenox’s wonderfully concise summary of learning theory and resources in a single posting on the American Library Association (ALA) Learning Round Table blog reminded me once again how close our cherished resources are these days.

Participating in web conferencing sessions through Maurice Coleman’s T Is For Training biweekly sessions, engaging in online chats and conducting interviews via Google Chat, and reading and responding to postings on individual and group blogs or LinkedIn discussion groups for trainer-teacher-learners means that we’re never far from Lenox and others who can help us in our training-teaching-learning endeavors.

What starts online can lead to treasures previously unimagined. Join the T Is For Training participants as they discuss challenges they are facing and resolving and you soon find yourself using and contributing to the links to training materials they are continuing to create on Delicious. Explore the links to individual and group blogs listed on the left-hand side of the T Is For Training page and soon you find yourself relishing Library Garden articles such as Peter Bromberg’s piece on “How to Ignite Your Passion” or John LeMasney’s “5 Great Tools and Techniques for Developing Presentations,” or discovering Jill Hurst-Wahl’s  “Assessing User Needs” article and following links to other resources. Respond to a posting by Lori Reed or Sarah Houghton-Jan and you are quickly on your way to being part of a community of learners that leaves you feeling less isolated than you otherwise might be.

The key remains engagement. Participating even at a rudimentary level in the various online activities available through these resources, the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD), and other groups and organizations supportive of face-to-face and online learning soon leads to contacts which are only an e-mail, a Skype exchange, or a phone call away. And that’s the real pleasure and benefit of the brief moments we give to these exchanges: they remind us of how much we gain while working with and for each other.

N.B.: For more on working with and for each other, please read the companion piece on the ALA Learning blog.