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Effective online teachers teach and model ethical online interaction, while helping students develop literacy that will poise them for success.
Effective online teachers teach and model ethical online interaction, while helping students develop literacy that will poise them for success.
Explanation of Digital Citizenship Principle
Explanation of Digital Citizenship Principle
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.
This principle emphasizes:
- Developing one’s own professional digital presence;
- Using and remixing digital Open Educational Resources (OER) to facilitate active learning;
- Establishing a learning culture that promotes curiosity and critical examination of online resources while fostering digital literacy and media fluency;
- Providing opportunities for students to create content that can be shared outside of a learning management system;
- Fostering a learning environment that encourages students to connect with and learn from a global audience.
Reflections
Reflections
The First Step
The First Step
I believed it was solely the teacher's responsibility to provide all the information to the students and find ways to make sure the students understood the information. I believed it was the students' responsibility to make the effort to learn the material presented. While I did encourage student discussion about their experience with or thoughts about certain concepts or how they could see themselves applying the concepts in their lives, I did not really encourage them to explore more deeply into any topic. This style short-changed students, who should have more control over and responsibility for their learning.
I intentionally did not create a digital presence. I had concerns about privacy and identity theft. I have provided content for the Facebook pages of a few organizations, so I do see the value of social media.
The Training
The Training
I was both fascinated and terrified by all I learned about digital polarization, algorithms, filter bubbles and digital redlining. Sites such as YahooNews give people different news and views of current events. People entering the same Google searches will receive different results. The internet gives people what it believes that they want to see because that is what will keep people interested. This often results in polarization, because people only see information that supports their beliefs. The majority of students are already interacting and seeking information online. As teachers, we can help students become aware of these practices and encourage them to look for ways to get accurate and unbiased information locally and globally.
It is interesting to note that Facebook, Google and other platforms make money from advertising, so advertisers are the customers and the people using the platforms are actually the product. In fact, whenever the product is free, the user is often the product. Students can be particularly vulnerable to having their personal data used; sometimes the only way they can access some online publisher materials is by waiving privacy rights.
Many students are already creating a digital presence. For the age group 18-29, 91% use Youtube, 81% use Facebook, 61% use Snapchat, 64% use Instagram; and 29% use LinkedIn. Students can be encouraged to have discussions about digital risks and benefits. Students who are not using social media could be given the option to create content on social media like Twitter in ways that are safe and fit within the students' comfort levels, as was done in the Digital Citizenship class. Teachers can also model professional digital presence, including proper netiquette.
A whole module in Digital Citizenship focused on Open Educational Resources and required us to find, evaluate, and curate content. There are a lot of quality sources, although often times the material is somewhat dated. We also learned how to give proper attribution. It is wonderful to be able to use materials and give credit without having to worry about copyright issues. The obvious benefit to students is free or lower cost materials.
In my opinion, the movement toward using Open Educational Resources is gaining steam, but there are some roadblocks. At an Open Educational Conference I attended, several attendees mentioned that publishers are making it hard to want to switch to OER because they are coming out with great online assignments and test banks. These pre-made and easily-graded assessments can save teachers a lot of time, especially in accounting and math. Furthermore, finding, updating and organizing OER into manageable chunks can take a huge amount of uncompensated teacher time. Fortunately, there is some grant money being used to help create OER courses for various subjects that can be shared.
Without this class, I would not have understood that using OER goes beyond just linking to or copying and pasting existing material. When making transition to OER, teachers should take the time to rethink the traditional teaching process. Instead of the teacher giving knowledge and the student taking information and reciting the information back, teachers can focus on facilitating the individual learning of students. An effective online class requires more active involvement by the student in the learning process.
We learned how to teach students digital information literacy, which is a valuable life skill in addition to an educational skill. Students can be taught to use Michael A. Caulfield's Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers to evaluate articles or resources by
- looking to find the original study or source of the story or claim
- checking to see whether a previous source has already verified or refuted the story
- checking out the legitimacy or potential biases of the original source of information
- repeating the original search again using better search terms
In the past, teachers often discouraged or even prohibited the use of Wikipedia. Its reputation and usefulness has improved. In this class, I learned that it can be used to investigate potential biases of article writer. Wikipedia can also be used for teaching. Furthermore, having students create or build upon a topic in wikipedia gives them a sense of accomplishment and the knowledge that their work is ongoing and beneficial outside of the classroom.
Part of digital citizenship is to convey that students can learn and help others learn through collaboration in blogs, discussion boards, Twitter, etc. Students could get immediate and ongoing benefit from this concept if they create and/or update LinkedIn profiles based on what they are learning in a Human Resources class. This would get students thinking about making connections and learning from others in a professional manner. Teachers can model safe, responsible and valuable digital presence.
In It for the Long Run
In It for the Long Run
- Help students realize that they are in control of their learning and guide them in discovering what methods and resources best meet their goals and needs. I would like to foster a growth mindset where the students want to push themselves to learn more.
- Add to a list of possible nondisposable assignments to allow students to explore personalized learning opportunities, contribute to society, and/or have concrete evidence of value of their education. There are several relatively simple possibilities, while others might be semester-long summative assessments. I would really like to take advantage of the student learning opportunities involved in doing a Wiki assignment. I need to figure out how to scaffold it, so that the project is not overwhelming. The students could select a course-related topic that interests them and contribute to the digital world.
- Come up with an assignment where students will identify an error or misconception online and try to discuss it by explaining rather than arguing. This would demonstrate to the students that they have the ability to improve the quality of information on the internet. In a Business Law class, this assignment will have to be carefully crafted. While there may be some legal myths that are easy to dispel, there are often exceptions to the exceptions to the primary rule, so that both the original poster and the student could both be correct.
- Teach students how to evaluate the reliability of resources in a fun or interesting way. Because students in a class could end up with different search results, it might be beneficial to have students work in teams, doing individual research and then comparing results before writing their papers.
- Be aware of barriers students may encounter and provide links or information. For example, it cannot be assumed that all students have 24/7 access to computers and internet. While it is ultimately the student's responsibility to be able to get their work done, letting them know various locations they can find internet as well as how to download material for when they need to work offline makes it seem more doable.
- Gather interesting resources to show students how spending time online impacts their emotional, brain and physical health. I want them recognize how important social interaction and connection are to emotional health, whether it be in person or online through social media, blogs, or class discussion boards and video meetings. Connection requires more than just reading; it involves sharing and contributing. Online activity can also impact students' brain health by harming short term memory, the ability to concentrate and the ability to make connections between the brain's left and right hemispheres. Excessive screen time can also impact vision, interrupt sleep, result in weight gain, cause neck and shoulder pain, and increase the risk of heart disease. In addition to gathering the resources, I would like to create a participatory Twitter assignment where students provide suggestions as to how they personally try to reduce the negative risks associated with digital life or provide links to resources on how to minimize risks.
- Develop a way to encourage students to be more deliberate with their digital time. Students can be deliberate by allocating a certain amount of time each week to research areas of interest or to prepare for their future careers. Students could take advantage of down time by creating a watch list of interesting youtube or TedTalk videos that could be quickly accessed instead of defaulting to cat videos or "news" that isn't really that interesting or valuable to the student.
- Create a Human Resource Management course using OER. I need to dedicate time to find and curate quality materials. Then I need to sort and break material down into meaningful chunks, insert culturally specific references to make concepts easier to understand, and provide opportunities for student involvement and interaction.
Examples
Examples
Tying Digital Citizenship in with Course Subject Matter Content
Tying Digital Citizenship in with Course Subject Matter Content
The original version of this assignment was for the Digital Citizenship Teaching Digital Ethics assignment. I revised it a little to give the students more control of the issues(s) they chose to address. This assignment would serve to increase Business Law students' awareness of digital issues while keeping the focus on course learning objectives.
Online Learning Discussion
Online Learning Discussion
This example links students to a California Community College video which identifies the common myths associated with online learning. In the video, it appears that actual students are doing the talking, which makes it more relatable. Asking the students to comment on the myths increases the chances that students will process and retain the success strategies rather than just passively watch the video.
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