Embedded Files
This course focused on the principle that distance education instructors can not only teach, but model, ethical and effective digital citizenship. In other words, apart from the content of the course, instructors also teach through how they deliver the content and interact with students in its development. More specifically, students will be most successful if their online presence represents their unique abilities and strengths. Effective online teachers understand that engaging students to use the Internet effectively is as important as a textbook, and that students are now expected to use a wide variety of sources for information about a topic--contributing to the available information themselves.
Reflections
Reflections
- How has your idea of digital citizenship changed? (Yes, "emerged" and "evolved.")
My idea of digital citizenship at the start of the class was one of citizenship, simply in the world of a digital age. In other words, I did not think that the issues would be too different than issues we already see, as a society, outside the digital world. That idea is unchanged despite the class.
However, I have a richer understanding of the idea of citizenship in the digital world, and how concepts like democracy, sharing, autonomy, can be expressed in our online lives. For example, the concept that higher education should be accessible to everyone through public funding and public resources is certainly not new. The digital age may have made that idea more palatable for many (given the ease with which resources can be made available) or may have made that goal more likely given how digital resources and tools make access easier for a larger group of people.
2. How will you interact with digital environments differently and/or ask that your students interact with digital environments differently?
I will certainly be more aware of the influences behind our digital environments that impact the information we are given. Digital redlining, algorithmic bias, and bubble filters are all great examples of ways in which our digital environments are impacted by things we don't immediately see. Being aware of those influences will make me a more intelligent participant as a digital citizen, and hopefully more thoughtful. In some ways, it is the same as the impact of learning about the classic logical fallacies. Afterward, it is much harder to be blindly influenced by advertising when seeing the use of such fallacies as a tool of manipulating behavior (e.g., nine out of ten doctors recommend this drug for you . . . .)
I hope that the skepticism this knowledge engenders can be shared with my students, even when not directly related to the topic of the course.
3. What will you change about your teaching practices?
I will be more aware of the many different resources that are available to me and to my students without additional cost (since the original cost is often already covered by public funds). That, alone, can be a major change for the students and move our institution closer to a goal of accessibility for all.
I will also be more aware of the idea of disposable assignments. The idea of having assignments with some utility beyond a practice tool, or to reinforce a concept, was already part of my teaching practice. Now I am interested in finding ways in which an assignment can also have utility to society at large. It is not yet clear to me how that might work, however.
I may also change the way in which I discuss some of the legal concepts that are part of this course. For example, the module on intellectual property (which covers copyright, naturally) could be expanded to include information about different types of open licenses and how they exist concurrently with copyright. At one time, students would learn about other resources available to them as part of higher education and also, through contrast, understand more about traditional copyright.
Where I was.
Where I was.
In my class there have historically been two assignments where students created a work that is not necessarily disposable. The first relates to a trademark registration. The second relates to the student's will. While both are fairly individualized (as the trademark or will of one person is not generally useful to someone else), at least the assignments are immediately useful to the student if they so desire. So, by doing those assignments, the students effectively reduce the need to repeat the work at a later date, outside the context of higher education.
Where I am.
Where I am.
Unfortunately, those assignments have had to be sacrificed in balancing other considerations. It has been difficult to make the assignments available to students of various challenges to online learning, and to do so at a level appropriate for a state funded course. My challenge is to find a way to reintroduce assignments like that which are both engaging and demonstrate good digital citizenship.
Where I'm headed.
Where I'm headed.
I have not yet identified how the concepts of Open Pedagogy apply in the area of Business Law, beyond the obvious use of Open Educational Resources. That is a topic very interesting to me as the basic legal principles taught do not change often, and therefore lend themselves to some of the OER textbooks that may not be revised frequently given the absence of a commercial interest.
Examples
Examples
The idea that social media can be supplementary to a Learning Management System encouraged me to expand my idea of how students can participate more in the process of learning. I am doubtful that the use of social media is, in the end, something significantly different than other means of communication among students--it just happens to be using different technologies. There is an argument, in fact, that many features of social media actually make meaningful communication more unlikely, and as a result the opportunity for real learning is missed. Having said that, social media could function as a path to apply concepts learned in class to other circumstances. It is an opportunity to reinforce the knowledge gained through more “traditional” methods. It could be through the creation of non-disposable assignments. It could also be through the sharing of new principles with people outside class, like co-workers, family, friends. It is clear that by explaining a concept learned to a new audience, a student reinforces his or her learning. Given that, I will look to expand opportunities for using social media to encourage sharing topics with people outside the class. It might even be used to look for examples of legal principles in current events, and then tracking their development. Often, with legal topics, the fundamental principles are introduced by decades-old case law. I have the sense that such examples are not memorable for students. Finding and following the development of modern examples through social media may be both effective and natural.
An example from my Business Law I course at College of the Desert:
We have learned that the concept of reasonableness is critical to the tort of negligence. A defendant owes a foreseeable plaintiff a duty, and when he breaches that duty in a way that causes harm, he is said to be negligent. What is reasonable in a particular case in heavily influenced by our perceptions of how people should act in certain circumstances. In business, defining policies and procedures for our work colleagues givens them guidelines that are reasonable. Might our own bias, and the bias from the web, influence what we consider is reasonable?
Objective: Identify how algorithmic bias found in search engines will influence how perception of how reasonable people should act in a particular circumstance.
Assignment: Identify an example of discrimination in our commercial lives. It could be discrimination from when a business treats certain people differently from others on the basis of a stereotype. Or, it could be discrimination in hiring, with a company choosing certain types of people based on perceptions of how they will work, or fit a company’s culture. Then, perform internet searches on those types of discrimination from at least three different locations (your phone, your computer at home, at school) and report what differences you see, if any, in how the discrimination is characterized. Does it seem to be more acceptable in some cases that others?
Hint: Be sure to use Private mode on your web browser so you are not logged into your account. The results will tend to be more “neutral”.
Grading: A complete assignment will summarize the results from the three searches, and then describe the similarities and differences in how the searched type of discrimination is presented.
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