After completing the week of studies according to the lesson plan below, students will understand the relationship between digital literacies and facilitation and recognize that both the facilitator and the learner have responsibilities regarding digital literacy in relation to successful online and blended learning.
Resources:
Eshet, Y. (2004). Digital literacy: A conceptual framework for survival skills in the digital era. Journal of educational multimedia and hypermedia, 13(1), 93-106.https://www.learntechlib.org/p/4793/
Read Eshet’s paper for a holistic definition of what is digital literacy and a review of their five different types of digital literacy: socio-emotional, reproduction, branching, information and photo-visual.
Marín, V. I., & Castaneda, L. (2023). Developing digital literacy for teaching and learning. In Handbook of open, distance and digital education (pp. 1089-1108). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-981-19-2080-6_64.pdf
Marin & Castaneda provide another definition of digital literacy, while also providing specifics on how to incorporate into various levels of education/learning.
Why digital skills are imperative for all of today’s students (economist.com) – blog post in The Economist
12 Best Practices For Online Facilitating (youtube.com)While all best practices are fantastic for general facilitation. Slides 2 & 3 speak to facilitation skills/online presence.
Dr. Andrew B. Campbell (DR.ABC)
Asynchronous Activities:
Cohort to complete required reading as above. Discussion forum based on the prompt of ‘Describe a personal experience with digital literacy and facilitation. Positive or negative, and why?’ throughout the week. Assignment by EOW for students to create a ‘Best Practice’ infographic or document (their choice) regarding facilitation and digital literacy, either from a learner’s or educator’s point of view.
We will assess the assignment by evaluating the participation in the discussion forum and the final submission of the infographic or document. We will be looking to ensure that students demonstrate understanding and engagement with digital literacy and facilitation. The discussion forum will focus on depth of reflection, clarity of communication, and relevance to the prompt. At the same time, the final submission will be assessed on how well it captures best practices and whether it is presented in a clear, visually appealing, or well-structured manner.
For the assessment criteria, we will be looking at
Relevance to Prompt: Does the student cover key aspects of best practices in facilitation and digital literacy?
Depth of Reflection: How deeply does the student analyze their experience? Do they demonstrate a clear understanding of the concepts involved?
Engagement with Peers: Does the student interact with other posts thoughtfully? Are they building upon or challenging ideas shared by their peers?
Clarity and Coherence: Is the post well organized and free from major grammatical or spelling errors?
Synchronous Session:
9/30/24 @ 5 pm PST. We will record for those who can’t make the date/time. PowerPoint will start with an open discussion regarding digital literacy and online/blended learning – what the currently held views/assumptions/thoughts are – followed by an outline of the week’s key learning points. Review of expectations regarding forum discussion and assignment. Q&A.
Technologies we will leverage:
Zoom will be used for the synchronous session as the cohort is familiar with the platform and has experience with Zoom calls within RRU. Canva will be leveraged for presentation material and content creation as it provides open templates that can easily be modified to meet our needs, and we possibly use PowerPoint to tie the presentation content together for the synchronous meeting. RRY LMS for forum discussions, again due to ease of use and familiarity with the cohort.
Timeline and Comms:
Prompt via class News Bulletin regarding the date/time for a synchronous session will be posted on 9/23, along with an email to RRU cohort emails. Synchronous session help is provided on 9/30 via the Zoom link in the News Bulletin. Readings are due to be completed by 10/4, discussion prompts will be posted by 10/1, with the cohort responding by the end of the week, and assignments are due by 10/6. All due dates will be covered in the Synchronous meeting and posted to the News Bulletin forum.
Community of Inquiry (CoI)
1. Teaching Presence
To establish a teaching presence, we will provide clear objectives to the cohort with timely feedback and actively join in on the discussions to help keep students engaged and the chatter flowing. The indicators we will look for for our successful presence Are learners following the course structure well, engaging with feedback, and asking clarifying questions.
2. Social Presence
To establish a social presence, we would encourage the cohort to connect to objectives with scenarios and examples they have faced and be open to sharing them with one another to connect emotionally and socially and foster deeper discussions and interactions.
What indicators will we look for? Is there evidence of social bonds forming? Are students engaging in discussions, both academic and informal?
3. Cognitive Presence
To establish a cognitive presence, we will encourage critical thinking through thought-provoking questions and provide problem-based learning scenarios that require knowledge application. We will look for indicators such as: Are learners demonstrating understanding of the material? Are they applying their knowledge critically in discussions and assignments?
September 11, 2024 at 12:40 pm
Hi Jessica and Radhika AKA Team Orange,
Here is my feedback on your draft plan using the list of items to be included from the assignment description:
1. A learning objective for the week. I very much like your topic exploring the relationship between digital literacies and facilitation, however this isn’t a learning objective as it is written. A learning objective needs to identify what the learner will be able to do at the end of the learning experience. This resource https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/catalogs/tip-sheets/blooms-taxonomy will help you with choosing verbs to describe your objective (i.e. will students be able to describe or analyze or explain etc…)
2. The learning resource and/or reading you have found and will be using for your facilitation week. These look good and I really like how you did a little explanation of each resource and that it’s a mix of different media (text and video)
3. A brief description of your asynchronous activity including potential discussion prompts. Well done on a solid prompt. I can’t wait to read about peoples’ experiences! In terms of your assignment, it’s great to have students doing a real exercise to cement their learning. How will you assess the assignment? Or will you? Do you have assessment criteria developed for the assignment? Perhaps it could be self-assessed against the criteria?
4. A brief description of your synchronous session. Excellent idea to have a session to really clarify expectations. I think there is also an opportunity here for some student participation if you hadn’t already planned for it, that way your synchronous session covers off more than Teaching Presence alone.
5. Date and time for your synchronous session. TBD I think?
6. The technologies you will use and why you have chosen them. Well done – good rationales for your choices here.
7. A timeline of the flow of your week including when and how you plan to communicate with learners. This looks good and makes sense to me.
8. How do you plan to establish Teaching, Social, and Cognitive presence, and what indicators will you be looking for that each presence has been achieved in your week? Good descriptions for how you’re going to do this!
Really great work putting together a thoughtful plan!