Frameworks for the Summer Institute

Personal Digital Inquiry and Digital Media Literacy

This week you will be moving through your own stages of Personal Digital Inquiry and Digital Media Literacy (PDI-DML) in a collaborative and creative project-based inquiry experience called Design Studio. Our PDI-DML model (Coiro & Hobbs, 2017) amplifies the core practices of personal digital in inquiry learning as the engine that enables digital and media literacy to become truly transformative pedagogical practices. Working with a partner in one of three collaborative formats, you will create an Anytime/Real-Time Inquiry Plan. Your resulting lesson (or project) will invite your learners into a content-based inquiry relevant for your work context while integrating hybrid and/or remote elements of teaching and learning, The week, and Design Studio time in particular, serves to inspire and support you through the inquiry process.

Below, read more about the three frameworks that will guide your work at the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy.

Framework #1: Personal Digital Inquiry (PDI) Framework and Planning Guide

A Personal Digital Inquiry (PDI) framework (Coiro, Dobler, & Pelekis, 2019) helps teachers envision ways of designing personal digital inquiry experiences that foster collaborative discussions and reflection that, in turn, lead to knowledge building, knowledge expression, and personal action.

ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS: The four essential elements of a productive personal digital inquiry project include regular opportunities for every learner to wonder & discover, collaborate & discuss, participate & create, and analyze & reflect. Learners may move through these opportunities in varied sequences with varied amounts of support, but successful inquiry-based projects make room for all four sets of practices.

PDI PLANNING GUIDE: As you choose to integrate digital texts and tools into your classroom inquiries, a PDI planning guide (view example of filled in planning guide here) can help you make intentional choices about technology use, depending on the project learning outcomes and your teaching and/or learning purposes. The planning guide leaves space for you to consider how you might a) identify learning outcomes and related standards, b) create opportunities for four sets of PDI practices, and c) intentionally select and use digital experiences that increase student engagement with deeper levels of thinking. For more details, these thinking guides and additional PDI planning guide examples provide a deeper dive into designing for Personal Digital Inquiry.

Designing for Learner Voice, Choice, and Agency? Four questions can help you design flexibly supported opportunities for students to take on more active roles in their learning. As shown across the top of this figure, educators can move flexibly between levels of support as needed while answering these questions; some days you might model and structure digital inquiry by providing most of the support and other times students will have opportunities to take more active roles in their learning as part of guided and open inquiry.

Framework # 2: Digital and Media Literacy

In expanding the concept of literacy to include all the ways that humans share meaning through the use of symbols, we recognize these cross-cutting core practices:

ACCESS: Using digital tools, generating keyword search practices, listening and reading comprehension. These competencies are all about finding, using and understanding ideas and information.

ANALYZE: Comparing and contrasting, evaluating message quality, recognizing purpose, point of view and stereotypes, all while considering the context and the meaning of messages. These competencies are all about asking critical questions.

CREATE: Brainstorming, collaborating, discovering a purpose and a point of view and developing ways to attract and hold audience attention through creative design of language, image, sound, and multimedia. These competencies are all about the creative and collaborative practices of composition.

REFLECT: Considering the impact and consequences of texts, tools, technologies and messages on individuals and society. Reflecting on the interpretive process and the differences that occur in meaning-making. These competencies are all about taking time to step back, think and wonder.

ACT: Being a responsible communicator and citizen, respecting laws and acting ethically and with integrity. These competencies are all about using the power of communication and information to make a difference in the world.

Framework #3: Anytime/Realtime Learning Framework

The SIDL Anytime/Realtime Learning Framework provides a useful instructional context to actively engage learners in inquiry as they develop digital literacies as well as use digital media texts, tools, and technologies to understand challenging content (e.g., science, math, language, history, etc.). The framework involves a sequence of four steps that structure inquiry-based teaching and disciplinary learning while also promoting digital and media literacy competencies. Elements in each phase of the framework are grounded in effective teaching practices for hybrid and remote learning contexts.

As part of the design process, the teacher/designer intentionally weaves into their digital and media literacy plan ways to 1) INSPIRE learners; 2) ENGAGE learners; 3) CONNECT with Learners and 4) CREATE with learners. They begin by designing one or more purpose-driven activities (e.g., those that begin with performance-based verbs such as watch, read, wonder, analyze, comment, plan, design, or act) that offer students an active role in each phase of their learning.

Three of the four phases in the framework are designed to leverage digital tools and practices connected with asynchronous (or anytime) learning; typically, these activities take place before or after students connect with you in real-time synchronous (F2F or virtual) activities. The framework also provides a flexible sequence of digital teaching practices (e.g., greet, hook, model, discuss, ask) to guide your efforts in each phase.

To read more about recommended practices for blending anytime and realtime teaching emerging after the COVID-19 remote teaching experiences, you might enjoy Nine Ways Online Teaching Should Be Different from Face-to-Face (Gonzalez, 2020).

Connections Between the Frameworks

The Personal Digital Inquiry [PDI] Framework helps build a culture that values and makes time for inquiry, collaboration & dialogue, participation & action, and analysis and reflection in any learning community before considering ways that technology can expand teaching and learning as part of digital inquiry. The Summer Institute experience is uniquely guided by these elements to ensure that you, as the learner, engage in the very same practices that we hope you will integrate into your project plans for the learners back in your educational settings.
Digital and Media Literacy (DML) is an expanded conceptualization of literacy that includes attention to how we use, consume and create messages in many forms. It emphasizes the practices of reflection and action in order to put "new literacy" practices in a larger social and political context.
Anytime/Realtime Inquiry Learning Model provides a useful instructional context to actively engage learners in inquiry as they develop digital literacies as well as use digital media texts, tools, and technologies and learn challenging content (e.g., science, math, language, history, etc.). It also provides an explicit structure for our week together, in that elements of the institute are designed to engage you with developing a compelling inquiry question, immerse you in diverse models of anytime (asynchronous) and realtime (synchronous) teaching and learning, working collaboratively during Design Studio to use, reflect on, and integrate relevant pedagogies and technologies, and ultimately, share your project with participants in Design Studio Showcase.

During the Institute you will be using the Anytime/Realtime Inquiry Learning Model as the primary pedagogical approach for the plan you will develop. You will use the Personal Digital Inquiry Framework to help you consider how you might design learning opportunities linked to four sets of essential inquiry elements. You will also use the Digital and Media Literacy Framework to identify specific digital literacy competencies your project might best address. Finally, we will encourage you to consider how an expanded conceptualization of literacy -- with its focus on reflection and action-- helps learners develop intellectual curiosity that connects the classroom to the culture.

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