4. DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP

Effective online teachers teach and model ethical online interaction, while helping students develop digital literacy that will poise them for success.

In the connected era, students will be most successful after college if they have a digital presence that promotes their unique abilities and strengths. Online instructors are poised to play a powerful role in the development of our students’ digital footprint. Students aspire to be like their instructors who actively model safe and professional use of digital tools and resources. Effective online teachers understand that engaging students in the web is an important part of becoming digitally literate and, as such, learning is not tied to a textbook.

Reflections

Where I was.

Before taking this course, I was not aware of the concept of digital citizenship. My digital presence involves a few personal social media accounts and ratings on rate my professor. In my classes, I did use OER textbooks in a few of my classes and also discussed social media in interpersonal communication.

Where I am.

After taking the Digital Citizenship class, I realized that powerful role the idea of digital citizenship has in my communication classes. First, I have transitioned all my classes to OER textbooks and now have no additional costs for students in my classes. In addition, I have created a digital citizen assignment that allows students to pick media that supports our course and also allows students to curate content for other students to use.

Where I'm headed.

Moving forward, I want to establish a greater digital presence in my online classroom . One way I plan to do this is by using Twitter and social media in the classroom. I hope that this will allow students to apply what they are learning to the ways in which they communicate online via social media. In addition, I would like to increase my professional digital presence by creating my own YouTube channel to share resources with other online educators and support professional learning on my college as well as across the district and state.

Examples

OER Textbooks

I use OER textbooks in all my communication classes:

Here are the OER textbooks I use in my classes. I am also working with an accessibility specialist to increase the accessibility of each textbook. Aside from using OER content in my courses, I also created an OER canvas shell for each of these courses that adjunct faculty can use to help build their own OER course shells. This also addresses this principle by remixing established OER content.

Student-Generated Content Assignment

Dynamic Assignment-1.docx

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This assignment addresses both the digital and dynamic principles and invites students to work in groups to select one interpersonal communication theory, conduct research on the theory and create a wiki resource page for other students to view in this class (and perhaps others outside of the class) that includes a definition of the theory, a short video or audio file explaining the theory and a list of 3 resources (links) that support additional learning. This assignment provides opportunities for students to create content that can also be shared outside of our Canvas shell and supports learning inside our course.

Instructor Communication &

Course Philosophy

Instructor Communication-1.docx

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I have an instructor communication policy along with a course philosophy and ground rules that guide our interactions and strive to provide a model for how to be ethical digital citizens.

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