Engaged Learners and Digital Citizens : Critical Outcomes for Teaching and Learning [1 ed.] 9781443898263, 9781443897303

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Engaged Learners and Digital Citizens

Engaged Learners and Digital Citizens: Critical Outcomes for Teaching and Learning By

Brad Garner

Engaged Learners and Digital Citizens: Critical Outcomes for Teaching and Learning By Brad Garner This book first published 2016 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2016 by Brad Garner All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9730-2 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9730-3

To my granddaughters Hannah, Samantha, Kait, and Stella … For whom the digital future will be an amazing adventure.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ................................................................................... viii Preface ........................................................................................................ ix Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 Bridging the Digital Divides Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 19 Redefining the Parameters of Knowledge Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 35 Digital Technology Use by Faculty and Students in Higher Education Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 67 Moving Forward to Digital Citizenship Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 83 Digital Citizenship and Course Design Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 104 Many Ways to Integrate Digital Technology Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 132 The Sense of Urgency References ............................................................................................... 144 Name Index ............................................................................................. 172 Subject Index ........................................................................................... 177

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1: Assessment Planning Format ..................................................... 89 Figure 2: Sample Assignments and Cognitive Affordances ...................... 92

PREFACE

The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential. —Steve Ballmer, Former CEO, Microsoft

The prospect of writing a book about digital technology was a daunting task. I knew this from the outset, but I proceeded boldly into the arena. Two things occurred to me during this process: (1) although I considered myself to be reasonably knowledgeable in this area, I was astounded to find out how much I did not know and how much I was learning, and (2) with every word I chose, I had a growing sense of sadness that much of what I was writing would soon be outdated. The emergence of new discoveries and thought processes redefines this area of investigation on almost a daily basis. These considerations have led me to propose what I call the Three Universal Truths About Digital Technology: 1. Everybody knows something about digital technology. 2. Nobody knows everything there is to know about digital technology. 3. We all have more to learn. These insights brought great comfort to me, convincing me that readers out there may pick up this book and gather some small piece of information or idea about digital technology and teaching that had previously escaped them. About the time that I finished writing my first draft and was about to begin the arduous task of editing, I attended a seminar conducted by a valued colleague on the topic of social media as a teaching tool in higher education. During his presentation, my colleague referenced several resources that were new to me. My immediate response was one of shock and horror. I began to question my own capabilities and wondered whether this book would actually have anything to contribute to the professional literature. On a more selfish level, I saw myself becoming the laughingstock of higher education (“Who does he think he is…writing a book on this topic?”). Human reactions, but embarrassing nonetheless.

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I then moved on to a more rational response, realizing that my Three Universal Truths were playing themselves out before my very eyes. I realized that in spite of my learning curve over the past year, I would always have more to learn about digital technology. In fact, I then concocted the Fourth Universal Truth…we should never stop learning about digital technology. There you have it—my confessions about learning and writing over the past year. It is still very likely that this book will be outdated rather soon. It is also likely that I will attend other seminars or read other books that contain information that is new and revolutionary to my way of thinking. Again I must remind myself that this journey of discovery and rediscovery will be the pattern of growth and change well into the future. For all of us, we can only hope to remain open and excited by new developments as they make their way into our personal and professional lives. The premise of this book is deceptively simple. It is a belief that faculty in higher education have the opportunity and the responsibility to provide learning experiences that not only include the knowledge bases of their academic disciplines but also highlight the impact and influence of digital technology. The deceptive part of this premise is the reality that a vast number of faculty members will need to improve their digital game dramatically to make this happen at any time in the foreseeable future. To take this assumption even further, I suggest that higher education must become definitively more digital to remain relevant and vital in the future.

CHAPTER ONE BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDES

It is dangerously destabilizing to have half the world on the cutting edge of technology while the other half struggles on the bare edge of survival. —Bill Clinton, Former U.S. President

Think back, for a moment, to the year 2001. That’s right, the year just after the dreaded, yet uneventful, Y2K phenomenon. This was a time before the launching of Facebook, Twitter, Skype, YouTube, Google Chrome, Firefox, and the iTunes Store. In that same year, Wikipedia was first launched, and Microsoft released Windows XP. Tablets and smartphones were only in the early stages of development, and Apple announced the debut of their new portable MP3 player, the iPod. This all seems like ancient history as we reflect on the many ways in which digital technology has dramatically changed the ways we think and act. For readers who may live and work in a digitally rich environment and have access to the latest technology, it might be difficult to imagine a lifestyle that does not include the levels of convenience, access to information, and connectivity that technology affords us on a daily basis. In the midst of this digital world, it is very easy to complain about websites that do not load as quickly as we think they should or apps that do not contain all the functionalities that we desire at a given moment. As we slowly and unconsciously become dependent on the speed, convenience, and accessibility of digital technology, our tolerance for anything less continues to diminish at a rapid pace.

Exploring the Digital Divides Immersed in our own digital life experiences, it is easy to lose perspective on the larger issue of global access related to the use of technology. Conversations on this topic acknowledge an ever-expanding digital divide between the haves and the have-nots. The origin of the term digital divide has been attributed to a variety of sources, including Lloyd Morrisett, one of the founders of the Sesame Workshop and the Sesame

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Street television program (Hoffman, Novak, and Schlosser 2001). Gunkel (2003), however, reports that early references to the Digital Divide can also be found in the book The Emperor's Virtual Clothes: The Naked Truth About Internet Culture (Moore 1995), and the National Telecommunications and Information Agency’s (1995) publication Falling Through the Net: A Survey of the ‘Have-nots’ in Rural and Urban America. Gunkel et al. (2003) described the Digital Divide in this way: Persistent gaps between developed and developing nations, as well as gaps domestically along socioeconomic, geographic, educational, racial, and gender lines, have broadly come to be known as the ‘Digital Divide’—a term that both names these disparities and stands as a marker for the concerns about them. (92)

Carvin (2000) suggested that the Digital Divide may be the “civil rights issue of the new millennium” (56). A key to understanding the impact of the Digital Divide is to assess the level at which people around the world have access to the key portal of the digital world: the Internet. Only 39.3% of the total world’s population currently has Internet access (i.e., 21.3% in Africa, 31.7% in Asia, 68.6% in Europe, 84.9% in North America). On an encouraging note, these figures represent a 676.3% increase in accessibility between 2000 and 2014. Those expanded rates of service take on more significance when we consider that Africa demonstrated a 5,219% in Internet service, the Middle East demonstrated a 3060.9% increase in Internet service, and Asia demonstrated a 1006.8% increase in Internet service during that same span of 15 years (Internet World Stats 2016). Initiatives currently underway seek to categorize Internet access as a basic human right connected to the freedoms of speech, economic development, and assembly (LaRue 2011). It is reasonable to hope that these efforts will promote ongoing expansion and availability of Internet services in countries around the world. Less certain, however, are the political and economic outcomes of such efforts. Hargittai (2003) cogently described the manner in which Internet access has simultaneously become a political and economic tool and a weapon that can be used to enhance or deny opportunity: In a society where knowledge-intensive activities are an increasingly important component of the economy, the distribution of knowledge across the population is increasingly linked to stratification. The mass diffusion of the Internet across the population has led many to speculate about the potential effects of the new medium on society at large. Enthusiasts have heralded the potential benefits of the technology suggesting that it will

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reduce inequality by lowering the barriers to information allowing people of all backgrounds to improve their human capital, expand their social networks, search for and find jobs, have better access to health information and otherwise improve their opportunities and enhance their life chances. In contrast, others caution that the differential spread of the Internet across the population will lead to increasing inequalities improving the prospects of those who are already in privileged positions while denying opportunities for advancement to the underprivileged. (822)

Several statistical indices have been created by the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ICT) as a means of tracking digital technology use around the world and the status of the Digital Divide (Kolpashnikova 2009). Two examples include the ICT Opportunity Index (ICT-OI) and the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). Using statistical formulas, the ICT-OI and DOI provide a country-by-country index and world ranking in relation to digital opportunities. The ICT-OI focuses on three clusters of indicators: Access (e.g., percentage of households with a computer), Use (e.g., percentage of individuals using the Internet), and Skills (e.g., adult literacy rate). Individual countries are ranked based on scores reflecting their overall performance on these indicators (International Telecommunications Union 2007). These data capture the most basic parameters of the Digital Divide and provide a means to assess progress on a country-by-country and global basis. The DOI was originally designed by the ICT (2007) as a tool to monitor the status and changes in the Digital Divide. A derived numerical score (by country) is generated based on three clusters of criteria: Opportunity (e.g., percentage of population covered by cellular telephony, mobile cellular tariffs as a percentage of per capita income), Infrastructure (e.g., proportion of households with a computer, proportion of households with Internet access), and Utilization (e.g., proportion of individuals that use the Internet, ratios of fixed broadband, mobile broadband and total Internet users). As of 2007, the countries ranked in the top ten, with the highest levels of digital availability, were the Republic of Korea, Japan, Denmark, Iceland, Singapore, Netherlands, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (International Telecommunications Union 2007). There is little argument about the significance of the Digital Divide and its dramatic impact around the world. Part of the challenge, however, according to Warschauer (2003), is that the Digital Divide is generally defined in a binary fashion (i.e., haves and have-nots) without due consideration of the varied ways and levels at which people might possibly use digital technology. One of the first to dig deeper into this matter,

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Hargittai (2002) proposed what she called a Second-Level Digital Divide, which reflects the manner in which individuals choose to use or have the skills to make use of technology. So even though an individual may have access to the necessary hardware, software, and the Internet, other factors may dictate the level at which they are able to accomplish what is needed or possible with digital technology (van Dijk 2012). Following the conceptualization of the Second-Level Digital Divide as a perspective for describing engagement with technology, researchers have endeavored to create (1) typologies for the various categories of users and (2) analyses of varied demographic groupings and their varied engagements with technology. We will examine several examples of these approaches as way of understanding the varied types of impact imposed by the Second-Level Digital Divide.

Types of Digital Users Consider the vast and varied potential digital technology users around the world. These individuals will quite obviously differ along a number of unique personal dimensions (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, educational level, income, interest in using technology). Taking away the element of accessibility for a moment (i.e., haves vs. have-nots), how can we make sense of the ways in which this vastly diverse body of individuals approaches the use of technology in daily life? Davis (1989) endeavored to create a systemic model to describe and systematize the level at which individuals might choose to use technology. The resulting Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is focused on two key variables that affect the levels at which individuals engage with technology. Perceived usefulness is defined as “the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job [or daily activity] performance” (320). Perceived ease-of-use is defined as “the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of effort” (320). So, for example, imagine that I find myself in a position to consider whether or not to learn and use the newly available SuperGizmoTech device. According to the TAM, I will give consideration to its potential worth by asking myself: (1) “Will learning to use the SuperGizmoTech device make my life easier and my work more efficient?” and (2) “How difficult will it be, and how much time will it take, for me to learn how to use the SuperGizmoTech device effectively?” All other things being equal, I will make my decision to use or not to use this device based on these criteria. In other words, I will decide whether to engage with this

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particular form of technology based on a pain to gain ratio (i.e., is the pain of learning this new technology worth the potential gain that I may experience?). On a larger scale, it is necessary to consider whether individuals and organizations have the ability to remain adaptive in relation to the ongoing and inevitable changes in technology. The maxim that “technique lags behind technology” (attributed to James Wetherbe of Texas Tech University by Twigg 2001) is one that we should all remember, as it often dramatically affects the degree of pain associated with digital innovations. Twigg (2000) provided the following examples of the manner in which this formula presents itself in everyday life and in history: x

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During the American Revolutionary War, the British soldiers, dressed in bright red uniforms, clustered together in a style that had made sense doing battle with swords and shields but made them vulnerable to the Americans' new style of fighting. Feelings of superiority prevented them from seeing why they were losing the war. Faced with the invention of the telegraph, the first reaction of the Pony Express was to buy faster horses. When that failed, they tried to hire better riders. They did not realize that the world had changed, and they went out of business. The first ATM was located inside a bank and was available only during banking hours. Real innovation occurred when it was placed outside the bank, available 24 hours a day. (1)

These examples illustrate the level at which human nature often motivates us to continue engaging in certain patterns of behavior that may no longer be productive. At the same time, we might also choose to resist pursuing new and ultimately more productive courses of action. With this in mind, Btrandtzæg (2010) conducted a meta-analysis of the professional literature to explore the idea of a media-user typology. He defined typology as “a categorization of users into distinct user types that describes the various ways in which individuals use different media, reflecting a varying amount of activity/content preferences, frequency of use and variety of use” (941). The meta-analysis suggested 22 different user typologies reported in the professional literature, containing a wide variety of labels and criteria. Btrandtzæg concluded that user typologies are largely qualitative in nature and driven by frequency of use, variety of use, and content preference. As a frame of reference, consider the work of Btrandtzæg, Heim, and Karahasanoviü (2011). The researchers used cluster analysis on survey responses from a sample of over 12,000 respondents, aged 16–74, and proposed the following set of user typologies:

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x Non-users (42% of the sample)—people who do not use the Internet on a regular basis x Sporadic users (18% of the sample)—people who occasionally use the Internet for specific searches or email access x Entertainment users (10% of the sample)—people who use Internet radio and TV and who download games x Instrumental users (18% of the population)—people who use the Internet for specific purposes such as banking, travel, and purchasing x Advanced users (12% of the sample)—aggressive Internet users who have the skill to use the tools and resources for a variety of purposes The Pew Internet and Life Project (Horrigan 2007) took the types of technology user to a more refined level by identifying those who are elite users, those who are middle-of-the-road users, and those who have few tech assets: Elite tech users (31% of American adults) x Omnivores—8% (i.e., voracious consumers of all types of digital technology) x Connectors—7% (i.e., individuals who are cell phones and online tools to connect with people) x Lackluster veterans—8% (i.e., frequent users of the Internet who are less frequent users of the Internet who are not thrilled about digital technology x Productivity enhancers—8% (i.e., individuals who use technology to enhance productivity and learn new things) Middle-of-the-road tech users (20% of American adults) x Mobile centrics—10% (i.e., people totally enamored with the functionalities of their cell phones) x Connected but hassled—10% (i.e., people invested in technology but hassled by the intrusive connectivity) Few tech assets (49% of American adults) x Inexperienced experimenters—8% (i.e., people who occasionally use technology and would do more given the experience) x Light but satisfied—15% (i.e., people who have some technology skills but technology does not play a central role in their lives) x Indifferents—11% (i.e., people who have cell phones and online access but only use them intermittently)

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x Off the network—15% (i.e., people who don’t have cell phones or online access and are content without having either) Raphael (2009) suggested a different typology that cleverly analogizes levels of digital tool usage as an individual’s zodiac sign of the twentyfirst century: x Digital collaborators (8% of the population)—people who are always engaged and sharing via the Internet, including their blogs and community forums x Ambivalent networkers (7% of the population)—people who use the Internet as much as the digital collaborators but enjoy it less, seeing the Internet as an intrusive force in their lives x Media movers (7% of the population)—people who are less connected than the previous two groups but very likely to be sharing photos and videos on a regular basis x Roving nodes (9% of the population)—people who want to be engaged and connected but mostly using email and chats x Mobile newbies (8% of the population)—people who are new to the mobile digital world, focusing mostly on cell phone use with an occasional text message or photo x Desktop veterans (13% of the population)—people who see the Internet primarily as a source of information and see the cell phone in their pocket mainly as a tool for making calls, but would rather use a landline if possible x Drifting surfers (14% of the population)—people with no real loyalty to using a cell phone or the Internet x Information encumbered (10% of the population)—individuals for whom the entire realm of digital technology is a troublesome burden x Tech indifferent (10% of the population)—people who are totally unimpressed by the capabilities of digital technology x Off the network (14% of the population)—people with no interest or inclination to be connected with or use digital technology These studies and analyses provide an interesting and somewhat entertaining perspective on the ways in which people engage (or disengage) with digital technology. According to van Deursen and van Dijk (1999, 2011), they share several common characteristics: (1) those who have a lack of digital experience that is attributable to fear, a limited interest, or a general dislike of technology, (2) those who do not have the

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equipment/digital connections necessary to use technology, (3) those who are unable to use digital technology due to limited skills or training, and (4) those who simply have limited opportunities for access as a means to develop their skills further. Of the elements that we will examine in this text, trying to understand and predict the manner in which a diverse global population will engage with technology is by far the most intriguing and complex. Bagozzi, Davis, and Warshaw (1992) provided an often quoted and useful framework for thinking about this complex question: Because new technologies…are complex and an element of uncertainty exists in the minds of decision makers with respect to the successful adoption of them, people form attitudes and intentions toward trying to learn to use the new technology prior to initiating efforts directed at using. Attitudes towards usage and intentions to use may be ill-formed or lacking in conviction or else may occur only after preliminary strivings to learn to use the technology evolve. Thus, actual usage may not be a direct or immediate consequence of such attitudes and intentions. (667)

It may be helpful to think about where you fit into these digital user typologies. The challenge for all of us is to make that assessment, to be dissatisfied with the status quo, and then to create personalized strategies that help us move along to the next higher levels of digital comfort and performance.

Varied Demographic Groupings Along with its focus on user typologies, research has focused on a variety of demographic groupings including gender, chronological age, race/ethnicity, income, and education. We will examine these variables as they relate to the use of digital technology. Kennedy, Wellman, and Klement (2003) have captured the essence of this issue: Most importantly, people’s social characteristics are not disposable baggage to be checked at the security counter when they go online. People come to the Internet as people and not as minds-and-fingers devoid of gender, socioeconomic status, race and the like. They have backgrounds that inform their access to the Internet and how they use the Internet. They have needs, constraints and abilities that affect what they want to do online and what they can do. (165)

It is important to note that these identified demographic variables are interactive in nature, and it is often difficult to isolate individual variables

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inside a research sample. Nevertheless, we can summarize cogent research on each of these demographic groupings.

Gender Research on gender equality in accessibility, frequency, and level of digital technology use has been significant and ongoing. The United Nations, in their report The State of Broadband 2014 (Broadband Commission of the United Nations 2014), made the following observations about the wide-ranging benefits of ensuring that women around the world gain ongoing access to digital technology: Gender equality in access to broadband is essential for empowering women and girls through equal access to new technologies to acquire ICT skills and better-paid jobs, access information, and redress some͒of the inequalities they face in their everyday lives. If women͒ and girls are unable to enjoy the same access to ICTs, and relevant content, they can find themselves at a serious disadvantage in becoming fully literate, learning about and exercising their rights, participating in public͒and policy-making processes͒and accessing skilled jobs. (42)

This report implicitly acknowledges the worldwide discrepancy in access afforded to women as compared with men. Further, it suggests that gender-based discrepancies are significantly more prominent in developing countries. Data indicate that 16% fewer women than men in developing countries use the Internet, as opposed to a 2% differential in developed countries. Discussions regarding gender-based inequities and digital technology are not a new development (Cooper 2006; Cooper and Weaver 2008; Cotten, Anderson, and Tufekci 2009; Gil-Juárez, Feliu, and Vitores 2012; Kennedy, Wellman, and Klement 2003; Tarrés and Montenegro 2015). A significant aspect of these inequities is a persistent process of attribution that favors men using technology (Cooper, 2006). This process begins with gender stereotypes (i.e., expectations for the ways in which males and females should engage with technology), followed by attribution patterns (i.e., attributing success or failure to prevailing stereotypes), resulting in computer anxiety (i.e., emotional responses and thought patterns related to the use of technology) and ultimately a collection of personal attitudes about computer use that correspondingly have an impact on computer performance. Cooper (2006) provided the following antidote to the continuance of gender bias in relation to digital technology:

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Chapter One Solving the problem of the gender Digital Divide will not be easy. In order to allow girls to benefit from the most important innovations of modern society, we must even the playing field and encourage girls and boys to partake of technology as a function of their interest, not as a function of their gender. (332)

Research has provided support for Cooper’s assertions that attribution affects personal perceptions and abilities related to digital technology. Hargittai and Shafer (2006) addressed what they called the “user side of the equation” (445). They asked a sample of adults, varying in age, to assess their own perceived skills and to engage in a variety of digital tasks (e.g., finding job/career information, purchasing a used car, finding music to listen to online). The results indicate that the men had more confidence in their own skill levels than the women did. Interestingly, however, the men and women did not demonstrate significantly different skill levels on the digital tasks. Faulkner (2001), drawing on the work of Cockburn (1992), suggested that discrepancies related to opportunity and technology are evidenced in a variety of rather subtle but significant ways. Examples include strong gender-based divisions of labor (based on the strong connection between masculinity and technical skill), cultural images of technology that are pervasively associated with masculinity, and the gender identities associated with men who play and work with technologies. As might be expected, the degree to which gender-related elements of the Digital Divide can be observed affecting the lives of individuals often covaries with other demographic variables (e.g., chronological age, geographic location, education, income). For example, a woman living in a male-dominated culture may have fewer ongoing opportunities to learn and use digital technology tools than her counterparts in cultures where women experience greater levels of independence, encouragement, and opportunity. It is reasonable to ask, “Are things changing in relation to digital technologies and gender?” Emerging studies indicate some positive movement in relation to perceptions and opportunities for women and technology (cf. Dresang, Gross, and Holt 2007; Li, Glass, and Records 2008; Remmele and Holthaus 2013; van Deursen and van Dijk 2011). However, much remains to be done on a global level so that women have equal opportunities to access and use digital technology.

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Chronological Age In 2001, Marc Prensky published an article proposing a division of the world’s population into two distinct groups, which he called Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives. Digital natives, people born after roughly 1982, “represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age” (1). Digital immigrants are “those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology” (1–2). Prensky was quick to point out that even though digital immigrants may learn, at some level, to adapt themselves to a growing digital culture, they tend to retain a telltale “accent” that distinguishes them from digital natives. Prensky’s initial distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants, in some ways reminiscent of the generational work of Howe and Strauss (2000), was an early attempt to make sense of the emerging interaction between digital technology and chronologically distinct groups of potential users. Since 2001, Prensky’s article has been cited over 10,000 times in a variety of publications! The tenor of these citations range from a tacit acceptance of the native–immigrant dichotomy (Herther 2009; O’Brien and Scharber 2010; Stucker 2005) to systematic research-based arguments that debunk these designations and propose that they are inappropriate or unnecessary (Bennett, Maton, and Kervin 2008; Helsper and Eynon 2010; Kennedy et al. 2010). One of the more interesting takeoffs on the digital immigrant–digital native scenario was provided by White and Le Cornu (2015), who proposed that the designations of Digital Visitors and Digital Residents are more helpful descriptors. Digital visitors are “those who understand the Web as akin to an untidy garden tool shed. They have defined a goal or task and go into the shed to select an appropriate tool to attain their goal. Task over, the tool is returned to the shed. It may not have been perfect for the task, but they are happy to make do so long as some progress is made” (5). Digital residents, on the other hand, “see the Web as a place, perhaps like a park or a building in which there are clusters of friends and colleagues whom they can approach and with who they can share information about their life and work. A proportion of their lives is actually lived out online where the distinction between online and off-line is increasingly blurred” (5–6). These distinctions provide a more useful way of looking at digital tool use as they extend beyond simplistic agebased distinctions and add references to mindsets and lifestyle choices.

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Helsper and Eynon (2010) concurred that it is overly simplistic to use chronological age as a predictive variable in determining the level at which an individual might have the predilection for and corresponding skills to make effective use of digital technology. Their survey, however, demonstrated differences in the types of digital activities common to various age groups. Younger participants (i.e., ages 14–25) were significantly more likely to engage with the Internet for tasks related to entertainment, fact checking, person-to-person networking, and social networking. Older participants (i.e., older than 35) tended to use the Internet for shopping, investment, e-government, and travel-related activities. After an additional examination of their data, however, the researchers pointed out that experience is a key factor in digital tool use. Simply stated, the more an individual uses the Internet, the more likely that person is to continue to use the Internet because key digital features become integrated more easily into their ongoing daily activities. In assessing Prensky’s (2001) delineation of digital natives and digital immigrants, it is important to remember the level at which the digital landscape has exploded since their introduction (McCracken 2011). The skill set necessary to be considered digitally competent is rapidly changing, affected by new digital tools and operations available for application in a variety of venues. In recent years, researchers have made efforts to add increased precision to observations about digital tool usage. Kennedy et al. (2010) performed a cluster analysis of survey responses from a sample of more than 2,500 college students between 17 and 26 years old. They identified four categories of digital users: (1) power users—roughly 14% of the sample—who make frequent use of a wide range of technological tools, (2) ordinary users—roughly 27% of the sample—who are standard users of common Web and mobile technology but generally avoid Web 2.0 publishing and file sharing activities, (3) irregular users—roughly 14% of the sample—who are standard users of common Web and mobile technology and also use Web 2.0 publishing, and (4) basic users—roughly 45% of the sample—who regularly use standard mobile features, infrequently use new and emerging technologies, and use standard Web technologies less often than once a week. The data indicate differentiated use of Web, mobile, and emerging technologies even among individuals who would be described as digital natives. One final observation about chronological age and digital technology is related to user patterns among older adults. This consideration has become increasingly relevant in light of the increased prevalence of aging populations around the world. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2002), by the year 2050,

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21% of the world’s population will be age 60 or older (as compared with 10% in the year 2000). Granted, many of the 60-year-olds in the year 2050 are likely to have some level of technological competence; older citizens are demonstrating ever-increasing levels of digital skills (Pew Research Center 2014). At the same time, however, it is reasonable to ask whether these individuals will have access to resources that can help them keep pace with emerging technology. It would appear that when talking about chronological age in relation to technology use, personal choice (or need) is a more important variable than membership in an arbitrary age-based category (e.g., native, immigrant). Additionally, from an actuarial perspective, the number of digital natives will continue to grow while the number of digital immigrants will necessarily decline as time passes (i.e., today’s natives will always be natives). This reality calls us to focus on ways that anyone, regardless of age and given the motivation and need to use digital technology, can realize that goal in a quick and efficient manner. The question is whether today’s digital natives will be inclined to remain digitally current as they grow older.

Race, Ethnicity, Income, and Education The demographic elements of race, ethnicity, income, and education have been routinely intermingled and cross-tabulated in relation to their connection with the use of digital technology (Enoch and Soker 2006; Heemskerk et al. 2005; Junco, Merson, and Salter 2010; Seckin 2010). Although this is a reasonable and accurate approach, the results are often somewhat difficult to interpret. Zickuhr and Smith (2012) examined digital tool use among individuals grouped by age, race/ethnicity, income, and educational attainment. Some of the most dramatic findings are the increases in Internet use across all groups (e.g., men/women, household income levels, white/black/Hispanic, all levels of educational attainment) between the years 2000 and 2011. Those least likely to use the Internet, however, were individuals who preferred to take the survey in Spanish rather than English, had less than a high school education, or lived in households making less than $30,000 a year. These data illustrate the reality that although Internet access and digital technology use is increasing, groups of individuals are still not able to take full advantage of those opportunities. These limitations in access seemingly have a strong connection to race/ethnicity, levels of educational attainment, and income. This study also documented the increasing influence of mobile technology as a factor affecting the Digital Divide. With the passage of

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time, increasing numbers of individuals who historically have been limited in their Internet access (e.g., young adults, minorities, those with lower levels of educational attainment and income levels) are now beginning to use mobile devices with greater regularity to gain access. Zickuhr and Smith (2012) referred to this phenomenon as a “mobile difference”: Once someone has a wireless device, she becomes much more active in how she uses the Internet—not just with wireless connectivity, but also with wired devices. The same holds true for the impact of wireless connections and people’s interest in using the Internet to connect with others. These mobile users go online not just to find information but to share what they find and even create new content much more than they did before. (14–15)

These authors also pointed to differences in the way that people use mobile devices. For example, Hispanic and black/non-Hispanic individuals are more likely than their white counterparts to use their smartphones to send or receive text messages, take pictures, send or receive email, play a game, play music, access a social networking site, watch a video, post a video, engage in online banking, and participate in a video call or chat. James (2007) also suggested that mobile telephony presents a significant opportunity in responding to the challenges of the Digital Divide. In a companion article, James (2008) pointed out one of the key advantages of mobile technology in creating digital opportunities is that it requires limited or no literacy skills to operate (as compared with the Internet and email, which require literacy and language skills, computer literacy, and technical competence). This observation is helpful in that it points toward data-based evidence for a potential strategy for addressing the digital divides. We examine this issue in detail in Chapter Seven.

People with Disabilities Another demographic group that deserves attention in any discussion of digital divides is people with disabilities. The World Health Organization (2016), in addressing the more than one billion people who experience a disability (27% of the world’s population at widely varying degrees), uses the following definition: Disabilities is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an

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individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations.

There are three major challenges in fully understanding digital access issues in relation to people with disabilities. First, the term disabilities covers a tremendous array of challenges, including intellectual deficits, learning problems, sensory deficits, movement-related challenges, and social/emotional/behavioral difficulties. So although someone may have a particular type of disabling condition, that condition does not automatically have an impact on the level at which the person can engage with digital technology (i.e., the disability might affect the person’s access to technology). Second, it is often difficult to determine whether individuals with disabilities are prevented from gaining full access to technology or whether they lack the ability to use it. For example, person with an intellectual disability is used to describe individuals with an extremely wide range of challenges and abilities. Some people with intellectual disabilities live independently and have full-time employment. Others experience a collection of challenges (e.g., language and communication, mobility and dexterity, social and behavioral challenges) that could overwhelm their ability to engage effectively with digital technology. The label itself is not a valid predictor of technology access or use. Third, for many individuals with disabilities, gaining access and the skills necessary to engage with technology will also entail the availability of appropriate training and adaptive equipment. Although this task is not insurmountable, the availability of these resources is often a difficult obstacle to overcome. The United Nations Broadband Commission (2013) identified four major obstacles to increasing access to digital technologies for persons with disabilities: (1) the cost of assistive technology, including hardware and software, assessment, training, and support services; (2) a generalized lack of accessibility technologies (e.g., availability of screen readers in languages represented around the world); (3) too few policies designed to foster the widespread availability of digital technologies for people with disabilities (e.g., only 36% of countries currently have accessibility policies related to people with disabilities); and (4) the limited availability and use of digital technology for people with disabilities, which in and of itself is a limiting factor in the promotion of social, educational, and economic equalities. Clearly, disabilities provide yet another component of the Digital Divide that will require ongoing attention and action.

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Higher Education and the Digital Divides Many of the challenges that we have discussed related to digital divides can have a dramatic impact on the level at which individuals can take full advantage of higher education. The following example offers perspective on making digital advancements part of the higher education experience without also providing the necessary resources and support for faculty and students: …it’s not surprising that working-class students, especially students of color, often do not have internet access at home. Those who do are more likely to use dial-up services or to work on older, slower computers. Colleges and universities try to address this problem by providing open labs and wireless internet access in college buildings. But even with reasonably good technology available on campus, many of our students struggle to complete online assignments, access readings and other course materials online, or do projects using new media. Why? The obvious answer is time….Most of our students live off-campus, sometimes as much as an hour away, and most work, often 40 hours a week or more. They come to campus for classes, and they have difficulty finding time to stay or to come back to access computers. Often, the time they have to do schoolwork is the middle of the night, when campus labs are closed. But even when they can find time to work on campus computers, these students come into the lab with limited experience, so doing internet-based assignments is harder. They may not be familiar with their own…But for many, catching up digitally is a slow and daunting process. (Linkon 2011)

It is important to consider the manner in which the digital divides affect curricular decision-making in higher education. For example, there will undoubtedly be students enrolled in colleges and universities who do not have ongoing access to a computer and have limited skills in using computers. This is not a reflection on their abilities, nor does it address whether it is appropriate for these students to be enrolled in a college or university. This reality, however, will have an impact on the level at which they will be able to engage effectively with resources or assignments that require digital technology. Consider an example of this dilemma. I was teaching an online class that routinely required the electronic submission of written assignments. This was an entry-level course in an associate degree program. The members of this class were adult learners, many of whom were returning to an educational setting for the first time in years. One particular student

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persisted in typing into a visual editing box rather than attaching the assignment as a document. As the instructor, I thought it would be helpful to advise this student that in this class, and in future classes, her assignments should be attached in the form of a “Word doc.” Her response was, “What is a Word doc?” This anecdote is not intended to be a negative judgment of this particular student. In all other ways, she was an excellent and engaged student. Further investigation revealed, however, that she did not have ongoing access to a computer and was not versed in the skills necessary to prepare a formatted document using a word processor. This scenario is an example of how the Second Level Digital Divide can present itself in a very awkward and untimely manner. This student, who is otherwise highly qualified and motivated, did not have the skills necessary to engage with the writing assignments in this online course. Fortunately, we were able to work out these challenges within the confines of the course. This student is but one example of many students who, otherwise qualified and motivated, may be hampered in achieving their goals because of the digital divides. We explore the implications of the digital divides and higher education further in Chapter Three.

Talking Points The preceding analysis of digital divides is intended to provide context for the remainder of our exploration related to the use of technology by the primary residents of higher education: faculty and students. In the remaining chapters of this text, we focus on the ways in which faculty can play a key role in ensuring that all their students have the ability to exercise the roles and responsibilities of digital citizenship. As we discuss, achieving this goal requires that faculty members continually learn new ways to use technology effectively and intentionally in their teaching. In this chapter, we have discussed the following topics: x The presence of a digital divide that affects individuals in varied locations around the world; they are denied access to digital technology and all that it affords x The existence of a second level digital divide that encompasses the manner in which individuals choose to use or have the skills to make use of technology x Demographic factors that have traditionally limited access and use of digital technology, including gender, chronological age, race/ethnicity, income, education, and the presence of a disability

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Reflective Questions 1. What evidence of digital divides (i.e., access, use) do you observe among the people with whom you work on a daily basis? 2. What are the ways in which your organization assists employees in enhancing their digital skills?

CHAPTER TWO REDEFINING THE PARAMETERS OF KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. —Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), English Poet and Essayist

Beginning with Plato’s Academy, and onward to the trivium and quadrivium, John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University (1852), and Derek Bok’s (2013) analysis of the current state of higher education, knowledge and its application have always been valued elements of the college experience (McCluskey and Winter 2012). Although couched in a variety of ways (e.g., competencies, skills, dispositions, learning outcomes, levels of understanding, Bloom’s taxonomy), higher education learning structures balance themselves on the degree to which they can effectively deliver graduates who have mastered collections of knowledge in their chosen areas of study.

An Ever-Growing Body of Knowledge The definition and acquisition of knowledge is a rapidly moving target. Buckminster Fuller (1982), in his classic text, Critical Path, suggested the evolutionary Knowledge Doubling Curve, whereby the quantity of available knowledge doubles in ever-shortening intervals of time. For example, he theorized that from the Year One until the Year 1900, the quantity of available knowledge in the world doubled every 100 years. By the end of World War II, the pace of knowledge creation had increased such that it was doubling every twenty-five years. Latest estimates, in the twenty-first century, suggest that the volume of available knowledge is doubling every thirteen months. This explosion of knowledge and accessibility, which started in a linear path, is now exponential. Futurist Ray Kurzweil has predicted that, in the near future, the quantities of available knowledge will double every twelve hours (Wolf 2008).

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Kurzweil (2014) also suggested that this phenomenon is largely attributable to the influence of digital technology, and he predicted continued levels of growth and change well into the foreseeable future. As a spinoff of the knowledge-doubling phenomenon, consider the speculation that identified individuals at points in history were considered to have “known everything” at the time that they were alive (Hmolpedia 2015). Some of those identified (in chronological birth order) include philosopher Aristotle (Kharbe 2009), philosopher Roger Bacon (Kidder 1992), mathematician and inventor Leonardo da Vinci (Brass 2004), philosopher and statesman Sir Francis Bacon (Swenson 1998), poet and polemicist John Milton (Jones 2001), mathematician and Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (Findlen 2004), mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (Thomas 2004), inventor Emmanuel Swedenborg (Thayer 1999), philosopher Immanuel Kant (Terras 2003), scientist Thomas Young (Robinson 2007), philosopher John Stuart Mill (Cialdini 1998), paleontologist Joseph Leidy (Warren 1998), mathematician Henri Poincare (Weisberg 2006), economist Thorsten Veblen (Heilbroner 1999), and sociologist/philosopher Max Weber (Grey 2005). These individuals, who lived hundreds of years ago or more, are part of an elite group that could never be replicated in the twenty-first century. With the breadth and scope of knowledge as it now exists and as it will exist in the future, it is inconceivable that any individual in the twenty-first century could ever be considered to have the ability to “know everything.” At the same time, however, it is ironic to note that citizens of the twentyfirst century have immediate access via the Internet to more knowledge than these individuals could have collectively imagined. It is mind boggling to think about what the digital future holds for all of us.

Plentiful and Accessible As knowledge has become more plentiful, it has also become remarkably more accessible. In the digital age, massive amounts of information are quite literally at our fingertips. This enhanced level of accessibility has taken on epic proportions. As we consider the role of technology in higher education, these emerging variables have great significance for faculty as they design courses and for students as they prepare for their lives in an ever-expanding digital environment. In the digital context, several key mechanisms deliver knowledge: x Published websites x Published books

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x Scholarly journals x Wikis x Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) We next explore each knowledge delivery mechanism, focusing on how each one affects the future of teaching in higher education.

Published Websites Closely related to Internet accessibility is the ongoing and growing emergence of published websites as sources of knowledge. Since its inception at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in 1989, the World Wide Web has grown at an amazing pace (Internet World Stats 2016). By 2013, more than one billion websites were operating on the Internet. The CNN news service has reported that these one billion plus websites represent in excess of one trillion individual web pages (Sutter 2011). There is, of course, some level of caution necessary when referring to websites as sources of “knowledge.” For example, the most actively trending search terms on Google during 2014 were related to the death of comedian and actor Robin Williams (Marketing Charts 2014). Following in order were the search terms World Cup, Ebola, Malaysian Airlines, Flappy Bird, ALS ice bucket challenge, ISIS, Ferguson, Frozen, and Ukraine. The most frequently visited sites were search engines (e.g., Google), social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter), portal sites (e.g., for checking email), shopping sites (e.g., Amazon), and usergenerated upload sites (e.g., YouTube). Each of these sites does, in a sense, contain a collection of “knowledge.” The proliferation of published websites is good news and bad news. In writing this book, I often marveled at the extent to which the resources that I needed at any given moment were typically available on the Internet. If I needed a particular article or a statistic and maintained a level of persistence, I could generally find it on a website, quickly verify, and download the information. For most of us, the Internet is a tool to search for a particular piece of information at a given moment in time. We are usually able to find what we are looking for and then move on with our lives. This focused approach may lead us to lose perspective on the mindboggling expansiveness of this digital frontier. This reality will only continue to grow. In the context of our discussions regarding digital technology and higher education, however, it is hoped that course-related use of the

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Internet will go beyond search engines, social networking, and checking email. Being a discerning user of published websites is a skill set that requires practice and guidance. The level at which our students become sophisticated and thoughtful users of the Internet is largely a function of the degree to which faculty members have those same skills and the ability to design and implement thoughtful, purposeful, web-based, digital learning experiences and assignments. An illustration of the ways in which web-based “knowledge” sometimes appears from nowhere, with no data to support it, is the ongoing transformation of Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience. In 1946, Edgar Dale, a librarian at The Ohio State University, published a book entitled Audio-Visual Methods in Teaching. He proposed a hierarchy of learning experiences, graphically organized into the shape of a cone with ten hierarchical levels (e.g., direct purposeful experiences, demonstrations, motion pictures, visual symbols, verbal symbols). If you Google “Dale’s Cone of Experience” (also sometimes generically called the “Cone of Learning”) today, you will be rewarded with a vast number of visual images, in the shape of a cone, in every imaginable color, with a variety of labeling configurations. These versions of the Cone of Experience include a varied number of levels but typically include percentages (referring to the level at which students presumably retain information) for a variety of teaching methods (e.g., students remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear). In reviewing the history of this graphic representation of teaching and learning, scholars have observed that the statistical additions appeared, at some point in time, without the benefit of any reported research-based support (Lord 2007; Molenda 2003). What is somewhat disturbing about this story is the way in which the new, revised, graphic version of Dale’s Cone of Experience is often treated with reverence as a piece of viable teaching and learning research. Molenda summarized these concerns: In summary, the Cone of Experience is essentially a visual metaphor for the idea that learning activities can be placed in broad categories based on the extent to which they convey the concrete referents of real-life experiences. Although it has sometimes been interpreted as advocating the selection of certain media and methods over others (favoring “realism”), such was not Dale’s stated intent. It has also been interpreted by many as a prescriptive formula for selecting instructional media. Dale’s own explanations are nebulous enough to enable a wide variety of interpretations to find support….The fact that the Cone has been taken seriously enough to be used in so many ways testifies to the robustness and attractiveness of Dale’s visual metaphor. (164)

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As has been mentioned throughout this text, the continued emergence of digital technology has resulted in the instantaneous and ever-growing availability of vast amounts of information. As faculty and students increase their levels of engagement with digital information, it is critically important that they develop the skills necessary to discern the level of accuracy and significance found in online material. However, the need to separate fact from fiction existed long before the digital age. In a 1969 lecture to the National Council of Teachers of English, Neil Postman, American author, media theorist, and cultural critic, proposed that “the art of crap-detection” was a term coined by Ernest Hemingway (Manning 1965, 1) and was vital to a reader’s ability to identify useful content from that which is worthless, inaccurate, or vacuous. Postman (1969) posited five qualities that can alert a reader to possible areas of inaccuracy or exaggeration: x Pomposity—using fancy words and phrases to reduce readers’ awareness of a lack of content x Fanaticism—failing to accept any data or positions counter to those of the writer x Inanity—exaggerating explanations on topics that have little value or relevance x Superstition—stating fantasies and false notions authoritatively, as if they are true, without any supporting data x Earthiness—using off-color language to emphasize a point or position The fact that students have established themselves as voracious consumers of the information found on the Internet has been widely documented (Jones et al. 2009; Smith, Rainie, and Zickuhr 2011). As such, faculty should not only facilitate student learning in relation to identified course content but also help students develop the skills necessary to be vigilant critics of the content they encounter in digital venues. Undoubtedly, there are countless examples of misinformation being generated and reported on the Internet every day. A vast majority of these can be categorized as “simply having fun.” At the same time, it is a rather frightening prospect to think about the teaching and learning practices that we choose every day with the assumption they are fully supported by research. As the volume of web-based resources increase, our need for vigilance and discernment must also increase.

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Books Books have long been considered highly reliable and consistent sources of knowledge. In a recent essay in The Economist (2014), the following observations were made about the past and future impact of knowledge packaged in book form: Books…have not merely weathered history; they have helped shape it. The ability they offer to preserve, transmit and develop ideas was taken to another level by Gutenberg and his colleagues. Being able to study printed material at the same time as others studied it and to exchange ideas about it sparked the Reformation; it was central to the Enlightenment and the rise of science. No army has accomplished more than printed textbooks have; no prince or priest has mattered as much as “On the Origin of Species”; no coercion has changed the hearts and minds of men and women as much as the first folio of Shakespeare’s plays. Books read in electronic form will boast the same power and some new ones to boot. The printed book is an excellent means of channeling information from writer to reader; the e-book can send information back as well. Teachers will be able to learn of a pupil’s progress and questions; publishers will be able to see which books are gulped down, which sipped slowly. Already readers can see what other readers have thought worthy of note, and seek out like-minded people for further discussion of what they have read. The private joys of the book will remain; new public pleasures are there to be added. (51)

In light of the increasing role of digital technology, Peter Osnos (2011), a well-known leader in the publishing industry, analyzed the history of the modern book. He observed that, as recently as ten years ago, publishers viewed bookstores as their primary customers. The goal for publishers was simply to place their products at these critical points of distribution. Consumers would then physically visit their local bookstores and make their purchases. With the advent of the Kindle Reader, the iPad, and Amazon.com, however, the dynamics of this relationship have changed dramatically. Now, readers can sit in the comfort of their own homes, go directly to a website, perform an electronic search for a book title or topic or author, and then purchase a book in a format of their choosing. In a matter of seconds, that purchase can be downloaded to a computer, smartphone, or tablet device and become available for immediate use. The move from print to electronic books also brings new and exciting opportunities for the reader that completely revolutionize the concept of what a “book” is able to accomplish (Carreiro 2010). These opportunities

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include mobile app capability, links to websites, embedded audio and video clips, content search options, embedded quizzes and other assessment strategies, ways to capture highlighted text and notes, and the ability to download selected passages. For higher education, the availability of these tools has great potential for affecting the manner in which course-related knowledge is conceptualized and delivered. Beyond simply assigning students the task of reading the next two chapters in their textbook, faculty and students can take full advantage of a whole new range of learning experiences that can be artfully and intentionally aggregated and woven into the course design process. In line with this observed reconfiguration of the publishing industry, it is interesting to note corresponding increases in the number of books that are published on an annual basis. As an example, consider data provided by Bowker Identifier Services, which creates and provides official International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN). According to their records, the number of ISBNs issued between 2002 and 2013 increased by 41.73%, resulting in over 300,000 new published titles in 2013. As the quantity of published books increases at a dramatic rate, can consumers assume that the quality of the books being selected for publication is increasing at a commensurate rate? Or conversely, does this increase in the number of published titles translate into a decline in the overall quality of available texts? Answering these questions in a definitive manner is beyond the scope of our current conversation. At the same time, however, a significant increase in the number of available books does require that consumers (e.g., citizens at large, university faculty members, students) demonstrate a higher level of selectivity related to what they read and how they evaluate the veracity of published content. These skills can and should become integral parts of the higher education experience in a digital culture. To expand this conversation further, consider the level at which selfpublished books are adding to the deluge of knowledge creation. Bowker (2013) reported that the number of ISBNs issued to self-published texts increased by 59% between 2011 and 2012. This increase translates into almost 400,000 self-published books hitting the marketplace and further complicating the process of book selection and evaluation. It would be presumptuous to generalize about the quality of self-published books as compared with those vetted and produced by corporate publishers, but this flood of self-published books dramatically increases the importance of a discerning, well-informed reading public. For higher education, textbooks have traditionally served as a central feature of the instructional process. These books are often written

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specifically for a college student audience and provide overviews of topics common to college curricula (e.g., introduction to philosophy, organic chemistry, microeconomics, principles of management). As students proceed through their academic programs, textbook topics become more specialized and highly focused. What may change is the manner in which textbooks are developed, perceived, and used in college courses. Rogalevich (2011) suggested a new day for textbooks, with a focus on the rise of content aggregation: The concept of the textbook has been changing over the last two decades since the World Wide Web was introduced. The word “textbook” has become a metaphor when new dynamic, personal, open, reusable digital learning resources have appeared. The concrete name of this concept is still missing. We can meet words like ‘personal textbooks’, ‘open textbooks’, ‘flexbooks’, ‘personal digital library’…It certainly started its own way of development, but potential output is not quite clear - what would we call textbook in the future? The word ‘textbook’ itself is becoming a metaphor. (101)

This approach adds a new dimension to an old product and reconceptualizes the textbook as a dynamic and flexible learning tool. This transition can be one way to expand the parameters of knowledge delivery dramatically in college courses (e.g., sources, formats, modes of delivery). The speed at which these changes continue to occur will, in part, be affected by the response of college students. As an example, Miller, Nutting, and Baker-Eveleth (2013) pointed out that the use of e-textbooks is becoming more common in elementary and secondary schools. Many of those students will eventually come to college with an expectation of continued availability and use of digitally delivered textbooks and resources. These authors also pointed out a number of variables that will have an impact on the level at which e-textbooks are prevalent in colleges and universities, including faculty attitudes (i.e., choosing on behalf of students based on their own personal preferences), academic discipline (i.e., more common in economics, science, and engineering), and financial capabilities of the students (e.g., students on financial aid and scholarships may more likely to use e-textbooks). The conversation regarding the use of e-textbooks and associated digital technology in higher education will have ongoing relevance to the parameters of knowledge. As faculty design their courses (which we discuss further in Chapter Five) and make decisions about the level at which they employ digital technology, textbook format will be a key variable. Faculty who want to maintain the status quo (e.g., hardcover

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textbooks, lecture as a primary mode of content delivery, limited use of web-based resources) will be making a choice to limit the learning opportunities available to their students. These types of decisions can have far-reaching implications related to our students’ readiness for the world they will face after graduation and into their professional futures. By helping our students to navigate academic content and use the best available tools, we are allowing them to be equipped for what the digital future will reveal.

Scholarly Journals Jinha (2010) identified the first modern scholarly journals as Le Journal des Sçavans, published in France in 1665, and Philosophical Transactions, published the same year in England. The author then tracked the annual rate of scholarly article publication through the year 2009. Although he conceded that the measurement process was somewhat imprecise, the data are still quite remarkable. For example, 699 scholarly articles were published in 1750; 13,349 were published in 1850; 258,274 were published in 1950; and 1,477,383 were published in 2009. Jinha estimated that the total number of scholarly articles that have been published since that modest start in 1665 is in excess of 50 million! This vast amount of knowledge creates a quandary: how to identify and assess high-quality journal articles. Knight and Steinbach (2008) approached this question from an author’s perspective in trying to assess which journals might serve as the best venues for their written work. The criteria they identify include (1) likelihood of manuscript acceptance (e.g., fit with journal’s pattern of publication, selectivity rates), (2) journal reputation (e.g., standing in the professional discipline, credibility), (3) journal visibility and potential article impact (e.g., accessibility), (4) likelihood of timely publication (e.g., time from submission to publication, critical nature of topic), and (5) philosophical and ethical considerations (e.g., open access, intellectual property rights). Based on these criteria, Knight and Steinbach created a template that identifies four categories of journals: (1) the bull’s eye (e.g., has an appropriate professional audience, excellent ranking, and timely publication process), (2) the gamble (e.g., uncertain likelihood of acceptance because research method or style does not comply with journal format), (3) the sure-thing (e.g., not highly regarded, offers little benefit to career development or promotion, timing of publication does not affect relevance), and (4) the sink-hole (e.g., meets few if any criteria; seeming “waste of time” in submission). Awareness and application of these

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criteria can assist faculty and students in assessing the level of scrutiny used by individual journals to select articles for publication. Two other methods for assessing the quality of a journal article are the Impact Factor and the Eigenfactor®. The Impact Factor is a ratio calculated by dividing the number of times that articles in a particular journal have been cited elsewhere in a given year by the total number of article citations published in the two previous years (i.e., an Impact Factor of 1 means, on average, articles published in a given journal have been cited one time in the last two years; Lazaroiu 2014). The Eigenfactor goes in a somewhat different direction as it “…accounts for the fact that a single citation from a high-quality journal may be more valuable than multiple citations from peripheral publications” (Bergstrom 2007, 314). It is computed by analyzing the number of citations made to articles in a given journal and the quality of the journals in which those citations appear. Although it is helpful to have tools that help us assess the quality of journal articles, it is also informative to evaluate the common practices of our students as they engage with the professional literature. Parry (2011) referenced The Citation Project, a national study that evaluated the writing and citation habits of students in their own written work, and reported the following results: x 77% of cited quotes came from the first three pages of the original source (regardless of the length of the source). x 96% of the cited material came from two or fewer sentences extracted from the original source. This pattern suggests that students are seeking out brief quotations that back up the contentions they are presenting in their written assignments. This practice reflects a lower level of complexity and involvement than engaging with longer portions of the original text. x 19% of the student papers included copied materials that were not cited as quotations. x In 56% of the papers, students misused sources by failing to cite quotations. These data and the work of Howard, Rodrigue, and Serviss (2010) suggest that today’s students rely heavily on the practice of picking out isolated quotes that support their own contentions rather than making the effort to engage actively with the big picture of their original sources. Further, the research implies that college students are in need of additional instruction and guidance on the proper use of source citations in writing.

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Wikis According to Wikipedia (2015), Ward Cunningham created the first wiki, then known as “WikiWikiWeb,” in 1995. A wiki is a web application which allows collaborative modification, extension or deletion of its content and structure….While a wiki is a type of content management system, it differs from a blog or most other such systems in that the content is created without any defined owner or leader, and wikis have little implicit structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users. (Wikipedia 2015)

Wikipedia, the most prolific of the wiki sites, began operation in July 2001. By 2015, the number of wikis included on Wikipedia surpassed five million (Wikipedia: Statistics 2016)! Although wikis are certainly popular, the most common concern for educators is that they allow and encourage multiple contributors to make entries without oversight other than that provided by other participants. Many faculty members warn their students not to use or at least not to cite Wikipedia in their writing assignments. A study by Giles (2005), published in the prestigious journal Nature (i.e., as judged by the Impact Factor and the Eigenfactor®), compared the accuracy of scientific entries in Wikipedia with those found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Interestingly, factual errors were found in both publications. More significantly, however, the two were found to be roughly equivalent on the level at which they accurately reported scientific content on the chosen topics. As might be expected, publishers of the Encyclopedia Britannica were both surprised and appalled by these results. They placed a one-half page response to the study in the Times of London, detailing the flaws, and they called for a full retraction of the published data (Association for Communication Machinery, 2006). As we think about the applicability of the knowledge found in the ever-growing number of wikis, we are reminded that discernment is a key skill for our students to learn and develop. Whether the content is in Wikipedia or the Encyclopedia Britannica, we must be careful in assessing the veracity of what is presented as truth. Wikis can be used as starting points in searches for accurate, truthful information. For example, if you are researching a particular topic about which you have little understanding or knowledge, searching on a site like Wikipedia can give you a starting point for your investigations. From that point, you can move on, equipped with some new terms and possible references to explore and evaluate further. It has been an interesting

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experience to observe that inaccuracies can be found in virtually every information-sharing venue.

Blogs Closely related to wikis are blogs. Wikipedia defines a blog as a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries (“posts”) typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of a single individual occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject. More recently “multi-author blogs” (MABs) have developed, with posts written by large numbers of authors and professionally edited. (Wikipedia: Blogs 2015)

Blogs, like other digital endeavors, are experiencing dramatic levels of growth and participation. The website Technorati regularly surveys the status of technology as it intersects with the culture. They report that there are more than eight million active blogs online, with a new blog being created every 7.4 seconds (State of the Blogosphere, 2011)! According to this report, bloggers overwhelmingly participate in this venue to share their expertise and experiences with their readers. However, bloggers also report that their primary sources of information are conversations with friends and family. These two pieces of data are significant in evaluating the overall legitimacy of blogs as sources of reliable information. Although it may be interesting to hear about bloggers’ food preferences or summer vacations, readers should apply careful scrutiny to the content and its reliability if blogs move beyond those parameters. An excellent example of a blog that invites a more informed level of conversation is Inside Higher Ed. This blog defines itself as the online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education. Whether you’re an adjunct or a vice president, a grad student or an eminence grise, we’ve got what you need to thrive in your job or find a better one: breaking news and feature stories, provocative daily commentary, areas for comment on every article, practical career columns, and a powerful suite of tools to help higher education professionals get jobs and colleges identify and hire employees. Inside Higher Ed was founded in 2004 by three executives with decades of expertise in higher education journalism and recruitment. We believed that higher education was evolving quickly and radically, and that the time was right for new models of providing information and career services for professionals in academe. (About Us 2016)

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In this instance, we find a blog that provides a forum for higher education professionals to engage with current news in the field, share perspectives, agree, and disagree. In fairness, readers of this blog, just like any other, should demonstrate some level of discernment in assessing the data and opinions shared by contributors. Given that caveat, it can be seen how blogs can serve the purpose of creating synchronous dialogue among colleagues in a variety of locations around the world. Without the Internet and without blogs, these conversations—and the learning that occurs with them—would be less likely to occur.

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) One of the newest kids on the digital block is the MOOC. Its arrival has not gone unnoticed. The New York Times designated 2012 as “The Year of the MOOC” (Pappano 2012). Although they are not a new creation, MOOCs began to gain extensive popularity in 2012 as several prestigious universities (e.g., Princeton, Stanford, University of Michigan) began to offer these unique online learning opportunities. Many of these institutions joined to form Coursera, a global collaborative of 147 partner universities offering MOOCs through a common electronic portal. As of 2016, this group was offering almost 900 courses to approximately 11 million participants (Coursera 2016). Other similar public and private collaborative groups have developed as a means of furthering this form of education (e.g., EdX, Udacity, Udemy). One of the first MOOC style offerings was created in 2007 by entrepreneur Mike Feerick (High, 2013). This creation, ALISON (Advance Learning Interactive Systems Online), is described as a global social enterprise dedicated to providing free certified education and workplace training skills to any individual, anywhere, anytime, on any subject over the web…. With 5 million learners in 200 countries, ALISON is changing how the world learns. Recognised as the first MOOC (Massive Open Online Courseware), ALISON has increasing global reach and reputation. Some 600,000 people all over the world have graduated from free certificate and diploma courses on ALISON with more 10,000 sharing their stories of empowerment and success, giving testimony to the positive change ALISON has brought to their lives.

This organization is outside the boundaries of higher education, offering certificate and diploma courses to anyone with a computer and Internet access. More than 750 course offerings cover a wide variety of topic areas,

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including financial and economic literacy, business and enterprise skills, health literacy, languages, and health and safety compliance. Granted, ALISON generally offers topics and courses to a clientele that may differ from students typically enrolled in higher education. In fact, over half of the ALISON participants are reported to be residents of developing world countries (Wikipedia: ALISON). The salient point, however, is that this website shares and spreads information around the world in a highly accessible manner. Knowledge and information are truly becoming universal commodities. To distinguish MOOCs from other online courses, Longstaff (2014; citing Gaebel 2013), offered the following criteria for this course venue: x x x x

No formal requirements for entry No limit on the number of people that can take part at any given time No requirement for study in a programme beyond individual courses No resulting credentials for the vast majority, no fees either—except for certificates of completion in some cases (165)

There are differing perspectives on the use of MOOCs and their effectiveness: Examining public data from 279 courses from the most popular MOOC providers (Udacity, Coursera, edX), researcher Katy Jordan finds that the average course enrolls about 43,000 students. About 6.5% of those stick around ’til the end. When looking at the number of students who engaged at least a little bit with course materials, the number of completion jumps to 9.8%. (Ferenstein 2014)

Even though MOOCs are generating large, remarkably impressive enrollment figures, they are counterbalanced by rather dismal completion rates. LeBar (2014), however, argued that MOOC completion rates are somewhat irrelevant and that it is more important to consider MOOCs as sources of information that can serve many different purposes based on the needs and interests of the learner (e.g., personal interests, courses for credit, tutorials on a specific topic, enhancement of job-related skills, supplement information provided in other currently enrolled-for-credit courses). As a means of understanding the MOOC enrollment/completion picture, Vu and Fadde (2014) proposed that reasons for participating and completing or not completing a particular course can be organized into what they called rings of engagement: (1) taking a MOOC for credit, (2) participating in a MOOC for a certificate, and (3) auditing a MOOC (i.e., students are not required to submit assignments). This type of categorization can be helpful for systematically aggregating data to get a

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clearer picture of what is happening with MOOCs. Obviously, the disruptive influence of the MOOC has generated heated dialogues on both sides of the aisle. Karsenti (2013) observed: On the one hand, we are denitely in unknown territory, as never before imagined. What would we have thought 10, 20, or 30 years ago if someone had predicted that a university course could be given to 300,000 students across 203 countries at the same time, and online? It would have been unbelievable. On the other hand, and even though many academics have praised the MOOC as one of the most significant innovations in university education, we note that the pedagogical practices applied in MOOCs are really very similar to those used in distance learning, and they have been around for some time already, even in what are considered traditional university courses. Revolution or fad? Only time and research will tell. For there is certainly a need to investigate this still fledgling trend in university teaching. (37)

Another element on the new frontier of learning, prompted by the MOOC movement, is the creation and awarding of electronic badges. Different from certificates and diplomas, electronic badges signify a learning accomplishment or participation in sponsored events. A good example of this system in action is the IBM Open Badge program. This initiative, sponsored by the IBM Corporation, is described as follows: IBM credentials are recognized, respected and valued globally in the IT industry, but communicating your credentials in today’s ever-expanding online marketplace can be challenging. IBM has established this program so you may easily and quickly share verified proof of your achievement wherever and whenever you choose. Where applicable, your IBM credentials will be represented by a digital image that contains verified metadata describing your qualifications and the rigorous process necessary to earn them.

This mechanism opens the door to on-demand learning and allows students to earn one or more electronic badges as a way of verifying and certifying their accomplishments. Electronic badges can be collected and then posted on social media sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook or on a personal or corporate webpage. In the past, if I wanted to receive training in a particular area and verify my learning, I would probably need to enroll in a course or program offered by a community or technical college or university. By passing a course or series of courses, I could receive a transcript, certificate, diploma, or some combination of these. All of these outcomes typically involve paying tuition, purchasing books and other learning resources, and

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completing requirements regarding attendance and assignments established by the faculty member. Those options are still available in face-to-face, online, and hybrid formats. Now, however, I have the additional option to seek out a MOOC. I can choose to participate at any time and at a level that meets my personal learning and informational needs.

Talking Points In this chapter, we have explored the simultaneous explosion of emerging knowledge and the pervasive influence of digital technology. These two variables will continue to interact and create the need for a fluid and expanding definition of the higher education experience. We have seen the beginning of this transformation, and this is only a preview of things to come. Faculty and, in fact, entire institutions will have to be nimble and resourceful as well as open to change. We have discussed the following topics: x The Knowledge Doubling Curve and the manner in which the availability of information is increasing at an exponential rate. The best way to remain abreast of this information explosion is to master the tools that provide ongoing digital access. x How, in the midst of this digital explosion, several key pathways have emerged, including websites, published books, scholarly journals, wikis, blogs, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). x The idea that the future of information availability is hard to imagine and describe. At every turn, we observe the manner in which knowledge and information are increasing in volume and accessibility.

Reflective Questions 1. Given the rapidly changing landscape of knowledge, how do you prepare your students to be discriminating Internet users? 2. How do you remain abreast of developments in your academic discipline? What are the sources that you routinely rely on for new and emerging developments? 3. In what ways does the vast and rapidly growing body of available knowledge in your academic discipline affect your approach to teaching?

CHAPTER THREE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY USE BY FACULTY AND STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Teachers need to integrate technology seamlessly into the curriculum instead of viewing it as an add-on, an afterthought, or an event. —Heidi-Hayes Jacobs, Author and educational leader

We now turn our attention to an examination of the digital preferences and skill sets of faculty and students as demonstrated in higher education. This examination focuses on the variety of ways in which faculty and students can engage with digital technology and with one another. It also focuses on the ways in which these interactions are occurring at colleges and universities. We will see a rather uneven pattern of use by faculty and students across various digital environments. It is therefore relevant to examine possible reasons for these inconsistencies along with promising directions for the future. The categories of digital technology that serve as a focus for our investigation of faculty and student use include x x x x x x x x

Conceptualizing the digital divide in higher education Learning Management Systems (LMS) Content management and aggregation Social networking and out-of-classroom communication tools Digital media e-Books Blended and online learning Open educational resources

Note that several of these categories are relevant for faculty and students, whereas others are focused specifically on the digital choices made by faculty in the creation of courses and learning experiences.

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Conceptualizing the Digital Divide in Higher Education As we continue to explore the role of digital technology in higher education, it is relevant to determine the level at which the Digital Divide can potentially affect the lives of faculty and students. Thus far, we have conceptualized the Digital Divide as a gap between the haves and the have-nots in relation to digital access (Epstein, Nisbet, and Gillespie 2011). Factors that have been shown to increase the likelihood of the Digital Divide affecting individual students or faculty include socioeconomic status, geographic location, educational level, race, gender, and disabilities (Tien and Fu 2008; Peña-López 2010). Additionally, there is evidence for the Second Level Digital Divide, which encompasses the manner in which individuals choose to use technology or have the skills to make use of technology (Hargittai 2002). The significance of these digital divides in limiting the opportunities available to citizens of the twenty-first century cannot be underestimated. For the focus of this text, however, we will narrow our further explorations to faculty and students in higher education. Cotton and Jelenewicz (2006) described these elements and the manner in which the digital divides are evidenced within higher education: There are multiple layers and aspects to the digital divide, including a hierarchy of access among those who are online...tangible aspects of communication and information technologies (i.e., types of access), less tangible factors, such as varying types of usage among different social groups….and components such as (a) motivation, (b) possession, (c) digital skills, and (d) digital use…For college students, access is available to all students on campus, but if students do not possess the skills to use computers or the Internet, then universal access is meaningless. (497–498)

As a means of understanding and responding to the complexities of the digital divides (i.e., access, use) and college students, Goode (2010a) proposed a technological identity framework as a means of assessing the level at which an individual student or faculty member may be affected by a digital divide. Drawing on the social sciences, Goode suggested that the nature of a person’s technology identity can influence the level at which that person is able to use or chooses to engage with technology (Gee 2001; Wenger 1998). The status of an individual’s technology identity, according to Goode, is directed by the person’s responses to four basic questions: 1. What do I believe about my own abilities to use technology?

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2. What are my beliefs and values regarding the importance of technology in my life? 3. What are my beliefs about the opportunities and constraints that affect my participation with technology? 4. How motivated am I to engage with technology? These questions bridge the gap between access and use and provide a global perspective from which to view the relationship between college students and digital technology. Goode (2010b) described this relationship as follows: [S]tudents come to college with differing technological skills, stratified by gender, socioeconomic status, and racial backgrounds. Beyond skills, students’ varied computing histories can result in a range of technology identities that impact their relationship with technology in their academic, social, and career aspirations. (583)

It is encouraging to note that Goode, as part of proposing this approach to analyzing the needs of students and technology, suggested the optimistic view that the technological identities of college students are amenable to change. It seems reasonable that it might also be possible to change the digital identities of the faculty who teach them. As a point of connection, Sharpe and Beetham (2010) proposed what they called a developmental model for effective e-learning. This model has an incredibly helpful connection to Goode’s technological identity framework and provides an incremental perspective that can help us to define the path to active engagement with digital technology: x Functional access (“I have”)1—learners gain access to technology x Skills (“I can”)—learners develop generic skills in a variety of digital technology contexts x Practices (“I do”)—learners make informed choices about the use of digital technology x Creative appropriation (“I am”)—learners use developed skills and practices to initiate and develop new digital content These descriptors, and the proposed developmental approach to digital technology use, should be front and center in our thinking.

1

The added designations of I am, I do, I can, and I am are taken from Effective Learning for a Digital Age (2016).

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Readers of this text are probably current or future users of digital technology. Remember that others on this journey will require support and assistance to move themselves along on this continuum. In subsequent chapters, we explore the ways in which faculty and students can systematically move through this continuum and become effective users of digital technology in a manner that complements their learning needs and lifestyles.

Learning Management Systems Wikipedia (2016) defines a Learning Management System (LMS) as a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of electronic educational technology…courses or training programs. Learning Management Systems range from systems for managing training and educational records to software for distributing online or blended/hybrid college courses over the Internet with features for online collaboration. Colleges, universities, school districts, and schools use LMSs to deliver online courses and augment on-campus courses. LMSs also act to augment the lessons the teacher is giving in a brick and mortar environment, not just replace them.

Lai and Savage (2013) cited the work of Carmean and Haefner (2002) regarding the perceived advantages of a well-functioning LMS that is actively used by faculty. An effective LMS should be: x x x x x

social—providing a rich set of tools that would enable social learning, allowing asynchronous and synchronous communication amongst its users; active—allowing for interactive assessment modules that would result in quick and meaningful feedback; contextual—having the capacity to cultivate contextual learning, where instructors could incorporate links to external resources, use multimedia in LMS, and allow students to share information online; engaging—accommodating diverse learning styles to increase student engagement; and student owned—accessible anywhere and anytime to focus on content, discussion, reading, reflecting and learning. (29)

A recent study indicates that 99% of institutions of higher education administer a LMS as a component of the teaching and learning experience for their students (Dahlstrom, Brooks, and Bichsel 2014). The average age

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of the LMS used by the institutions was eight years, and 15% of surveyed institutions were considering a change in their LMS within three years. Despite the omnipresence of the LMS in higher education, faculty members vary in the degree to which they use their LMS. Allen et al. (2012) found that a majority of faculty members reported that they use it to make their syllabi available (80.3%), to communicate with students (66%), and to post grades (66%). Faculty members were less inclined to use the LMS to provide eBooks and related materials, track student attendance, or integrate lecture capture resources. The administrators believed that faculty usage was even higher— 98.6% reported that faculty members on their campuses used the LMS to post syllabi, 93.3% said that faculty used the LMS to communicate, and 94.2% reported that faculty used the LMS to report grades. Faculty members with experience teaching online classes were dramatically more likely to use the LMS in their faceto-face teaching than faculty who did not teach online courses. In a similar study, Jaschik and Lederman (2014) found that tenured faculty members were less likely to use a LMS than untenured faculty were. The level at which students can make use of a LMS is largely dictated by the manner in which the faculty choose to include this resource in the course design. Dahlstrom, Brooks, and Bichsel (2014) surveyed students about the ways in which the features of their LMS could be enhanced as a pathway to improved learning opportunities. Students identified the following areas of needed improvement: better tools for interaction and communication, a more user-friendly interface, better functionality, and more and better faculty participation. As the LMS is probably the most widely available digital tool in higher education, there is tremendous potential to create and deploy highly engaging digital tools and enhance learning opportunities for students. This reality should serve as a motivation for LMS vendors to upgrade their products continually and for universities to require and hold their faculty accountable to take full advantage of LMS-based tools. The most important question about LMS use is the level at which this collection of tools contributes to student learning. Lai and Savage (2013) offered a significant observation about the potential power of the LMS. In their examination of this tool from the perspectives of faculty and student use, these authors reflected on two classic articles that elaborate seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education (Chickering and Gamson 1987; Chickering and Ehrmann 1996): 1. Good teaching encourages contact between students and faculty... 2. Good teaching develops reciprocity and cooperation among students: Student learning is greatly enhanced through collaboration...

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Good teaching encourages active learning... Good teaching gives prompt feedback... Good teaching emphasizes time on task... Good teaching communicates high expectations... Good teaching respects diverse talents and ways of learning (Chickering and Gamson 1987, 3–5).

Since their introduction, these principles for good teaching have been frequently cited in the literature of higher education (i.e., over 5,000 times according to Google Scholar). They have also been reinforced by ongoing research that verifies their value in the promotion of student success. These principles predate the emergence of digital technology as a powerful force in higher education and remain relevant today. Lai and Savage correctly observed that the seven principles are more about how faculty teach than about what they teach. As Lai and Savage noted, if faculty are attentive and well-disciplined in the design and delivery of their courses, the power of the LMS can be used to accomplish several of these designated principles (i.e., contact, reciprocity, feedback, time on task). In any event, it is always helpful for faculty to keep these seven principles readily available as reminders to strive for excellence in teaching! As educators consider how the LMS will fit into the future of higher education, faculty must think about how it might change and grow to remain a viable part of the learning process. Several factors will have a notable impact on the role of the LMS in the coming decades: x As increasing numbers of faculty engage in blended and online courses, they will necessarily engage with their LMS. This experience, as demonstrated by Allen et al. (2012), will likely result in increased use of the LMS in the face-to-face classes. x Smartphones and tablet devices are rapidly gaining popularity (Smith 2015). It will be critically important for any LMS to be accessible and functional on a variety of platforms common to mobile devices (e.g., Android, iOS). x The LMS can become a standard and widely used launching point from which students engage with a wide variety of web-based digital media (e.g., audio, video, simulations, learning objects, interactive websites). x The LMS platform provides a perfect location to capture data on student learning practices (e.g., time on task, interactions with eBooks, quiz/test performance) as a guide to the effectiveness of chosen learning experiences.

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Content Management and Aggregation The manner in which individual faculty members define knowledge is central to the process of effective course design (e.g., the types and quantity of information that are selectively included or excluded from the content, the sources of information that are modeled and students are exposed to, methodologies used for determining the veracity of information). Given a set of learning outcomes for a designated course, faculty often first turn their attention to the selection of a textbook. This decision is generally based on a number of key factors, including readability, scope, chapter organization, and supplementary resources (Durwin and Sherman 2008). The expectation in this process is that a chosen textbook will provide satisfactory coverage for the topics, concepts, skills, and knowledge that faculty expect their students to master. Whereas faculty in the past may have focused their course design efforts on a textbook, a set of PowerPoint slides, and a collection of articles from the professional literature, they must now broaden those perspectives and consider the expansive and seemingly boundless Internet, where vast storehouses of knowledge and information are quite literally at their students’ fingertips. Textbook publishers are becoming increasingly inventive in the design of digital tools that can be used to supplement the basic textbook (e.g., test question banks, videos, interactive digital tools, PowerPoint slides, webbased resources). A well-written textbook provides a basic framework for conversations and exploration on the topic of choice. That being said, it is highly unlikely that a single textbook, even with all the bundled bells and whistles that are typical in the twenty-first century, can capture an entire topic with all the best available information. Textbooks, even at the time of publication, have been in development for two or more years and, therefore, may already have rapidly diminishing relevance. The textbook may best be used as a starting point for creating a collection of resources that assist students in their learning. Aggregation involves bringing together a diverse collection of curated content and resources in such a way that they create a unified whole. Although the textbook will probably continue to be a central feature in course design, faculty should also give thought to aggregating a chosen textbook with other digital assets that supplement and enrich the basic content. For example, instructors might consider the following tools to assist in the aggregation process:

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x Textbook evaluation. The degree to which the chosen textbook provides desired levels of emphasis for the course topics and content articulated in the learning outcomes needs to be assessed. This initial examination provides guidance in identifying topics and content that may need additional coverage or that might be better examined by using alternative resources. x Video supplements. A variety of free online searchable databases provide rich, vibrant resources that can be used inside (i.e., as part of presentations) or outside (i.e., as assigned content students can watch on their own) the classroom. x Electronic database articles. University libraries are rapidly transitioning to digital resources that supplement traditional, hardcopy documentation. Part of this transition is the availability of searchable online databases that provide access to digital versions of current academic publications and other learning resources (e.g., videos on demand). x Open educational resources (OER). These resources include documents, videos, simulations, activities and labs, case studies, lecture notes, and assessment strategies. By thoughtfully assembling a variety of instructional resources, instructors can deepen their students’ engagement with chosen content and widen the breadth of learning experiences that students encounter in their courses. Further discussions of ways to use open educational resources are found in Chapter Five.

Social Networking Sites and Out-of-Classroom Communication Tools One of the most influential cultural impacts of digital technology can be seen in the realm of social media. Boyd and Ellison (2008) defined social network sites (SNSs) as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semipublic profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site. (211)

Examples of currently popular SNSs include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google, Tumblr, and Instagram. According to the website

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eMarketer (http://www.emarketer.com/), one fourth of all people worldwide are regularly interacting with a SNS. That number, which continues to increase annually, currently includes over 1.73 billion people! The growing popularity of SNSs is a global phenomenon. Kohut (2012) noted that the five countries reporting the highest level of SNS usage were Britain (52%), the United States (50%), Russia (50%), Czech Republic (49%), and Spain (49%). Kohut also pointed out that many lowand middle-income nations are experiencing rapid growth in the use of SNSs. Some other interesting patterns of usage were also identified: In every country polled, use of social networking sites varies by age. In 17 of 21 countries, there is a gap of 50 points or more in usage of social networking sites between those younger than 30 and those 50 or older….Similarly, use of social networking sites varies by education level, with double-digit differences between those with a college degree and those without a college degree in 15 of 18 countries. (3)

SNSs have the potential to connect people around the world and surpass the influence of varied political, geographic, political, and ideological boundaries. Lichy (2012) suggested that social networking tools may be the pathway to what he called an international culture. The possibilities for collaboration and sharing of information are virtually limitless. As SNSs continue to grow in popularity and increase their levels of refinement, access, and technological sophistication, it will be remarkable to observe and be part of the global digital community. Higher education is also finding new ways to capitalize on the growing popularity of SNSs. Greenwood (2012) investigated the level at which the top 100 universities, as identified by U.S. News and World Report, were taking advantage of SNSs as part of their marketing and recruitment strategies. Their results indicated that 92% of the identified institutions contained links to SNSs on their official websites (with an average of 3.7 links per website). The data reveal a high level of awareness on the part of higher education officials that their target audiences are attentive to social media and this venue. Wilson (2013) suggested that these interactions foreshadow the many ways in which higher education can potentially pursue contact, interact, and engage with students in the future. As social media increasingly becomes part of the higher education landscape, a number of unique twists and turns have emerged: x SNSs are being used at increasing levels. As part of this pattern, universities are using social media to maintain consistent connections with their alumni (Leibowitz 1999; Winston 2013).

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x It is becoming a standard practice in higher education to use social media as a key mechanism for fundraising (Arnett 2015; Masterson 2010). x Colleges and universities are finding it necessary to create policies designed to guide student use of social media (Pomerantz, Hank, and Sugimoto 2015). x Social media is being used to help students make effective transitions and adjustments to higher education (DeAndrea et al. 2011). x College libraries are capitalizing on social media as a way to advertise library services and connect with students (Harpel-Burke 2006; Young, Hazard, and Rossman 2015). x Students are using Facebook to research their roommates. At the same time, parents are taking the additional step of preemptively requesting roommate changes for their sons and daughters (Millar 2007). x A growing body of literature is emerging that focuses on the ways in which employers use data from social media to make decisions about whether to hire or retain employees (Baumhart 2015; Rainone and Watson 2012). It will be intriguing to watch the role of SNSs in the future of higher education. Wilson (2013) observed that social media applications may be very popular and widely known one day but can be quickly replaced by a new, more engaging tool the next day. Along with these new developments, however, come new challenges. These will require critical thinking about the advantages, disadvantages, and limitations of potential strategies and tools as well as about ways to protect ourselves and our students from harm. This give-and-take is an integral part of the digital tool use reality. SNSs, perhaps, best exemplify this challenge. The potential benefits are significant, but we must also create safeguards and guidelines for safe and effective use.

Faculty Engagement with SNSs Seaman and Tinti-Kane (2013) examined the levels and various ways in which faculty choose to use SNSs. They found that 70.3% of faculty reported using SNSs for personal reasons on at least a monthly basis. Additionally, 55.0% reported professional use on at least a monthly basis, with 41% reporting uses related to teaching. Not surprisingly, younger faculty members consistently made greater use of SNSs than their older

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colleagues do. Equally compelling, however, is the finding that each age group (i.e., ages 55+, 45–54, 35–44, under 35) reported an increase in SNS use between 2012 and 2013 (Moran, Seaman, and Tinti-Kane 2012; Seaman and Tinti-Kane 2013). Faculty reported the primary barriers to their choice to use SNSs as (1) a lack of institutional support, (2) time, and (3) a lack of integration with their institutional learning management systems. These data support the contention of Martinez-Alemán (2014) that “faculty’s main use of social media appears to be consumptive rather than productive” (15). Ajian and Hartshorne (2008) examined faculty use of SNSs and report two conflicting stories. Faculty reported an awareness of the ways in which these technologies could benefit student learning (e.g., improving student learning, increasing student–faculty interaction, improving student writing). Conversely, the majority of respondents also reported not having any intentions to use blogs, wikis, social networks, or social bookmarking as part of their teaching. The factors that best predicted faculty adoption of these tools included ease of use and perceived level of usefulness (which once again reinforces the issue of pain versus gain and the technology acceptance model, discussed earlier). The authors also identified social norms as influencing whether faculty choose to engage on a SNS. Social norms include superiors, peers, and students encouraging faculty to engage with a SNS. This observation speaks to the importance of working to create a campus culture that promotes and encourages the appreciation of digital technology as a learning tool. Beyond the issue of faculty preferences and inclinations related to the use of SNSs, researchers have identified several issues that faculty members consider when making decisions about whether or not to include these resources in their courses. Rodriguez (2011) identified these issues: x Ownership and intellectual property. With the vast amount of information available on the Internet, students and faculty must remain aware of protecting their own intellectual property and must consistently respect the intellectual property rights of others (e.g., use proper citations, refrain from acts of plagiarism). x Privacy and security. Under the provisions of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), faculty must remain aware of the potential ways in which identifiable information about students can be shared and seen on SNSs. It is worth noting that faculty and students, even though well intentioned, could inadvertently share personal information that is protected by

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confidentiality (e.g., grades, feedback on individual performance, enrollment-related information). x Access, accessibility, and compliance. Colleges and universities enroll students with a wide variety of learning styles and needs. When considering the use of technology, faculty must consider any possible technological challenges that students may face and make necessary adaptations to facilitate success. x Stability of technology. Although colleges and universities are becoming more proficient in providing wireless Internet access and software tools or apps to their constituents, any challenges faced by faculty in using that technology can serve as a strong disincentive for future use. Technology is never totally perfect and predictable (i.e., glitches occur even with the most sophisticated hardware and software). Effective integration of technology into course-based learning experiences requires that every effort be made to ensure that the best, most recent version of technology is available and that support services are readily available and easily accessible. As faculty consider the benefits and costs of using SNSs, they should always remain vigilant about these important considerations. Doing so not only increases the chances of a seamless learning experience but also helps students learn about digital practices through the behaviors that are modeled by faculty on a daily basis.

Student Engagement with SNSs It should come as no surprise, at this point, that students are generally perceived to be more highly engaged with SNSs than their faculty counterparts are. Smith, Rainie, and Zickuhr (2011) found that 88% of non-students between 18 and 24 years old, 86% of undergraduate students, and 82% of graduate students reported regular use of SNSs. Overall, 60% of the adults surveyed reported regular interactions with SNSs. Within this study and other sources of data related to student use of SNSs, there are some subtleties that will help us better understand how to deploy SNSs effectively as a learning tool for today’s students. As the use of SNSs continues to increase, a number of researchers have investigated the ways in which college students make connections between social networks and the other aspects of their lives. For example, studies have focused on attachment, friendships, and relationships (Baek, Cho, and Kim 2014; Morey et al. 2013; Özad and Uygarer 2014; Wang et al. 2014), information sharing and self-disclosure (Dong and Bradford 2014;

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Kim, Chunsik, and Elias 2015), SNS use among students in individual countries (Karuppasamy et al. 2013; Lu and Kee 2015; Rahman 2014; Zhong 2014), and behavioral patterns and emotional difficulties (Fournier et al. 2013; Moreno et al. 2011; Moreno et al. 2012; Ridout, Campbell, and Ellis 2012; Tsisika et al. 2014). There have been numerous efforts to capture the level at which students spend their time engaging with SNSs. Pempek, Yermolayeva, and Calvert (2009) asked a group of college students to maintain diaries for one week, documenting the time they spent on Facebook and the nature of their activities. Participants reported being on Facebook an average of 27.93 minutes a day on weekdays and 28.44 minutes a day on weekends. Other studies that monitored the amount of time that college students engage with SNSs have different results: x Four or more hours a week (Jones 2002) x Ten to thirty minutes a day (Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe 2007) x Two or more hours a week (60%) and three or more hours a week (44%; Jones and Johnson-Yale 2009) x 1.5 hours a day (Kim, Lee and Elias 2015) x One to five hours a week (Higher Education Research Institute 2007) The level at which college students engage with SNSs is a significant consideration for higher education faculty and administrators. What is also emerging, however, is a new insight about the preferences, activities, and motivations that guide student use of SNSs. As part of their investigation of students and Facebook, Pempek et al. (2009) asked participants to share why they engaged with Facebook on a regular basis. The overwhelming theme of the responses was “communication” (i.e., with friends on campus, with friends not on campus, with friends that they rarely see). Thus, it seems that one of the byproducts of the SNS experience is a redefinition of how friendships are conceptualized. Facebook and other SNSs provide opportunities for subscribers to identify others as “friends” based on a digital request. Manago, Taylor, and Greenfield (2012) analyzed the friendship networks of college students on Facebook and found that students had widely varied criteria for providing others the opportunity to become part of their network of friends. The researchers identified a typology that includes the following groups:

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x Acquaintances (27%)—includes friend of friend, casual date, floor-mate x Activity (24%)—includes teammate, classmate, fraternity brother x Close (21%)—includes best friend, close friend, current boyfriend or girlfriend x Maintenance (18%)—includes high school friend, past romantic partner x Strangers (4%)—includes people not known in any way x Online only (2%)—includes, for example, musical artists, individuals in a preferred band x Other (4%)—no detail provided In this study, participants reported the number of friends they had on Facebook. The number of friends ranged from 29 to 1,200, with an average of 440 friends. Twenty percent of the participants reported having between 200 and 299 friends. Imagine for a moment that college students were asked the same questions about their face-to-face friendships. It would come as no surprise that some students have more friends than others. Furthermore, students can probably assess their perceived connections and intimacy with each group of friends, make choices about what to share with their friends, and determine the level at which they can be authentic and transparent. Those decisions are often made in direct conversations or through individual correspondence (e.g., email). Tene (2013) cited Sittenfeld (2011) regarding the angst that can sometimes occur while making decisions about the nature of an online identity: The biggest reason [I avoided joining Facebook] was that I didn’t know which me would join. Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg believes we should all be the same in every context. According to Time’s 2010 Person of the Year profile of him, he once told a journalist, ‘Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.’ To which my only response is, You’ve got to be kidding. I mean, I’m not even the same person with all the members of my immediate family. And I’ve long thought that my impulse to act differently with, say, my friend from grad school and my husband’s aunt—to adjust my personality to fit the situation and the other person—is an example of good manners, not bad ones. (118)

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SNSs as Teaching Tools Although faculty have demonstrated an awareness of social media and have some level of participation, there is still work to be done on refining the ways in which SNSs can be linked purposefully with teaching and learning. As a starting point, it is reasonable to identify the types of skills that students need to develop in order to become active learners while engaging with social media. Selwyn (2011) suggested that higher education finds itself in the midst of a new brand of learners who, because of their connections with social media, may approach learning and the acquisition of knowledge in a manner that is counter to the traditions of higher education: Social media constitute an increasingly important context wherein individuals live their everyday lives. Indeed, some commentators talk of the ‘networked self’—acknowledging the importance of social media as a key site of sociality and identity performance in many people’s lives….As such, the most immediate significance of social media for higher education is the apparently changing nature of the students who are entering university. In a practical sense, the highly connected, collective and creative qualities of social media applications are seen to reflect (and to some extent drive) more flexible, fluid and accelerated ways of being. (2)

This reality will continue to confront faculty members as they think through the details of course design. Faculty need to think about their own skills in the digital world, and they need to think about the manner in which they can promote effective digital performance by their students. Regarding the use of social media, Rheingold (2010) suggested a set of literacies that relate to social media and that can be taught and reinforced during course design and delivery: x Attention. This refers to the ability to focus selectively and purposefully on specific aspects of social media and the classroom. x Participation. Although people may be tempted to watch, observe, and consume the vast amount of data and information available in social media, participation involves actually engaging in the process by sharing and communicating in a way that influences others. x Collaboration. Social media provides an opportunity to come together in unique ways with others around the world in pursuit of a common goal.

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x Network awareness. Awareness includes being mindful of the varied places and ways that interactions and communications can occur in social media. x Critical consumption. Given the volume of data available in social media, it becomes essential to have the skills necessary to assess the sources and accuracy of information. A common perspective on the use of social media in college teaching is to view the process of a constructivist vantage point (i.e., learners construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world while reflecting on their experiences). Social media provides a perfect location for the construction of knowledge, collaboration, and reflection. Bonzo and Parchoma (2010) pointed out that as faculty in higher education seek to engage with social media on a bigger scale, they may ultimately “tame” the very nature of SNSs. This process of seeking to gain control of the medium may be counterproductive, as part of the magic of SNSs is the degree to which they remain open and unpredictable.

Blogs and Wikis A growing aspect of online living is the development of online locations where people have opportunities to share their ideas and perspectives on topics of concern. Tim Berners-Lee, the engineer and computer scientist credited with the creation of the World Wide Web, actually had a vision for the web as a place where people could both read and write (Richardson 2006). Two of the more popular approaches to writing on the web are blogs and wikis. Blogs A blog (short for weblog) is a website that allows contributors to share their thoughts and feelings on one or more topics or questions. There are blogs devoted to countless topics and issues of concern. Comments are posted in reverse chronological order (i.e., the most recent entry is listed first) and can be read by anyone who has access and logs on to the site. According to www.technorati.com, there were over 70 million blogs in 2011, with estimates that this number would double every six months afterward. Students often spend great amounts of time reading and responding to the information found on blog sites. Likewise, many faculty members write their own blogs as a means of expressing their thoughts and opinions on a variety of topics. In one class this year, I asked my students to select

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and read an article on a website related to the topic of the course. They then had to log on to a blog designed specifically for the course and record a response to the article that they had read. The depth of the responses was far deeper than I had expected or observed on previous assignments. I have a working hypothesis that, on some level, the blog is one of the most comfortable writing venues for millennial students—compatible with their dominant forms of communication. Blogs have limitations, but they can serve as a place for recording thoughts and feelings in an informal format. Blogs provide a forum for chronologically sequential communication on topics of interest. The writing on blogs can range from lengthy essays to quick, brief responses to the work of others. Quite often, bloggers will use specialized and commonly known abbreviations to express their ideas. Wikis Wikipedia, self-proclaimed as a free, online encyclopedia, is the website that is often identified by faculty members as “the source that cannot be used in the creation of research papers.” This pronouncement is made because of the general perception that the information shared on open content sites simply cannot be trusted (i.e., there is no oversight in regard to the accuracy of the information shared). One way of turning the tables in this situation is to challenge your students to create one or more Wikipedia sites around the content of your course. The power of this collaborative tool was chronicled by Richardson (2006) in relation to the Indian Ocean earthquake of 2004: The event occurred just after midnight (GMT) on December 26, and the first 76-word post was created at Wikipedia about 9 hours later. Twentyfour hours after the first mention, the entry had been edited more than 400 times and had grown to about 3,000 words, complete with some of the first photographs of the devastation, a chart documenting the dead and injured, and other graphics describing how the tsunami was spawned. Forty-eight hours after the first post, the entry had grown to more than 6,500 words, had been edited 1,200 times, and included more than a dozen graphics including videos of the wave itself. Six months after the event, more than 7,000 changes had been recorded, and the post had settled at around 7,200 words. All of it had been created and recreated by people just like you and me who were interested in contributing what they were finding to the entry. It was without question the most comprehensive resource on the Web about that horrific event. (61)

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What faculty might find objectionable is that there is no easy way to verify that the information in a wiki is factual. A different way of looking at a wiki entry, however, is to view it as an exercise in critical thinking. For virtually anything that we read—whether on Wikipedia, another website, a journal article, or a book—we need to be vigilant about the content and its veracity. Wikis can provide great opportunities to make connections with our students. As an assignment, for example, students could pick a topic of interest and examine the entries that have been made on Wikipedia and the sources that have been cited as verification. Students could be asked to review this information, check the sources, and provide a written critique of the entry. Additionally, they could be required to provide their own sources of information that either affirm or debunk the sources that are cited on Wikipedia. Another way to use Wikipedia is to ask students to create their own wikis. On the website, the sponsors of Wikipedia provide specific directions for creating a new article on a new topic. Students could be asked to generate a series of topics that are related to course content and are worthy of their investigation. At the end of the semester, the quality and organization of the Wikipedia articles could be evaluated. As an additional component, teams could be asked to develop their own articles and serve as constructive critics for other groups. This interactive activity should increase student involvement and, ultimately, enhance the quality of their work.

Digital Media We live and teach in a media-rich culture. If you engage your students in conversation or listen in on their conversations, you will undoubtedly hear references to the latest films or the most recent events on popular television programs, or hear quotes and phrases from their favorite characters. Although visual and electronic media are integral parts of the twenty-first century life experience, their influence has intensified, in part, because technology permits increasing flexibility in deciding when, where, and how to watch films and television programs (e.g., DVR, DVD, podcasts, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu). For faculty, the sheer breadth of digital media offers a rich opportunity to make it an integral, relevant, and meaningful part of the students’ learning experience. Bluestone (2000) articulated the powerful influence of film in the instructional process:

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Selected feature films integrated carefully into the curriculum can foster a variety of important skills for lifelong learning….Feature films often make a wide range of issues relevant to a diverse student body. The more realistic, intimate quality of films further enhances students’ ability to understand and apply concepts. Film analysis, when linked with key themes and issues covered in class, not only increase students’ engagement in the course but also can help develop connected learning experiences and critical thinking skills. (144)

In recent years, with the advent of iTunes, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and a variety of other electronic media sites, it has become remarkably simple to access a multitude of video resources that can, in turn, be integrated into classroom or online instruction. Despite the quick and easy availability of digital media, however, faculty need to be aware of federal regulations pursuant to the Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act (2004), which focuses on copyright in a variety of areas, including digital audio recording devices; media; and playing copied, rented, or purchased media resources in the classroom without a license. These regulations require that the performance occurs x during one-on-one instruction between a teacher and student; x in a classroom or other setting devoted to instruction; and x under the auspices of a nonprofit organization (creating potential challenges in for-profit settings and online teaching). As added protection and as a way of documenting the connection between the selected media and course learning outcomes (although not addressed directly by the regulations), faculty should consider including information about the selected media, the date and time of the performance, and any related assignments within the context of the course syllabus. Another standard that protects copyrights and allows for restricted use of copyrighted material without permission is the Fair Use Doctrine (1976). The Fair Use Doctrine provides stringent guidelines for using television programs in the classroom. For example, material used in a course x should be recorded by the institution rather than the faculty member; x may not be altered in any way; x has a 10-day limitation on use; and x must be destroyed within 45 days.

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This provision of the law allows a window of opportunity for faculty to use educationally relevant and current materials appearing on television. What remains somewhat nebulous is the legality of using video from other sources (e.g., YouTube) or specialized software that provides the user with the ability to download formatted versions of material for direct insertion into classroom presentations (e.g., YouTube Downloader, Keepvid, iLivid). It can be argued that these resources also fall under the Fair Use Doctrine. It would be prudent, however, to use the procedural guidelines outlined in this section when using these media. Readers are encouraged to examine the prevailing rules and procedures in their own countries to determine how digital media can be employed legally in the classroom and in the LMS.

eBooks Of the topics related to digital technology that are examined in this text, perhaps the one that generates the widest variety of opinions is the eBook. Vassiliou and Rowley (2008), tracing the history and variables used to define eBooks (e.g., emphasis on digital or electronic nature, content, technologies, use features), proposed the following two-part definition: 1. An e-book is a digital object with textual and/or other content, which arises as a result of integrating the familiar concept of a book with features that can be provided in an electronic environment. 2. E-books, typically have in-use features such as search and cross reference functions, hypertext links, bookmarks, annotations, highlights, multimedia objects and interactive tools. (363)

By their digital nature, eBooks provide a variety of built-in features that are unavailable in printed texts: search tools, digital bookmarking, navigable table of contents, tools to save and collect highlights and notes, embedded media, interactive glossary and pronunciation tools, web links, variable font sizes, text-to-speech features, and the ease of portability afforded for multiple books on one device. This list will continue to grow as the technology is refined and improved. Richardson and Mahmood (2012) found, however, that users also have some basic concerns about eBooks, including difficulties in finding or referring to a particular page (as compared with the “actual” page in a “real” book), difficulty reading in certain types of lighting, and the inability to share the book with a friend or colleague.

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Beyond the functional advantages and disadvantages of print and eBooks, there also seems to be an affective element to the manner in which people identify their reading preferences. In conversations about book format preferences, people often mention the touch and feel of a “real book” or a preference for using a highlighter pen or making notes and comments in the margins. Costello (2014; citing Revelle et al. 2012) discussed four common types of readers, based on their preferences for book formats: x Book lovers have an inherent affinity for the print form. x Technophiles are strongly interested in the possibilities of new technology for reading. x Pragmatists are most interested in content and see pros and cons to both formats. x Printers prefer print books but are distinguished from book lovers in that they have specic difculties with the usability of eBooks. Additionally, most people find it challenging to adapt to change. This, of course, is not a new discovery. The story is told of Johannes Trithemius, a fifteenth-century Benedictine abbot, who both praised and lamented the impact of Gutenberg’s printing press (Grafton 2002). Although in many ways he celebrated and took advantage of this new discovery in his own work, he felt an additional sense of sadness over the end of an era when monks labored on a daily basis in the creation of handwritten books. His writing on this topic, In Praise of Scribes, makes the point that these handwritten texts will far outlive those created on a printing press, due to differences in durability and paper quality. The language and sentiments of Johannes Trithemius—as well as those of the book lovers, technophiles, pragmatists, and printers—will be prominent factors among students and faculty as they make choices about the use of eBooks in their academic pursuits. Beyond the realm of personal opinions that individuals may have about eBooks, some rather confusing and contradictory trends are emerging related to sales and consumption patterns. It is quite easy to find opinions (even with some occasional data thrown in) to make a case about the grand success or collapse of the eBook market: x “Five Reasons for Optimism About the Future of eBooks” (Kleinfeld 2014) x “The Market for Printed Books Will Collapse by 2020” (C.G.W. 2014)

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x “EBook Growth Slows” (Enis 2014) x “Ebook Sales Slow, Strategies Shift” (Martin 2014) Most often, this trend is described as a contest between print and eBooks, with an expectation that the winner will eliminate its opponent. Although the issue is interesting, and good fodder for a debate among strong believers on either side, it is unlikely that eBooks or print books will be eliminated in the near future. In the midst of these examinations, there is sometimes a tendency to lose perspective on the history that preceded us. Cueto (2015) provided a healthy perspective on this debate: The reality is that there is absolutely no reason print and e-books can’t coexist in the books market. I realize that can be hard to wrap your head around given the way the two have been portrayed as inherent adversaries in the media for so long, but it actually is possible. And more importantly, coexistence really does seem to be what’s happening, at least for right now.

One way of focusing the discussion of eBooks is to consider the skills necessary to maximize use. For example, imagine a vacationer sitting on a beach, sipping a Piña Colada, holding an e-reader. During this lazy afternoon, we inquire about the book they are reading. They respond that it is a best-selling thriller written by their favorite mystery writer. The pace of their reading is slow and casual with no expectation of a deadline, a final examination related to the content, or the need to prepare a book report. Contrast that reading experience with the experience of a student reading a textbook full of material on which they will be tested or that of a professor examining a collection of research studies while preparing an article for publication. The intentions and skills for these sets of tasks are entirely different. Muir and Hawes (2013) observed a group of students with eBooks and focused on their engagement with course work. Their findings indicate that the students experienced challenges with access and search results and that they had generally unpleasant reading experiences. Interestingly, in spite of these challenges, the students maintained a level of optimism about the eBook as a tool for learning. These researchers also provided a very useful hierarchical taxonomy that connects eBook literacy skills with eBook features (e.g., searching and effective use of the table of contents, managing references and acknowledgment of sources, presenting and submitting results and linking text content). In the immediate future, it will be most beneficial for students and faculty to become proficient in the use of both print and eBooks. Being restricted to one book format may prove too limiting in terms of academic

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performance and proficiency. A survey by Raimie et al. (2011), for example, indicated that respondents preferred print books for reading a story to a child and sharing books with other people. At the same time, they preferred eBooks for reading while traveling and in situations where access to a book was needed quickly. In some ways, choosing a book format may become a matter of simply choosing the right tool for the job.

Blended and Online Learning In the midst of the present-day digital explosion, it has become quite common to refer to college courses as traditional, online, blended, hybrid, flipped, or web enhanced. Unfortunately, these terms have been used rather freely and easily, and there is some confusion as to the actual format of the courses in question. Allen and Seaman (2010) provided an excellent template for addressing learning within different classroom and online configurations. They identified four course types: x Traditional courses, in which no online technology is used in the course x Web-facilitated courses, with 1%–29% of the content presented using web technology during a face-to-face course x Blended/Hybrid courses, in which 30%–79% of the course involves engagement with web technology; these courses combine face-to-face and online participation, typically with a limited number of face-to-face meetings x Online courses, in which 80% or more of the course content is delivered online This taxonomy is incredibly helpful if higher education students, faculty, administrators, and governmental or accrediting agencies are to have meaningful conversations about digital technology and higher education. It is still questionable, however, whether these criteria are known and spoken of correctly in higher education research and professional journals. There are, of course, vastly divergent opinions among the inhabitants of higher education about the quality and legitimacy of online learning. Some say that online learning is the future of higher education and would encourage institutions who want to survive the turbulence of the twentyfirst century to hop on board and embrace digital course delivery. Others claim that a college degree earned online is of inherently lower quality and value than one earned on a campus in a classroom-based program. And, as expected, numerous opinions fall in between.

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Once again, we are confronted with the realities of consumer choice. Doyle (2009) reported some of the emerging trends regarding when and why students choose face-to-face classes or online learning. Students enrolled in online classes tend to be a little older, on average, than students in traditional classrooms are. Additionally, they are more likely to be female and financially independent. A longstanding belief is that online students choose that venue because they do not have convenient access to a campus setting. The data reveal that the median distance from a campus is approximately 15 miles for both face-to-face and online students. The bottom line: When a decision is made to attend college, students have a range of options to pursue. The final choice can be based on personal needs and preferences. Regardless of what people might feel or believe about online courses, the emerging data reveal that increasing numbers of students are choosing that option and that members of the higher education community are beginning to believe in and accept that option as a valid part of the learning continuum. A survey of academic leaders (Allen and Seaman 2014) revealed several growing trends related to online education: x Sixty-six percent of the academic leaders who responded to the survey identified online education as being critical to the future of their institutions. x Academic leaders at institutions with online classes as part of the course delivery structure expressed more positive views of this option than those at institutions that did not provide that option. x Seventy-seven percent of the academic leaders indicated that online courses are equal to or better in quality than their face-to-face courses. x Thirty-three percent of students enrolled in a higher education institution were enrolled in at least one online class. x In 2013, 7.1 million students participated in online classes. These data detail the growing support from academic leaders for online education as well as growing levels of participation from students. Central to the future of online education is the issue of course quality. Of course, not everyone agrees that the infusion of online courses into the mix of higher education is a positive development: …the universities are not simply undergoing a technological transformation. Beneath that change, and camouflaged by it, lies another: the commercialization of higher education. For here as elsewhere technology is but a vehicle and a disarming disguise. (Noble 1998 2–3)

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This observation is a stark reminder of the continuing suspicions and doubts in higher education about the veracity of online learning. Quality, as always, must be a primary consideration. Quite often, faculty who are successful at teaching in a face-to-face format are asked to take their courses and translate them into online learning experiences. This process is never as simple as taking the resources used in a face-to-face class (e.g., presentation slides, webcasts, journal articles, quizzes) and loading them onto the university’s LMS. That would be a grossly oversimplified approach to online course creation. Online course design should be a systematic process exemplified by careful thought and planning. A common term that is consistently used to define excellence in online course design is alignment. Blumberg (2009) defined this term as follows: Consistency and alignment of the course objectives, content delivery and learning activities, and the assessment methods help students understand why they are taking this course and help them see how this course relates to other courses and to the overall program goals….Therefore, objectives should serve a critical, integrating role in courses and curricula both for instructors and for students. (96)

McCracken et al. (2012) pointed out that the process of determining the level at which an online course is aligned should be based on a set of clearly defined, research-based principles. An online course that is fully aligned, then, is one in which students can see clear connections among the outcomes for the course, the learning experiences that promote their understanding of course content, and the assessment strategies designed to determine whether they have accomplished the outcomes. As a means of helping faculty thoughtfully design online learning experiences for their students, two assessment tools have gained prominence in higher education: (1) Quality Matters™ and (2) The Online Learning Consortium (formerly known as Sloan-C). Quality Matters™ has a created a research-based rubric that provides guidance for the development of online courses. This rubric identifies eight areas of concern that should be addressed in course design: 1. Course overview and introduction—a pathway for students to understand the overall direction and focus of the course and an introduction to the teaching faculty 2. Learning objectives (competencies)—clearly and precisely stated expectations

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3. Assessment and measurement—clearly defined approaches to the assessment of student learning with criteria, varied processes, and grading standards 4. Instructional materials—sufficient, available, and varied resources that assist students in achieving course learning outcomes 5. Course activities and learner interaction—tools and strategies that actively engage students in the learning process 6. Course technology—quick and easy access (or download capability) for all necessary digital tools and resources 7. Learner support—tutorials and direct contact with other resources designed to assist students with their questions and concerns 8. Accessibility and usability—readability and compliance with standards for individuals with disabilities These criteria are very helpful to faculty members as they begin to examine the ways in which their face-to-face courses can be translated into blended learning experiences. As a way of increasing faculty awareness of the Quality Matters™ standards and their applicability to online learning, it may be helpful to have faculty assess their own work and engage in evaluating course designs developed by their colleagues. This cross-referencing process will help to assure quality in course design and reinforce the principles of best practice. Readers are encouraged to learn more about Quality Matters™ by examining the resources available on their webpage at https://www. qualitymatters.org/. The second approach, developed by the Online Learning Consortium, is the quality scorecard, which provides a similar listing of key criteria for effective online course design (available for review at http://onlinelearning consortium.org/consult/quality-scorecard/). The weighted categories of program quality include the following: x Institutional support (12% weighting)—policies and organizational structures to support the provision of online learning for participating students x Technology support (9.3% weighting)—electronic security measures that are in place and operational x Course development/Instructional design (16% weighting)— operational guidelines that promote best practices in studentcentered course design x Course structure (10.7% weighting)—a collection of courserelated resources that are transparent (e.g., expectations,

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assessments, grading standards), with easily accessible materials that include provisions for students with disabilities Teaching and learning (6.7% weighting)—student–faculty interactions, quick feedback, and ongoing faculty presence in the course Social and student engagement (1.3% weighting)—opportunities for students to interact and engage with one another Faculty support (8% weighting)—necessary professional development and support so as to ensure faculty effectiveness in interactions with the course and with students Student support (21.3% weighting)—information, resources, and technical assistance before and during student engagement with online courses and programs Evaluation and assessment (14.7% weighting)—ongoing processes and standards in place to determine the level at which the course and program are providing quality learning experiences for participating students

As you may notice, this scorecard has a heavy emphasis on the manner in which the online learning experience is effectively designed, well supported technologically, and with a focus on engaging students and faculty in a community-oriented learning experience. These criteria could be clustered around three main themes: support (50.6% weighting), course design (26.7% weighting), and teaching/student engagement (22.7% weighting). This configuration speaks to the importance and critical nature of planning effectively and coordinating resources in the development of online learning environments. If the design and support are well conceived, faculty need not be concerned about these details and are free to focus on interacting with their students in deep and meaningful ways. Moore and Shelton (2013) pointed out that the provisions of the Online Learning Commission Quality Scorecard are becoming common features among accrediting agencies (e.g., Middle States Associations of Colleges and Schools, North Center Association of Colleges and School). Chapter Five of this text is devoted to the process of course design, with recommendations for the systematic inclusion of digital technology.

Open Educational Resources Over the past several years, a rapidly growing movement has emerged that focuses on the creation and open sharing of learning resources in a

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variety of digital environments. These ever-expanding collections of learning materials are referred to as open educational resources (OER). The William and Flora Hewett Foundation (n.d.) defined OER as teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their use and repurposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.

This trend can revolutionize teaching and learning across the board. Imagine the tremendous possibilities when people around the world share and have access to vast amounts of information in a free, online format. As Smith and Casserly (2006) cogently observed, At the heart of the open-educational-resources movement is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the World Wide Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse that knowledge. (10)

Wiley (2006) traced the history of OER back to 1994 when Wayne Hodgins coined the term learning object. Learning objects are digital materials that can be designed, shared and reused in a variety of contexts. Later, in 1998, Wiley coined the term open content, which articulates the idea that various types of learning resources can be made globally available, for uses designed by the recipient, in support of learning. The turning point, it could be argued, came in 2001 with the founding of Creative Commons by Larry Lessig. The Creative Commons website estimates that there are 350 million licensed works as part of this collection. The licenses, according to Creative Commons (2016), forge a balance inside the traditional ‘all rights reserved’ setting that copyright law creates. Our tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work. The combination of our tools and our users is a vast and growing digital commons, a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law.

Inside this clever, open, resource-rich world, participants can choose from one of six different licensing arrangements:

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x Attribution—Others can build on, remix, distribute, and tweak the original materials as long as they provide attribution to the original author. x Attribution–NoDerivs—Others can distribute original materials commercially and non-commercially with no modifications and proper attribution. x Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike—Others can remix, tweak, and build on original materials, giving attribution and using the product only for non-commercial purposes. x Attribution–ShareAlike—Others can build on, remix, distribute, and tweak the original materials non-commercially with proper attribution. x Attribution–NonCommercial—Others can build on, remix, distribute, and tweak the original materials non-commercially with proper attribution. Those making modifications can re-license the “new” product as they choose. x Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs—Others can use original resources for non-commercial purposes, with no changes, and with proper attribution. These options give the original creator a range of control over the ways in which their materials are distributed and potentially modified. This venue provides an organizational structure for open sharing with the world. However, any intellectual property, whether formally copyrighted or licensed through Creative Commons or another site, can be taken without permission or proper attribution and/or modified in some way. The Hewlett Foundation, in cooperation with a variety of open educational resource providers, analyzed open educational use data from 2013–2015, collected from individuals whom they described as informal learners (i.e., learners not registered for a course at a residential institution). These data reveal some fascinating findings: x Although 35% of the respondents were from the United States, the remaining 65% represented 135 nations around the world. x 67% of the respondents indicated that English was their primary or first language. x 64.4% of the respondents were between 19 and 44 years old. x 95.8% of the respondents had some formal certificate, degree, or diploma. x The top reasons for choosing to use OER included an opportunity to study at low or no cost (89%), a desire to learn (75%), the

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x

x x

x

x

accessibility of materials (74%), the ability to study materials online (74%), and the ability to use materials flexibly. The most common subjects used in OER included computer and information science (31.8%), economics, business, and management (30.6%), science (28.2%), mathematics (26.4%), and psychology and philosophy (25.2%). The most popular resources included open textbooks (69.8%), videos (64.1%), lectures (55.4%), tutorials (55.1%), and full courses (49.4%). The likelihood of selecting a particular resource was enhanced by the relevance of the resource to the interests or needs of the individual (70%), the description of the learning objectives (63%), the creation of the resources by a reputable institution or person (56%), and the inclusion of interactive or multimedia content (43%). Challenges in using OER included knowing where to find needed resources (48.8%), finding suitable resources in a designated subject area (45.9%), and finding resources that are up to date (28.3%). Participants indicated that in the future they would plan to take a course or study in OER (84.5%), do further research (81.4), and recommend this resource to others (80.4%).

The data reveal that OER can provide an incredibly diverse range of learning materials in a variety of formats suited to the needs of the individual. As OER expand, it is reasonable to predict a refinement of search tools as well as increases in the quality and quantity of available resources. Part of that journey, however, will be a robust vetting process that assures the quality of searchable items (Porcello and Hsi 2013). The OER website Merlot II (2016) describes itself as “a curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed by and used by and international education community.” The curation process is undertaken by a collection of editorial boards and peer reviewers. Camilleri, Ehlers, and Pawlowski (2014) suggested a multidimensional approach to ensuring that OER are of sufficient quality by evaluating each of the following: x Efficacy—the fitness for purpose of the object or concept being assessed. Within the context of OER, fitness might include characteristics such as ease of reuse or educational value.

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x Impact—the extent to which an object or concept proves effective. Impact is dependent on the nature of the object or concept itself, the context in which it is applied, and the use to which it is put. x Availability—a precondition for efficacy and impact and thus part of the element of quality. In this sense, availability includes concepts such as transparency and ease of access. x Accuracy—a measure of (a) precision and (b) absence of errors in a particular process or object. x Excellence—a comparison of the quality of an object or concept to (a) its peers, and (b) the maximum theoretical quality potential it can reach.

Talking Points As higher education proceeds ahead through the twenty-first century, faculty and students will experience increasing pressure to engage with digital technology as part of the process of teaching and learning. Some faculty, and some students, will be attracted to the idea of learning in a digital context. At the same time, others will continue to resist this reality. In this chapter, we have reviewed some of the major categories of digital tools and resources that are useful for higher education. These include x Learning Management Systems x A process for the aggregation of content x The ongoing use of social networking and other out-of-class communication tools x The deployment of digital media as a learning tool x The use of eBooks in the learning process x The instructional formats of blended and online learning x The vast and growing storehouse of Open Educational Resources To a great extent, the speed at which these tools become commonplace across the breadth of higher education will be driven by individual faculty members and the choices they make at the course level. That reality may not be in the best interest of students, but it is the rule of the day in higher education. Faculty generally have the latitude to teach as they please and make a wide range of choices on the manner in which students will be exposed to, and master, the content of the courses they teach. As has been proposed throughout this text, however, faculty who avoid using digital technology are depriving their students of a powerful and long-lasting

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learning opportunity. That opportunity is one of engaging not only with course content but also with a rich collection of digital tools that can enhance their learning and simultaneously acquaint them with broader learning opportunities that live in digital contexts. As the old adage goes, time will tell. The question, however, is whether the clock will be digital or analog.

Reflective Questions 1. What are the activities that you engage in regularly to ensure that you are refining and expanding your digital skills? 2. What types of resources (e.g., people, websites, tutorials) do you rely on to assist you when digital tool use challenges arise in your daily routines?

CHAPTER FOUR MOVING FORWARD TO DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP

Students need to be educated on how to be good citizens of their country and what their rights and responsibilities are as members of society. The same issues need to be addressed with regard to the emerging digital society, so that students can learn how to be responsible and productive members of that society. —Mike Ribble, Author, Digital Citizenship in Schools

As we have discussed, part of the digital divide conversation has focused on the level at which individuals around the world have the skills necessary to engage effectively with technology for informational and other chosen or needed purposes (Hargattai 2003; Hargattai and Shafer 2006). The rise of a global context for digital technology has been accompanied by increased interest in identifying the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to survive and thrive on this new frontier. Generally, the dialogue has centered on two interrelated concepts: digital literacy and digital citizenship. In this chapter, we examine each of these areas, with an eye toward identifying the collection of competencies that are most relevant to students and faculty in higher education.

Three Lenses While we explore a variety of definitions and criteria for digital literacy and digital citizenship, you are encouraged to reflect on this information through a set of three distinct lenses. These lenses were chosen to help focus our attention on specific dynamics that affect the process of learning and employing digital tools. These lenses will also help us further clarify the similarities, differences, and connections between digital literacy and digital citizenship. The first lens, transliteracy, concentrates on the growing assortment of digital tools and platforms that await us as we engage with technology in ever-expanding ways. The origin of this term is credited to Alan Liu, Director of the Transcriptions Research Project and Professor in the

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Department of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara (Ipri 2010). Thomas et al. (2007) have defined transliteracy as the ability to read, write and interact across a range of tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.

So although it is important for each of us to master a variety of digital skill sets (e.g., email, document creation, image manipulation, posting on social media, web searches, video creation), transliteracy reminds us that it is also important to expand our ability to perform these skills across a range of tools and venues (e.g., computers, smartphones, tablets, browsers, operating systems). Bush (2012) described a transliterate learner as one who “…builds knowledge, communicates, and interacts across a range of platforms, tools, and media” (5). By the same token, a transliterate faculty member would design learning experiences and assessment strategies that require students to connect with a wide variety of digital platforms, tools, and media as they engage in learning, research, and the creation of authentic products to document and display their summative learning. Adopting a commitment to facilitate the development of transliterate learners makes it necessary to provide the supports and resources that can assist faculty and students in gaining or refining their digital skills. This particular lens can be somewhat deceiving. One of the trademarks of the technology industry is that there is ongoing competition to present new and improved products with entirely new sets of bells and whistles. That is excellent news for the consumer (except for the ongoing financial burden that comes with needing to be the first kid on the block with the newest device). It also means, however, a constant process of learning how to navigate and maximize the new tools that come our way. Just another challenge of ongoing digital citizenship. The second lens, based on the work of Martin (2009), focuses on the developmental progression of skills that lead to either digital literacy or digital citizenship. Martin suggested three sequential levels of digital development: x Digital competence (e.g., document preparation, electronic communication, creating and manipulating digital images) x Digital usage (e.g., drawing on specific digital skills to complete professional tasks). Usage could probably be also extended to include daily tasks that may fall outside of our professional responsibilities but are useful and necessary in our lives (e.g.,

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making online purchases, airline and hotel reservations, googling for information) x Digital transformation (e.g., pursuing individual interests and goals, connecting with various groups of individuals, remaining abreast of societal issues in our roles as global citizens) This model acknowledges that it all begins with learning how to use, at a rudimentary level, those digital tools that will best assist us in performing necessary tasks and accomplishing chosen goals. From that point forward, individuals can make a myriad of decisions about the ways in which they will make digital tool use an integral part of their lives. It may be helpful to think about your own digital engagement story and your path toward increasing your digital proficiencies. Questions that may guide this reflective process include the following: x How was I first introduced to technology as a life and learning tool? x To what extent do I currently rely on technology as a part of my daily life (e.g., vocation and profession, recreation, communication, relationships, information)? x How open am I to a continuation of the digital learning process (e.g., expanding my mastery of digital tools)? x What are my restrictions and limitations related to digital tool use (e.g., limited availability)? x What are the resources that I have available to learn and master newly emerging digital tools and skill sets? x Where do I go for assistance when I reach a challenging point in my digital journey? We each have a personal story to tell in relation to digital technology. It may be robust and energetic or filled with challenges and setbacks. One of the ongoing themes for each individual is the need to create support structures that allow us to have access and the opportunity to grow and learn digitally. As you will observe in the following models of digital literacy and digital citizenship, there is generally a progression of development from novice to competent performer to expert (Benner 1982). Although these conceptual frameworks use differing sequences and terminologies, they all presume a developmental approach driven by the motivations, level of access, and resources available to the digital sojourner.

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The third lens focuses our attention on what I will term the psychotechnical variables that come into play when individuals choose or have the opportunity to engage with digital technology. Ng (2012a, 2012b) provided an excellent model that can guide our thinking about the cognitive, social-emotional, and technical aspects of digital engagement: x The technical dimension includes operational literacy and critical literacy (e.g., the ability to learn technical and operational skills for daily activities). x The cognitive dimension includes information literacy and critical literacy (e.g., thinking critically, ethically, legally, and morally about the information we are seeking and using). x The social-emotional dimension includes responsible use of digital tools, propriety and politeness in social interactions, and protection of personal safety. Ng emphasizes that a primary focus should be placed on the critical aspect of digital literacy, defined as follows: …understanding that people behind the scenes writing the information have their own motivations and being able to critically evaluate whose voice is being heard and whose is not is important for learning as neutrally as possible….It is important that the individual critically analyse digital materials in more depth to understand the underlying meanings in the information. (1068)

Ng acknowledged that active and effective engagement with digital technology involves the whole person. As people engage with technology and execute required technical skills, they are energetically activating their minds to what they are seeing, reading, and hearing. They are also making social-emotional connections as they communicate and interact with others in a manner that demonstrates character and netiquette. At the best and most effective levels, delving into the digital world requires multiple layers of personal involvement. Of these three layers proposed by Ng, perhaps the most ignored is the social-emotional dimension. This layer acknowledges the feelings that accompany the process of engaging our technical and cognitive sides. How often have you observed someone becoming incredibly frustrated with the computer, or a piece of software, or a website? Those feelings have an impact on whether the individual is willing or interested in digging deeper into the digital world. At this moment of frustration, the person makes a decision. He or she can walk away and find another way to

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get the desired information or accomplish the task. Or, the person can bite the bullet and dig in until the task is accomplished using the digital tools available. These three lenses have been selected to help us sift through the varied definitions and criteria that have been created for digital literacy and digital citizenship. As you think about the descriptions that lie ahead, stop and consider the vantage points provided by these lenses. Also, think about how well these criteria describe you and the students with whom you work on a daily basis.

Perspectives on Digital Literacy The term digital literacy, according to Bawden (2008), first gained traction with the publication of the text Digital Literacy by Paul Gilster (1998). Gilster observed that digital literacy “…is about mastering ideas, not keystrokes” (15). This distinction reminds us that literacy in the digital world is about more than simply checking off a list of mastered competencies. So although we should remain cognizant of the actual skills necessary to choose, activate, and navigate the digital tools at our disposal, we will always need to consider the purposes and outcomes that are the focus of the digital experience. Lankshear and Knobel (2006) suggested that definitions of digital literacy generally fall into two categories: conceptual and standardized. Conceptual definitions are those that focus on the medium, the message, and the intended audience (e.g., the digital environment as a storehouse for ideas; the ability to access, decipher, and understand the available digital content). Standardized definitions “refer to attempts to operationalize what is involved in being ‘digitally literate’ in terms of certain tasks, performances, demonstrations of skills, etc., and to render these as a standard set for general adoption” (12). They further contended that most mainstream definitions of digital literacy have three common characteristics: (1) they all involve a connection with information, (2) part of this connection involves the process of assessing the truth and validity of digital content, and (3) digital literacy is considered a dynamic and growing collection of skills. Although it is critically important to determine the competencies necessary to navigate in a digital world successfully, the varied nature of these definitions makes it challenging to chart clear and consistent expectations for students and faculty. Eshet-Alkalai (2004) described the confusion that arises:

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Chapter Four In light of the rapid and continual development of digital technology, individuals are required to use a growing variety of technical, cognitive, and sociological skills in order to perform tasks and solve problems in digital environments. These skills are referred to in the literature as ‘digital literacy.’…Like any fashionable term, ‘digital literacy’ has enjoyed a broad range of uses in the literature, from reference to technical aspects…to cognitive, psychological, or sociological meanings….The indistinct use of the term causes ambiguity, and leads to misunderstandings, misconceptions, and poor communication among researchers and developers involved in the processes of designing and developing learning digital environments. (93–94)

A common criticism of the efforts to define digital literacy is, according to Chase and Laufenberg (2011), that the work being done around digital literacy is inherently “squishy.” In spite of these difficulties, these authors encourage us not to shy away from conversations and debates on this topic. Increased levels of dialogue will lead to consensus building, new understandings, and an expansion of the boundaries for what we are able to accomplish personally and what we can teach to others in a digital context. As we review and move through summaries of the varied definitions and perspectives on the nature of digital literacy, you will begin to make some connections between your current roles and responsibilities and the ways in which you are able to take full advantage of the resources that are found inside the various frameworks of digital literacy. Our starting point for considering varied definitions of digital literacy is one developed by The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO 2011). It includes three subsets of digital literacy: x Information and communications technology literacy (i.e., skills necessary to access and participate in computer-based services and cultural offerings) x Technological literacy (i.e., use of technical computing skills) x Information literacy (i.e., optimizing the ability to locate, identify, retrieve, and process information) This generalized model of digital literacy is organized developmentally with a primary focus on the skills involved in accessing and using information as a pathway to cultural participation. UNESCO has highlighted digital literacy as a critical feature of life skills for the twentyfirst century. UNESCO uses sixteen core indicators to monitor global

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opportunities for education, training, and access to information and has determined that seven are highly dependent on and connected to digital literacy (e.g., civic skills, learning-to-learn skills, participation of adults in lifelong learning). In an attempt to tighten the parameters of literacy in the twenty-first century, Belshaw (2014) proposed eight essential elements of digital literacy: x Cultural—Digital technology is considered in relation to all the other elements and influences in our lives. As digital technology grows within our culture, our connections with information and with one another undergo a dramatic transformation. Belshaw considered this element to be the most important element of digital literacy. x Cognitive—Learners can expose themselves to a diverse collection of ideas and concepts and can think through that information. x Constructive—The vast and diverse body of knowledge available to the learner provides new and expanded opportunities to create and construct new forms of content that can be shared. x Communicative—Digital technology offers new opportunities to communicate with vastly expanded and diverse audiences, and learners must develop new skills as pathways to full participation. x Confident—Learners must be self-assured about their abilities and must understand what they can accomplish as full participants in a vast digital frontier. x Creative—This new collection of digital tools and resources provides unlimited opportunities for learners to engage in creative endeavors and problem solving. x Critical—Learners must develop the skills necessary to be vigilant critics of the content they encounter in digital venues. x Civic—Digital technologies offer new opportunities for citizens of the world to engage with a variety of issues in active and collaborative ways. Belshaw also described the manner in which digital literacy is an interesting mixture of content knowledge and tool knowledge: Literacy is very closely aligned with the knowledge and use of tools. I shall call this tool-knowledge. This first involved inscribing words or symbols upon rock or stone, then moved on to the use of quill/pen and ink, and finally the printing press. Literacy, however, also depends upon a different

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kind of knowledge. There has to be both something that is being communicated through the writing as well as an ability to use tools to do that communicating. I shall call this content-knowledge. Literacy, then, involves both tool-knowledge and content-knowledge. Some would wish to equate literacy with these forms of knowledge. They would say that literacy is the sum total of the existing tool-knowledge and content-knowledge. However, this is problematic as it depends upon a static conception of knowledge. Both forms of knowledge change over time because of external factors out of our control such as societal norms and trends. (15)

Eshet-Alkalai (2004) and Aviram and Eshet-Alkalai (2006) proposed an integrated model of digital literacy skills. These authors suggested that digital literacy is a necessity for “effective and mindful learning” (1) in an ever-expanding and increasingly complex digital world. The areas of digital literacy they have conceptualized include the following: x Photo-visual literacythe ability to interpret and make use of graphic representation and visual messaging for the purposes of communication and understanding instructions and messages x Reproduction literacythe ability to reproduce and edit text, graphics, and sound in a way that creates new meanings and interpretations of the original product x Branching literacythe ability to move nimbly across a variety of digital domains for the purposes of connecting and constructing knowledge x Information literacy“the art of always questioning information” (Aviram and Eshet-Alkalai 2006, 4). Although this form of literacy has always been a required skill for accomplished scholars, it is now an absolute necessity for all digitally engaged learners. x Socio-emotional literacya level of maturity and the ability to engage judiciously with other members of the digital world and the other forms of literacy. Aviram and Eshet-Alkalai (2006) described this form of literacy as the most sophisticated and complex aspect of digital literacy. Aviram and Eshet-Alkalai (2006) made a unique contribution to the literature of digital literacy by asking these four highly provocative questions: x

Are “digital skills” really independent characteristics in their own right, or just derivatives of deeper personality characteristics?

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If the latter is true, are these derivatives of learning styles, of intelligences, of personality types, or of some combination of the above? If “digital skills” are simply derivatives of personality traits, what are the educational implications? If we adopt the pluralistic recommendation, that is, that individuals should focus on their inclinations and strengths, what is the task of the designers – to facilitate the acquisition of the digital literacies, to help individuals who are not endowed with such skills function in digital environments without them (by adapting the environment to the profile of the user), or both? (9)

These questions require us to consider whether digital literacies, and their acquisition, can be separated from the learning styles, intelligences, and personality types of the learner. Just as the pace, quantity, and quality of learning in other areas (e.g., reading, writing, communicating, numerical learning) are correlated with the varied abilities of the learners and the quality of the instruction they receive, so will they be with the acquisition of digital literacies. This inquiry reminds us that creating a taxonomy of digital literacy is only the starting point on this journey. We must then continue on to create and validate instructional processes that provide the widest possible pathway to digital literacy for the greatest possible number of individuals around the world. Van Deursen and van Dijk (2009, 2010a, 2010b) identified four categories of digital skills, primarily as a strategy for further research on skill measurement and mastery and a way to operationalize skill deficits in the digital divides: x Operational Internet skillsa basic skill set related to the use of Internet technology (e.g., browsers, search engines, Internet-based forms) x Formal Internet skillsskills related to Internet navigation and orientation (e.g., hyperlinks, maintaining a sense of orientation when navigating) x Information Internet skillsskills related to fulfilling informational needs (e.g., search queries, evaluating web-based resources) x Strategic Internet skillsskills that assist individuals in improving their position in society (e.g., efficient use of resources in pursuit of a goal)

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This type of taxonomy provides a simple and straightforward means for ongoing assessment of progress toward closing the digital divides. Part of the authors’ concern is the lack of any systematic process developed for assessing “the actual level of internet skills possessed by populations at large” (van Deursen and van Dijk, 2015, 894). In their estimation, many of the studies that have been undertaken suffer from faulty sampling procedures and inappropriately ask individuals to estimate their own levels of proficiency. Although these studies might add some small measure of data to what is known about Internet use and skill patterns, they do little to provide any generalizable results. Van Deursen and van Dijk are correct in asserting a need for a research strategy that will provide valid and reliable estimates of Internet proficiencies on a global scale. Sadly, the scope of such an effort may make the realization of this dream far off in the distant future. In spite of the limitations outlined here, what van Deursen and van Dijk have suggested could set the stage for change. Imagine, for example, if a standardized protocol for digital literacy could be created, validated, made easily available, and widely disseminated. This protocol would provide a pathway for local, regional, national, and international organizations to survey the individuals with whom they work to determine their levels of digital literacy. In this scenario, it would be important to maintain some level of fluidity so that the content remained relevant and accounted for ongoing changes in the digital landscape. Finally, and in a similar vein, Sharpe and Beetham (2010) suggested a pyramid of digital literacy skills that include the following: x Functional access to technologies and tools needed to accomplish desired tasks (e.g., networked computer, wireless digital devices, any required specialized hardware or software) x Skills in learning, communicating, information seeking, and organizing (e.g., use of search engines, ability to access and evaluate information, finding and evaluating what might be useful) x Practices that provide individuals the opportunities to make choices about how they engage with technology (e.g., downloading needed materials onto a portable memory device, accessing resources from a variety of sources, choosing appropriate tools for specific tasks) x Creative approaches that provide individuals the ability to create their own digital environments and resources (e.g., as previously learned skills are mastered or appropriated, the learner is equipped

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and ready to begin personalizing their digital technology use and creating additional resources) It is interesting to note that Sharpe and Beetham, in describing their model, refer to Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy of needs. Like Maslow’s hierarchy, the Sharpe and Beetham approach to digital literacy is based on achieving one set of needs before moving on to the next higher level. Both models acknowledge what Maslow referred to as pre-potency: Human needs arrange themselves in hierarchies of pre-potency. That is to say, the appearance of one need usually rests on the prior satisfaction of another, more pre-potent need. Man is a perpetually wanting animal. Also no need or drive can be treated as if it were isolated or discrete; every drive is related to the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of other drives. (370)

This foundation is integral to thinking about the manner in which digital literacy is facilitated with learners. For example, moving from the functional access level to the skills level requires that an individual first satisfy (i.e., accomplish, master, fulfill) the criteria of functional access. As the principles of digital literacy become more refined and universally accepted, it will be important to create instructional programs that assess learner knowledge and affirm the role of pre-potency in skill acquisition and mastery. In summary, interest in defining the parameters of digital literacy is ongoing and increasing. As we have seen, however, the collection of proposed parameters for digital literacy contains a wide range of skills and emphases based on the preferences and perspectives of the creators. It will become increasingly important to consolidate these criteria into a commonly affirmed set of criteria. In this way, research-based teaching practices can be validated for use with varying populations of learners.

Perspectives on Digital Citizenship The term digital citizen is often attributed to journalist Jon Katz (Miller 2014). In an article published in Wired magazine, Katz (1997) described a group of individuals based on how often they use email and the extent to which they have access to a laptop, a cell phone, a beeper, and a home computer. The “Superconnected” use email at least three days a week and use all four of the target technologies. The “Connected” also exchange email at least three days a week, but they have access to only three of the other four communication tools. The “Semiconnected” use at least one but not more

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Katz identified the Superconnected and Connected groups as digital citizens. Interestingly, beyond the realm of their connection status, Katz also observed the level at which digital citizens could name current political leaders, were knowledgeable about the world, and were active future-oriented participants in the culture. Although it would be an exaggeration to assume all these wonderful qualities are part of every digital citizen’s repertoire, Katz did manage to foreshadow the kinds of attributes that are now being folded into conversations about this group of digital users. The emergence of digital technology has the continuing potential to redefine the boundaries and criteria for citizenship on an ongoing basis. Since Katz created that initial designation, ongoing examinations of digital citizenship, as the term implies, tend to focus on creating pathways for individuals to exercise their rights and responsibilities as citizens (e.g., access to varied forms of information; ability to participate, express opinions, make choices). The literature regarding digital citizenship acknowledges the need for access and skills (i.e., digital literacy) as prerequisite but then proceeds to move the conversation to a higher plane. Digital citizenship expands the conversation to include a whole new rhetoric that ranges from individuals as respectful and conscientious users of technology to their engaging actively in the political process. One of the most frequently cited definitions of digital citizenship came from Mossberger, Tolbert, and McNeal (2008), who proposed the following: Digital citizenship is the ability to participate in society online. Information technology, we argue, has assumed a secure place today in the civilized life and prevailing standards of U.S. society. In much the same way that education has promoted democracy and economic growth, the Internet has the potential to benefit society as a whole, and facilitate the membership and participation of individuals within society. We define “digital citizens” as those who use the Internet regularly and effectively—that is, on a daily basis. Previous research has defined a ‘‘digital divide’’ in terms of access to technology….Daily Internet use implies sufficient technical competence and information literacy skills for effective use along with some regular means of access. (1–2)

These authors suggest that the inclusive experience of being a digital citizen can be evidenced in three areas of life: (1) engagement with prevailing forms of societal communication (i.e., the Internet in our

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twenty-first century context), (2) a connection between digital citizenship and participation in the larger democratic process, and (3) the opportunities that the Internet affords in the marketplace. The tenor of this definition reflects the advantages that accrue from being able to access and use the tools of the Internet effectively as part of a larger global community. From this vantage point, it can be seen that digital citizenship includes social, economic, and political implications. Many authors and researchers have chosen to focus their investigations on particular aspects of this concept, and this specialization is actually very helpful as it brings clarity to the multiple dimensions of digital citizenship. Isin and Ruppert (2015), in their thoughtful examination of digital citizenship, provided a unique perspective on this concept. It begins with what they define as three groupings of digital acts: callings, closings, and openings. Callings include participating (e.g., gaining access to and acquiring the skills and tools necessary to engage with the digital world), connecting (e.g., engaging with social media, emailing, chatting, following), and sharing (e.g., using wikis, file sharing, creating websites). Closings refer to filtering (e.g., evaluating norms, values, and ideologies that guide digital interactions), tracking (e.g., reviewing issues related to privacy), and normalizing (e.g., developing a personalized pattern of consent). Openings are characterized by witnessing (e.g., observing, reporting, analyzing), hacking (e.g., securing code and written language that is originated by someone else, without their expressed consent), and communing (e.g., considering copyright law and proper attribution). These delineations are very helpful in capturing both the positive and the challenging aspects of achieving digital citizenship. The model also reminds us that citizenship comes with personal as well as collective responsibilities. Ohler (2010) assumed a rather philosophical view of the roles and responsibilities of digital citizenship. Harkening back to the days of the ancient Greeks and Romans, Ohler laid out an extensive foundation for the ideas of being a citizen and being part of a community. He passionately implored all of us to take these responsibilities seriously: We use the term digital citizenship as a catch-all phrase to describe an ideal for our students with regard to understanding their opportunities and responsibilities in the Digital Age. If we look at it as simply meaning “what it means to be a citizen in the Digital Age,” then it works fairly well. After all, issues of local, global, and digital community are always at play these days, so digital citizenship would therefore seem to embrace all of them as well as the citizenship issues associated with them. (40)

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Ohler (2012) also suggested that true digital citizenship implies a responsibility to demonstrate character. The meaning of character in the digital world is one that can promote interesting conversations. Ohler described a “two lives” approach to digital engagement and character (e.g., students are unplugged during the school day and reconnect after the school day ends). This idea was proposed as a way of thinking about the responsible use of technology in relation to what happens in school during the day. What, however, might happen if we extended this two-lives concept to include, for all of us, the difference between what people see of us in our daily face-to-face interactions and the ways that we engage online through digital technology (e.g., Facebook profile, LinkedIn summary of training and work experiences)? How might we feel if our digital fingerprint were available for all to see? What level of consistency would be noted between our face-to-face self and our digital self? Simsek and Simsek (2013) suggested that full realization of digital citizenship will require new literacies. They described this transition in the following manner: Before the Internet, main information resources were newspapers, books, radio, television, films etc. These information resources shaped or affected decision-making process in order to fulfill the citizenship responsibilities and exercise democratic rights. They mostly focused on understanding printed and audiovisual messages. Thus, the literacy they required was often called “print literacy” and “media literacy.” As information technologies have changed rapidly especially with the emergence of the Internet and other related applications like Web, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, Facebook, mobile technologies etc., new multimodal information forms have been created. Because traditional literacy could not meet the requirements of the digital age, more complicated skills are needed in the name of new literacies. In the digital age, it is a vital requisite to fully understand and use the capacity of new information and communication technologies. (128)

As an example of the manner in which literacies engage with various types of technology, James (2007) cross-referenced a variety of tools with varied literacy capabilities. For example, radio, television, telephones, and mobile telephones require no literacy skills. On the other hand, email and Internet use require high-level literacy and language skills, computer literacy, and technical competence. This study points to the reality that simply providing digital tools and access is not sufficient, even in the presence of skill training related to the use of a computer or mobile device. The digital world is largely driven by language and literacy skills. To be fully successful, digital citizens must have the necessary levels of

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preparedness to maximize the information available through digital pathways. Ribble and Bailey (2007) suggested nine basic elements, and later, three categories of digital citizenship: Respect your self/Respect others x Digital etiquette (e.g., demonstrating proper conduct and behavior) x Digital access (e.g., having the ability to have full access to needed digital technology) x Digital law (e.g., maintaining an awareness and compliance with digital laws and policies) Educate your self/Connect with others x Digital communication (e.g., understanding the parameters of exchanging digital information) x Digital literacy (e.g., knowing how to choose and use varied digital technologies) x Digital commerce (e.g., buying goods and services via digital means) Protect your self/Protect others x Digital rights and responsibilities (e.g., taking responsibility for protecting our own rights and those of others) x Safety (e.g., taking necessary precautions to protect personal information) x Digital health and wellness (e.g., being aware of risks and challenges of digital technology) This framework provides an excellent blueprint for thought and action related to the ever-expanding future of technology and the ways in which increasing numbers of people around the world can be welcomed as fullfledged members of a global digital community. A synthesis of the various frameworks outlined in this chapter will provide academicians, practitioners, government officials, and advocates with a direction for legislation, resource allocation, training, and development in neighborhoods, geographic regions, and countries. Efforts and initiatives must be created at a variety of levels—all focused on providing all the rights and responsibilities of digital citizenship. In summary, digital citizenship expands the conversation beyond the boundaries of access and skills to include opportunities to engage in the social, political, economic and commercial, cultural, and creative features of the culture. Inherent in the role of a digital citizen is an expectation for consistently ethical, legal, and character-driven behaviors and choices.

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Talking Points In this chapter, we have explored the varied dimensions of digital divides and digital citizenship. The antithesis of a digital divide is the combination of the promising concepts of digital literacy and digital citizenship. The body of literature addressing these topics articulates technological aspirations at a global level. Through a clear description of the varied components of digital literacy and citizenship, it becomes possible to envision the world of the future, where ever-increasing numbers of people not only have access to needed technology but also have the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to maximize the role of that technology in their daily lives. That picture creates a clear pathway across the Digital Divide. Exciting possibilities lie ahead. Explorations of digital literacy and digital citizenship will continue. Dialogue surrounding these two concepts will serve to sharpen and refine what we know and do to promote the acquisition of digital technology skills by people around the world. From the vantage point of higher education, it is reasonable to ask if we are willing to “settle” for our students mastering the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that are outlined in our syllabi and program descriptions. Should we not also be looking forward and equipping our students to master program content and become full-fledged, participating digital citizens? One final thought on digital literacy and digital citizenship. Achieving the levels of performance that are inherent in literacy and citizenship are important milestones for all of us. The important thing to remember, however, is that literacy, citizenship, and staying on top of what is happening in the digital world are ongoing, lifelong processes.

Reflective Questions 1. What are the criteria that you use to determine what is critically important to learn in a changing digital world? What will you decide not to pursue or learn? 2. How do you help your students wrestle with the challenges of making good digital choices?

CHAPTER FIVE DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP AND COURSE DESIGN

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. —Steve Jobs, Entrepreneur and inventor

We now turn our attention to the process of using digital technology in a purposeful manner as a part of the course design process. The focus of this effort is to help our students learn more effectively and to practice the skills and responsibilities of digital citizenship. For each of us as faculty members, this could mean either creating a new course from scratch or taking a course that has been traditionally offered in a face-to-face format and rethinking how that course might be redesigned to include a collection of robust and interactive digital elements. A primary premise of this text is that faculty can play a pivotal role in promoting students’ digital citizenship through the strategic design of learning experiences that promote interaction with a variety of digital tools and resources. For the faint of heart, who may be wondering if they can take this next step and create courses that effectively integrate digital technology as a learning tool, McHaney (2011) provided powerful motivation for what might be possible: As educators, we have the monumental task of learning to use these new capabilities [application of digital technology] in ways that enhance and build on what we have learned to be true and useful. This is not an occasion for despair, because changes have the potential for the synergy of technology, scholarship and pedagogy. One can add an entire generation of eager, motivated, excited, and engaged young people to the mix. But we must bear in mind that, just because they are ready to use information systems, computers, mobile devices, social networks, and virtual reality games doesn’t mean they are experts in understanding how to filter information and determine its value and relevance. They are more willing to dabble and explore, and they have good instincts regarding ways to make better use of the digital world emerging around us, but we still have an incredible responsibility to ensure the continuity of higher education. (51)

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The journey will be different for each of us. This chapter is intended to provide a road map for making the transition from your current location in the digital world to a place where you feel comfortable and proficient in using digital technology as an integral part of the teaching and learning experience with your students. The platform for this process is course design. In this chapter, we explore some basic considerations related to course design and the integration of digital technology. Chapter Six is devoted to research-based practices that demonstrate what can be accomplished with various forms of digital technology.

Embracing the Process of Course Design In higher education, there is a common assumption that faculty members, as experts in their academic disciplines, inherently have the skills necessary to translate that knowledge into well-designed learning experiences for their students. As a result, faculty are often handed a syllabus, wished good luck, and then sent off to create the courses they will teach during the upcoming semester. This process can lead to frustration for faculty members and the students they teach. Whetten (2007), lamenting some of the challenges in his own journey as a faculty member, cited Fink’s (2005) observations about faculty awareness and skills related to course design: When we teach, we engage in two closely related, but distinct, activities. First, we design the course by gathering information and making a number of decisions about the way the course will be taught. Second, we engage in teacher–student interactions as we implement the course we have designed…. However, of these two activities, our ability to design courses well is usually the most limiting factor. Most of us have had little or no training in how to design courses. (1)

Of course, faculty members’ skills in course design vary to a large degree. Furthermore, faculty also have a variety of feelings and opinions about the manner in which courses should be developed. Bates and Poole (2003) suggested two general types of faculty members, based on the mindsets that are prominent with regard to course design: neats and scruffies. Neats are inclined to adopt a systematic approach to course design and then follow a prescribed schedule and set of procedures. These practices generally result in the creation of well-organized and tightly designed courses. However, neats tend to be overly rigid and may have difficulty communicating and dealing with any ambiguities that arise during the course design process. Scruffies, on the other hand, are more

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casual in their approach to course design. The courses they create tend to be more original and creative. At the same time, they often include an overloaded quantity of student work. As can be seen, both extremes carry with them positive and negative features. The authors suggest that the best possible approach may be to strive to develop courses using the combined attributes of both neats and scruffies: well organized, tightly designed, original, and creative. To complicate the picture even further, faculty also have access to an abundance of course design models from which they can choose. Andrews and Goodson (1980), for example, identified over sixty models of course design that have been documented and described in the professional literature. They also observed that common practices in instructional design often have a strong local flavor, driven by what they termed “raw empiricism.” They cited the work of Merrill and Boutwell (1973) to describe the general level of imprecision that seems common in this area of educational practice: Instructional materials are prepared on the basis of intuition, folklore, or experience and administered to members of the target population. If the students pass the test, the product is considered appropriate. If not, the materials are revised and tried again. This tryout revision cycle is repeated until the product works or the developers run out of resources or time. (96)

For the purposes of this discussion, we approach the task of connecting technology with course design through the pathway of backward design. This approach was selected primarily because of its relative simplicity and elegance. This approach to course design is also one that faculty can easily apply to their own course design and development needs. The idea of using a backward design approach to course creation is often attributed to Ralph Tyler in his book Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Wiggins and McTighe 2005). Interestingly, although this a commonly cited attribution, Tyler never actually used the term “backward design” in his book. He did, however, lay the groundwork for this perspective on the course design process: Educational objectives become the criteria by which materials are selected, content is outlined, instructional procedures are developed, and tests and examinations are prepared….The purpose of a statement of objectives is to indicate the kinds of changes in the student to be brought about so that instructional activities can be planned and developed in a way likely to attain these objectives. (Tyler 1949, 1, 45; as cited by Wiggins and McTighe)

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Wiggins and McTighe (2005) operationalized the process of backward design into three distinct steps: (1) identify the desired results (i.e., articulate the course learning outcomes), (2) determine acceptable evidence (i.e., create assessment strategies related to the learning outcomes), and (3) plan learning experiences and instruction (i.e., identify a plan of instruction to facilitate accomplishment of the learning outcomes). We explore each of these three dimensions in detail as a conduit to the integration of digital technology.

Identify the Desired Results It all begins with learning outcomes, the desired results that you plan for your students to accomplish over the span of a semester. In colleges and universities around the world, it is common for each course to have an established and approved set of learning outcomes. Suskie (2009) defined learning outcomes as “the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and habits of mind that students have and take with them when they successfully complete a course or program” (38). Wiggins and McTighe (2005) described the importance of designing instruction with a clear set of outcomes: We cannot stress enough the importance of long-term priorities in planning. Justifiable decisions about what to teach, what to leave out, what to emphasize, and what to minimize can be made only if there are agreedupon priorities related to exit-level objectives. With no long-term goals, there is no perspective, hence, no check on the teacher habit of merely teaching to short-term, content-related objectives. (56)

Scott (2011) provided an excellent analysis of the role that these learning outcomes can, do, and should play in the course design process in higher education: The pedagogic purposes of learning outcomes are clear, in that they are designed to give a clear indication of the learning destiny, that the learning opportunity provider intends the learner to reach. In doing so they give power to the learner, as armed with knowledge of the destiny the learner can if they wish, chart their own journey to this destination…. To the potential learner, the learning outcomes describe what will be learnt, to the potential employer they describe what should have been learnt, to the quality agencies they provide a system for audit and for the funders (if there are still any left) they provide a means to account for how the money was spent. (1)

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Learning outcomes serve multiple roles as they guide faculty members in the selection of assessment strategies and the creation of learning experiences that form the substance of designed courses (e.g., reading assignments, lectures, group discussions, simulations, and online learning tasks). Creating these outcomes, however, can be a challenging task. Diamond (1998) suggested a strategy for completing this process in a “painless” manner: .

As an alternative to writing objectives [learning outcomes] in the abstract, a facilitator can help us develop strong, clear objectives by playing the role of the student asking us, ‘If I’m your student, what do I have to do to convince you that I’m where you want me to be at the end of the lesson, unit, or course?” Out of this discussion will come performance objectives that are measurable and that tend to be far more important and at a higher level than would be produced otherwise. (135)

Although this may sound like a rather simple exercise, it is essential. Selected outcomes create the shared targets or expectations that are the focus of learning. Furthermore, it is important that faculty maintain awareness of those outcomes, not only during the process of creating a course but throughout the process of course delivery.

Determine Acceptable Evidence for Student Achievement After affirming the course learning outcomes, it becomes important to ask, “How will my students demonstrate what they have achieved in relation to those outcomes?” The following research-based considerations provide a starting place for making decisions about the selection of assessment strategies: x Classroom assessments should be teacher directed, mutually beneficial (i.e., students in learning, faculty in the assessment of teaching), formative, context specific (i.e., responsive to the needs and characteristics of students, teachers, and disciplines), ongoing, and rooted in good teaching practice (Angelo and Cross 1993). x Good practice in assessment results in (a) improved teaching and learning, (b) a focus on what is maximally relevant, and (c) a mechanism for informing students about what they know or can do (Wergin 1988). x Effective assessment is contingent on the instructor’s ability to define measurable outcomes, concentrate on higher level thinking

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and problem solving, and create criterion-referenced standards that promote mastery (McDaniel 1994). x Assessment tasks should be visible and meaningful pieces of work that are capable of standing on their own (Tagg 2003). The assessment of student learning is a key element of course design and delivery. Quite often, however, assessment strategies are simply seen as a means to calculate final course grades. Regrettably, this perspective often assumes that good grades necessarily equate with good learning (Jennings et al. 2013). In practice, although course-based assessments do lead to grade calculations, they should be viewed primarily as evidence for what students have learned and accomplished. As we think about assessments as evidence for student learning, we consider six dimensions of this process: (1) define and declare expectations, (2) employ a variety of assessment techniques, (3) make the connections, (4) acknowledge the power of cognitive connections, (5) give prompt and thorough feedback, and (6) learn from the assessments and the performance levels of the students. Define and Declare Your Expectations Clearly describing expectations for course performance (i.e., how student performance will be measured, how to define the criteria for excellence) is one of the greatest gifts that faculty can give their students. To ensure students understand prevailing assessment standards and course requirements, faculty should do each of the following: x Make students aware of the assessment tasks that will document their learning (e.g., due dates, descriptions, expectations) at the beginning of the semester x Give students a rubric that defines excellence on authentic performances (e.g., presentations, projects, group work, written products) x Repeatedly help students see the connections between the course learning outcomes and the assessment activities they are completing Employ a Variety of Assessment Techniques Faculty members should provide students with a range of assessment options that capitalize on their individualized learning preferences and

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strengths. When considering learning outcomes and related assessments, instructors should think creatively about the ways students can demonstrate their learning, mastery of course content, and new skills: x Give students a variety of outlets to demonstrate their learning (e.g., examinations, written work, creative endeavors) that offer different strategies to communicate their knowledge and expertise x Ensure that assessment techniques tap into a wide range of skills (e.g., the elements and levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, knowledge, skills, dispositions) x Employ the vast collection of digital tools and assets that can be molded into engaging, interactive assessments Make the Connections As you begin to think through the process of course design, it may be helpful to collect a variety of assessment strategies and systematically connect them with your course learning outcomes. This process can be visualized in a four-column chart: Figure 1: Assessment Planning Format (Column One) Learning Outcomes

(Column Two) Type of Assessment

(Column Three) Criteria

(Column Four) Role of Technology

To engage with this process, you should take the following steps: x List your learning outcomes in Column One. x Specify the type of assessment associated with each learning outcome in Column Two (e.g., examination, research project, presentation, portfolio). x Connect your assessments with specific performance criteria in Column Three (i.e., how will the results in Column Two be measured?). The criteria could include, for example, a specific number of correct responses on a quiz; criteria could also be presented as components of a rubric (e.g., to evaluate content, critical thinking, grammar and spelling, or organization of a writing assignment or to evaluate organization, use of visual aids and

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presentation tools, eye contact, and verbal skills for a student presentation). x Identify ways in which technology might contribute to the assessment process in Column Four (e.g., online quiz, video creation, response to a discussion prompt). Obviously not all of the developed assessments will include digital components. This fourth column merely serves as a prompt for you to include digital assessment tools as viable options. Taking the time necessary to think through this process will create longterm benefits for the quality of the courses you create. Acknowledge the Power of Cognitive Connections To be most effective, assessments should be seamlessly integrated and aligned with the remainder of course content (i.e., learning outcomes, learning experiences). One way of accomplishing this task is to employ cognitive affordances. Hartson (2003) described a cognitive affordance as “a design feature that helps, aids, supports, facilitates, or enables thinking and/or knowing about something” (319). Norman (2002) further clarified the nature of cognitive affordances as those fundamental properties that…provide strong clues to the operations of things. Knobs are for turning. Slots are for inserting things into. Balls are for throwing or bouncing. When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking. (423)

In the cited examples, each physical object (i.e., knob, slot, ball) prompts a specific action. Responses to these affordances are learned over time as the appropriate actions (i.e., turning, inserting, throwing) consistently provide the desired result. Just as these physical objects trigger specific responses, faculty can craft clear, concrete instructions and prompts that engage students in active learning by having them think, write, and interact with what they have read. As an example, imagine yourself entering your local superstore to buy your next week’s groceries. It is very likely that as you walk through the door you will find yourself in the bakery, the floral shop, or the produce department. These sections of a grocery store are the most likely to elicit the strongest sensory responses from shoppers…the smell of fresh bread baking, a colorful bouquet, and the varied shapes and colors of fruits and vegetables (Kendall 2014). These everyday experiences exemplify the ways in which cognitive affordances are quietly but

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powerfully part of our daily lives (e.g., prompting us to buy more groceries). In an ideal learning environment, all the outcomes, assessments of student performance, assigned readings, and classroom experiences connect seamlessly in ways that are interdependent and interactive. Yet in reality, faculty may struggle to help students make these connections. For example, instructors create reading assignments to help students engage actively in the classroom and achieve identified outcomes; however, faculty generally are (often sensibly) suspicious about whether students actually read those assigned texts (Clump, Bauer, and Bradley 2004; Lei et al. 2010). How, then, can faculty motivate their students to engage in the preparatory reading and exploration that facilitates more active and informed participation in the classroom? To motivate students to read their assignments and interact with instructional content, as well as to strengthen this part of the learning process, the principle of cognitive affordances can be useful. When faculty learn to use cognitive affordances effectively, they create links between content and some form of response that can significantly impact the ways students engage with assigned readings and other learning experiences. Some examples of this process follow: x Students are asked to read a body of instructional content and then to respond by collaborating with classmates in the construction of a wiki. x Students are asked to seek out articles and web-based resources that present points of view diametrically opposed to the position taken by the author of an assigned reading and then to summarize arguments on both sides of the issue. x Students are asked to gather information through on-the-street (or on-campus) interviews and then to summarize their findings. x Students are asked to read a newspaper editorial on a topic of concern and then to draft a letter to the editor in response. Each of these examples has an information-gathering phase (e.g., reading, listening) and a response phase (e.g., wiki construction, web search, field interviews, letter to the editor). The faculty member’s direction to gather information is directly linked—and serves as an affordance—to the creation of a specific type of response (e.g., written product, presentation). Consider the two reading assignments displayed in Figure 2. In Assignment #1, the faculty member asks students simply to read a portion of the textbook with the hint (or threat) that some material from this

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chapter may reappear as a test question on the final examination. This assignment is a relatively weak and imprecise cognitive affordance; the link between the assignment and demonstrated learning is not defined clearly. The assignment does not prompt students to take any action other than to read the assigned text. Figure 2: Sample Assignments and Cognitive Affordances

Assignment #1 Read Chapter 7 in your textbook. You will be responsible for the material related to emotional intelligence. This content will be included on the final examination.! ! Assignment #2 Based on this week’s reading related to emotional intelligence and information from the in-class survey, please post a profile of your strengths and weaknesses in this area. Also, respond to the postings of two classmates.

In Assignment #2, however, the faculty member provides students direct, immediate instruction on how to apply what they are learning from the text, in class, and from their peers (i.e., process content from the reading, respond to the content, critique the work and responses of classmates). This cognitive affordance provides the learner with clear cues about the assignment and the desired outcomes. These strategies can help students immediately process, apply, evaluate, and synthesize the media (e.g., books, articles, video clips, and audio clips) they have been absorbing. Consider the intentional use of cognitive affordances in your course design process. Give Prompt and Thorough Feedback The assessment process also provides feedback that can serve to improve student performance on future tasks. Wiggins (2007) differentiated feedback (i.e., current performance in relation to a final goal and descriptions of ways to meet that goal) from evaluation (i.e., value judgment without actionable steps) and advice (i.e., tangential comments). He also suggested that feedback is the most helpful way to respond to student work and offered seven suggestions for creating effective feedback:

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1. Reference feedback to the final goal (i.e., whether the learner is on track and what can be done to improve performance) 2. Make the feedback tangible and transparent (i.e., apparent and understandable to the learner) 3. Make the feedback actionable (i.e., specific to the point that learners know what to do next) 4. Make the feedback user-friendly (i.e., understandable at the level of the learner) 5. Make the feedback timely (i.e., sooner is better) 6. Provide ongoing feedback (i.e., formative experiences that occur on a regular basis) 7. Be consistent (i.e., “stable, accurate, and trustworthy,” Wiggins 2007, 15). In the scheme of teaching and learning in higher education, making a commitment to the provision of excellent feedback is a powerful way to make connections with students and their work and to provide a link to improved performance. Learn from Your Assessments Faculty can use course-based assessments to inform and improve teaching by reviewing the results of student work at the end of every semester. This process involves x analyzing student assessment data to determine consistent areas of deficient performance (e.g., areas that may need additional emphasis or a different form of assessment); x finding gaps in the assessment model that need strengthening (e.g., areas in which assessments appear incomplete or inadequate); and x examining assessment results to determine particular topics or areas of concentration that need greater or lesser emphasis.

Design Course-Related Learning Experiences After determining the final destination (i.e., the learning outcomes) and the evidence for attainment (i.e., assessment strategies), we can begin to think about strategies that assist students in acquiring and practicing the identified course skills and outcomes. It is here that we make decisions about the exact content that will be included, the pacing and timing of classroom instruction, and the level at which in-class and online

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technology will be integrated into the instructional process. Decisions about Course Content As a way of thinking about the content question, consider the metaphor of the three boxes (Garner 2012a). The largest of the three boxes contains all the knowledge and information that has been generated in your particular academic discipline. The contents of this box, and the size of the box, continue to grow and expand as new discoveries are made and research extends the boundaries and understandings of existing knowledge. No faculty member can possibly acquire all the available knowledge in an academic discipline. Nor can a faculty member remain fully abreast of every new theory, discovery, article, book, or conference presentation. The emergence of technology has dramatically affected the manner in which the box grows and expands. In the recent past, faculty could remain abreast of developments in their fields by being on the lookout for newly published books and subscribing to the lead journals in their academic disciplines. Today, it is virtually impossible to examine all that is written, published, and posted. Now, more than ever, faculty must develop skills to analyze new information critically to determine its veracity and quality. We should systematically pass this skill set along to our students. The second box, a bit smaller than the first, contains all the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that you have acquired and mastered within your discipline over the course of your career. This box also grows and expands as you read, attend conferences, and engage in scholarly pursuits. This box, although constantly growing, will never be as large as the first box. There are two important elements to remember in relation to this second box. First, the size of the box does not matter. We can fill our minds with bits of knowledge and information that are neither accurate nor valuable. The process of discernment is always an important part of our roles as professionals in our respective disciplines. Second, in the digital age, it is useful to recall the observation of Samuel Johnson: “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it” (Hill and Powell 1934). Interestingly, Johnson made this observation in 1775. Although things have changed dramatically since that time, Johnson unknowingly observed something that is still true today. We might rephrase Johnson’s observation to say, “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we google it.” In the realm of course design, we must decide which pieces of information are truly worthy of memorization and instant recall and which should be googled.

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The third box is designed to hold the content of individual courses that you teach (i.e., the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that your students are expected to learn over the course of a semester). This box is smaller than the other two, as you cannot possibly teach your students, within the context of one course, all the information that you know individually or that may be known collectively within your academic discipline. It is at this point that the real challenge arises: picking and choosing instructional content and learning outcomes that will form the foundation for the learning experiences that comprise the courses that you teach. What to leave in? What to take out? What to add? Wiggins and McTighe (2005) identified two common practices, directly related to course content, that they dubbed “the twin sins of traditional course design.” They described these challenges in the following manner: The error of activity-oriented design might be called ‘hands-on without being minds-on’ engaging experiences that lead only accidentally, if at all to insight or achievement. The activities, though fun and engaging, do not lead anywhere intellectually… A second form of aimlessness goes by the name of ‘coverage,’ an approach in which students march through a textbook, page by page (or teachers through lecture notes) in a valiant attempt to traverse all the factual material within a specified time. (16)

Thinking about the integration of digital technology into course design, we could easily find ourselves in situations where our students are handson without being minds-on (e.g., trivial yet fun-oriented digital tools that have little to do with promoting the achievement of course learning outcomes) or where we are ravaged by the tyranny of coverage (e.g., rapidly leafing through presentation slides to feel better about “covering” the content). It behooves every faculty member to remain on the alert as these two factors can quietly creep into course design and teaching practices and easily go unnoticed. Acknowledging the Power of Instructional Alignment The process of course design is intended to be intentional and systematic. As faculty engage in this process, and work to create learning outcomes, assessment strategies, and learning experiences, it is critically important that these three components be linked in a purposeful way. Martin (2011) referred to this process as instructional alignment, defined as

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Chapter Five the process by which the different instructional elements are connected to each other and, in the end, makes the instructional material effective. For example, it is important to align the goals with the objectives in the lesson. The instructional objectives have to be aligned with the information, examples, practice/feedback, and review. The instructional media and strategies have to be aligned with all the different elements. (962)

This process of instructional alignment is particularly critical when courses include digital technology, particularly when digital resources are being delivered. Decisions about the Deployment of Digital Tools There is a growing body of research on the best teaching and learning practices related to the use of multimedia. This research can help guide our thinking about the process of course design and ensure that the best possible strategies are selected to improve student learning. The most groundbreaking work in the area of multimedia learning has been done by Richard Mayer (2009, 2014) and his colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Mayer has defined multimedia learning as …learning from words and pictures. The words can be printed text or spoken text. The pictures can be in static form, such as illustrations, photos, diagrams, charts, or maps, or in dynamic form, such as animation or video. Examples of multimedia learning include watching and listening to a narrated animation, reading a science textbook, playing an educational video game, or attending a Power-Point presentation. (Mayer 2008, 761)

When we talk about engaging our students with digital technology, we are actually discussing the use of multimedia as a means to promote learning. Mayer (2008), based on extensive research, formulated twelve key principles related to multimedia learning: 1. Coherence principle—Learning is enhanced when extraneous words, pictures, and sounds are excluded. 2. Signaling principle—More effective learning occurs when learners are alerted to the organization of essential material. 3. Redundancy principle—Learners benefit more from graphics and narration. 4. Spatial contiguity principle—Presentation of information is more effective when corresponding words and pictures are presented near each other rather than far apart.

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5. Temporal contiguity principle—Learners benefit when words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively. 6. Segmenting principle—Learning is improved when a multimedia lesson is controlled by the learner rather than presented in a continuous unit. 7. Pre-training principle—Multimedia lessons are best learned when students know names and qualities of key system components. 8. Modality principle—Presentation of information is more effective when words are presented as narration rather than as words on the screen. 9. Multimedia principle—Learning is enhanced when words and pictures are used together. 10. Personalization principle—Learners benefit from multimedia lessons presented in a conversational style. 11. Voice principle—Learning is enhanced when narration in multimedia lessons is spoken in a friendly human voice. 12. Image principle—Learning is not necessarily enhanced when the speaker’s image is added to the screen. In thinking through how digital technology or multimedia might be integrated into a course, these principles become critically important. Some questions that you may want to consider include the following: x How well organized are the intended resources? x Are there extraneous and competing components (e.g., words, pictures, narrative) that detract from the overall presentation to the learner? x At what level does the learner have control over the pacing and presentation of these resources? x Do the intended resources provide a personalized experience for the learner? Decisions about Course Pacing A concept that can be used to help faculty think through the overall organization of the work required in a semester-long course is rhythm (Garner 2012b; Garner and Oke 2013). Rhythm is the descriptive term used by Duffy and Jones (1995) to capture the pattern of emotions often observed during a semester: All classroom experiences are shaped by a rhythm inherent in the

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Many semesters start slowly but then build rapidly to a crashing crescendo as assignments, readings, projects, and examinations begin to collide because of due dates and course finals. These expanding expectations, which admittedly could be related to procrastination, result in a discernible level of frustration and tension among students and faculty, with students lamenting the work that remains to be completed and faculty lamenting the work that is yet to be graded. The concept of rhythm reflects a learning environment in which the level of effort required by participating students is roughly equivalent over the span of a semester. All faculty members believe in their hearts that the courses they are teaching are the most important events of the semester for every student. The good news is that they are passionate and devoted to their academic disciplines; the bad news is that this myopic viewpoint often leads them to conclude erroneously that the only thing their students think about is “their” course content. Think, for example, of a student who is taking five courses that are all heavily loaded with assignments at the end of the semester. Their stress is elevated to new levels. In the midst of that stress, they are probably not doing their best work or retaining the content that they are “learning” for a final examination. Granted, part of that stress may be attributed to the wait-until-the-last-minute syndrome, but faculty can maximize the power of teaching and learning by arranging assignments, deadlines, and due dates in a thoughtfully intentional manner. Faculty can purposely include the element of rhythm in course design by planning a blend of face-to-face and online learning experiences over the span of the semester. This can be accomplished by looking at the big picture. Consider, for example, the idea of laying out a set of calendars covering the months that comprise a semester (e.g., September, October, November, December). With those calendars as a template, plot out, dayby-day, the anticipated schedule of learning experiences (e.g., face-to-face class meetings, online learning opportunities and resources, assigned readings) and assessments (e.g., due dates for written assignments, quizzes and tests, online discussions and engagements). This thorough and systematic process allows you to strive for a sense of rhythm in the semester with your goal being to make each week roughly equivalent in

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terms of the effort and time required of your students. Finally, you can convert those calendars into a schedule for your students to follow as they travel with you through the semester. The thought of course planning can be daunting. However, if you approach this task like eating the proverbial elephant (i.e., “One bite at a time”), you can create and deliver a collection of amazing experiences that will raise your students’ learning to new levels of excellence.

Integrating Technology into the Course Design Process Now that we have established a process for course design, we need to turn our attention to the manner in which digital tools can be effectively integrated for the purpose of improving and expanding student learning. Integration could include specific course-based learning outcomes related to digital learning and digital citizenship, or it could involve a variety of assessments and learning experiences. Before embarking on this process, we will consider several preliminary elements: (1) course learning outcomes, (2) the available collection of digital learning tools, (3) the level at which the students have access to digital technology, (4) the instructor’s digital skills, and (5) the digital skills of the students.

Course Learning Outcomes As we have discussed, the first and primary consideration in the decision-making process is the creation of learning outcomes. Outcomes should reflect the collection of digital technology tools and assets that you choose for inclusion in your courses.

The Available Collection of Digital Tools With the ever-growing abundance of digital tools that can be used to promote learning in higher education, a major challenge is sifting through this compilation to determine the best possible tools that connect with the course learning outcomes and that will best promote student learning. The emergence of Open Educational Resources (OER) has provided a wealth of free, accessible tools that can be matched with learning outcomes in virtually every academic discipline. Most of the web-based repositories provide searchable databases that add efficiency to the process of locating resources. Examples include x African Virtual University (http://www.avu.org/)

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x x x x x x

Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/) Global Voices (https://globalvoices.org/) Open Educational Resources (https://www.oercommons.org/) Merlot II (http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm), and The Open University on iTunesU (http://www.open.edu/itunes/) UNESCO OER Knowledge Cloud (https://oerknowledgecloud.org/)

One of the challenges that faculty face when considering whether to use these resources is determining their relative instructional value. The nonprofit education reform organization Achieve has created a series of rubrics to assist in this process (e.g., quality of explanations of the subject matter, quality of assessment, quality of technological interactivity, opportunities for deeper learning). Interestingly, as a means of advancing the need for quality assurance in open educational resources, OER Commons (www.oercommons.org) is now hosting these rubrics to encourage users to evaluate the resources they are selecting according to validated rubrics.

The Level at Which Students Have Access to Digital Technology Although the digital divides are closing, some students in your classes will not have extensive or ongoing access to digital technology. It is important for faculty to be sensitive to this fact in the design and implementation of digital assignments, assessments, and learning experiences.

The Instructor’s Digital Skills Obviously, the digital competencies of individual faculty members will influence the level at which they include digital technology in their courses. This may be the most important variable in the entire process. If faculty are not willing to extend themselves so that they stay abreast of technology as it develops, then the process of integrating technology into higher education courses will advance at a snail’s pace. You have the power to influence what and how your students are learning. Additionally, the example that you set can be a powerful source of motivation for your colleagues.

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The Digital Skills of the Students Last, but certainly important, are the digital skills of our students. Part of the challenge is selecting learning tools and strategies that will help your students learn without being a distraction (i.e., time spent learning to use a digital tool may detract from other engagements with course content). There is a delicate balance here. We need to ensure that our students are accomplishing the identified learning outcomes and mastering course content while engaging with the digital experiences that we have selected as a means to accelerate that process. The point is that digital strategies should help students focus on their learning rather than serve as a distraction. An example illustrating the skill levels of students and faculty may be helpful at this point. I was recently asked to write and teach an online course. As part of this process, I wanted to create a new pathway for students to capture what they were learning, share it with their classmates, and participate in a peer review process. To accomplish this task, I decided to have my students create their own websites and routinely post the products they were generating as evidence of their learning. The problem was that I had no idea how to create a website. The solution: I needed to learn how to build a website myself. Then I had to create a strategy for communicating the steps in the process to my students. I decided to use a free web service (www.weebly.com) to create my sample website. As I learned, I made note of the steps that I was following and created a “how to” list for my students. I also made note of the tutorials and troubleshooting resources provided by Weebly as part of their website offerings. Students were then made aware of this requirement. During the first week, I asked the students to create their own websites (using the directions that I provided). In subsequent weeks, I asked them to post a variety of products on their developed websites (e.g., a letter written to a governmental policy maker, a personal mission statement related to the topic of the course, an annotated list of web-based resources related to our course focus). During this process, I routinely checked their sites to make sure they were on track and asked them not to share their work-in-progress websites with their classmates. During the final week of the semester, the students shared a link to their completed websites and engaged in a process of peer assessment using a rubric that I provided. The students were able to offer each other encouragement and constructive criticism for the work that had been completed. As a postscript to this experience, it is worth noting that all the participants in this class were digital immigrants (i.e., adult learners). No student had any difficulty following the directions and completing the

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tasks involved in creating and building a website. So, in the final analysis, they were able to develop the written products and assignments that were instrumental to the course while learning the (lifelong) skill of creating a website. They were proud of their accomplishments, and I was totally pleased with the quality of their efforts.

Making the Decision to Use Digital Tools When considering whether to use digital tools in course design, we should ask several key questions: x Will using a particular digital tool help my students master the identified learning outcomes? How much will it take (e.g., time energy, resources) to learn to use the tool effectively? x Will this tool seamlessly connect with other learning experiences that are part of this course? x Is the necessary technological support available and accessible to introduce this tool, to help students learn how to use it, and to assist in its implementation? x Is the tool intended to help students learn new skills or to assess their learning? x What types of post hoc assessments are available to determine whether the tool was beneficial to students and their learning?

Talking Points This chapter provides a brief explanation of the process of course design. Knowing about technology is one thing. Developing the skills and abilities to integrate that technology effectively into course design is quite another. As faculty, we need to hone our skills in each of these arenas. Without sharing too much detail on this aspect of my personal life, I can divulge that at one point I aspired to be a standup comic. On my first venture into this world, I went to Amateur Open Mic Night at a local comedy club. When I was signing in to participate, I asked the person doing the registration, “How much time do I have for my routine?” He quickly asked, “How much time do you think that you will need?” Confidently, and rather naively, I responded by saying, “I think that I have roughly 30 minutes of material.” Under his breath, the registration person said (prophetically), “You will be lucky if you have 30 seconds of good material.”

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Actually, he was correct. I did have exactly 30 seconds of usable material. Why do I share this rather embarrassing anecdote? The fact is that standup comics try out material, keep the jokes that work, and throw away those that do not work. This is much like teaching in one respect. As we design our courses and try out new ways to help our students accomplish course learning outcomes, we find learning experiences (e.g., class presentations, videos, readings, digital tools) that work well and those that do not. Just like the standup comic, we can keep the teaching strategies that work well and refine or discard the rest. Course design and selecting the resources that we include in our courses are parts of a process of making educated guesses about what might work effectively to help our students accomplish our stated learning outcomes. We make revisions in subsequent offerings of our courses based on the data we gather from students’ performance. Treat your course design process as an ongoing, ever-improving effort to bring the best to your students.

Reflective Questions 1. How do you decide which elements of your course will be offered in a face-to-face setting and which elements will be created and delivered online? 2. After teaching a course, what are the steps or procedures that you use to assess quality and impact of your chosen learning experiences and assessment strategies?

CHAPTER SIX MANY WAYS TO INTEGRATE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY

Innovation—the heart of technological change—is fundamentally a learning process. —Peter Dicken, Economic geographer, United Kingdom

I hope that you, as a highly motivated faculty member, now have an increased level of interest in the possibilities for integrating digital technology into your courses for the benefit of your students’ learning. This chapter is intended to provide you with a compendium of strategies for integrating digital technology while enhancing the learning accomplishments of your students in the courses you teach. These resources have been selected because they are practical and useful in the application of digital technology in higher education. You are encouraged to explore these resources and determine which tools, and which directions for enhanced performance, are most applicable to your students, your teaching, and your discipline. The topics that we will consider are the following: x x x x x x

Learning management systems (LMS) Social networking sites (SNS) Presentation tools Classroom response systems Digital media Avatars and virtual reality tools

The examples provided, which have been created by your colleagues in higher education around the world, should serve as an encouragement to try something new, different, and digital with your students in the courses you teach. Start small and make a commitment to yourself and to your students that you will continue to grow and learn more and more about the possibilities for teaching digitally.

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Learning Management Systems (LMS) The LMS employed by your college or university can serve as an excellent resource for the course design process. It can serve as a repository for a variety of course-related resources including assigned readings, collections of presentation slides, embedded videos, and links to websites. It also includes tools such as the course gradebook, discussion forums, messaging tools, and online quizzing tools. Faculty should be encouraged to use the LMS as a centralized location to connect students with learning experiences, assessments, and graded submissions. For faculty who may be just starting out in the digital world, the LMS is a great place to begin building and honing your digital skills. From your centrally located LMS, you can connect with your students as they share information in a discussion forum, complete an online quiz, review the slides from your classroom presentations, read assigned articles from the professional literature, watch embedded videos, submit assignments, and check their grades. To help you on this journey, LMS providers make it their business to provide step-by-step directions and tutorial videos that can guide you in accomplishing all these tasks. Once you master these tools, the sky is your digital limit!

Best Practices in Asynchronous Discussion Forums A great way to connect students with one another and with course content outside the classroom is your LMS-based discussion forum tool. Discussion forums have become an integral component of courses offered in online, blended, and face-to-face formats. Baker (2013) provided an excellent and comprehensive tutorial on the implementation of asynchronous discussion forums in higher education. This examination is organized around the important roles that faculty need to fulfill in an online venue (Berge 2008): x Pedagogical role (e.g., planning and organizing the online discussion, introducing the discussion forum to your students, creating groups, setting boundaries for the discussion process) x Social role (e.g., creating a comfortable online learning environment, promoting cohesiveness among the students, being a presence in the discussion forum, engaging in ongoing conversations about the role of assessment in the discussion forum, stating expectations for proper netiquette)

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x Managerial role (e.g., enforcing timely participation, introducing icebreakers to facilitate the creation of community, assessing student performance in an ongoing and timely way, quickly handling inappropriate student behavior) x Technical role (e.g., ensuring that technology is delivered in a transparent and seamless manner, providing instructions for required tasks, being able to troubleshoot technological challenges and direct students to available technical support resources) Baker’s (2013) framework for thinking about the creation and implementation of discussion forums is comprehensive. From a course design perspective, and to maximize the opportunities for success in using discussion forums, it is important for faculty to maintain this type of comprehensive view of these varied roles.

Engaging Students in Online Discussions Instructors must first clearly identify the content and focus of the online discussions they are planning. In addition, they need to consider carefully the questions or prompts that will best invite diverse opinions and perspectives as well as provide a platform for healthy exploration— and even disagreements—among students. Prompts can be as simple as open-ended questions or may include a variety of formats, such as video clips, webpage links, or quotations from an expert or radical thinker in your academic discipline. The main point is to provide a discussion prompt that will invite students to think, feel, and respond. A typical LMS discussion tool will contain multiple features that allow faculty members to customize the students’ learning experience. These features may include beginning and ending dates for the discussion, the option to allow students to edit their posts, the ability to make anonymous posts, and a requirement that students must submit their own discussion posts before being able to see the work of their classmates. Prior to launching an online discussion, faculty need to spend time investigating the options in their LMS (or seek advice from their campus IT department) to decide which settings will best achieve the desired learning outcomes. As students begin to engage with one another in a discussion forum, it is important for them to know and understand your expectations (e.g., the date the initial post must be submitted, the number of responses they are expected to provide to their classmates). Additionally, it is helpful for them to have a rubric that specifies the parameters of a quality response. Typical criteria might include the respondent’s working knowledge of the

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topic under discussion, level of critical thinking, quality of participation or interactions, timeliness, spelling, and mechanics. These aspects of the discussion process can each be given a level of importance and value (e.g., point weighting) based on faculty preferences and course learning outcomes. In the book Teaching Naked, Bowen (2012) compared moderating discussions in online and classroom settings: You want to encourage good ideas, ask for clarification, and pose a new question when things get off track. Your standards for discussion should be higher in the online world than in the classroom. With time for reflection and the ability to stop and find and reference sources and complementary ideas, discussion should be richer. (170)

Faculty can define the manner in which they engage with students during the discussion process. The primary faculty role should be as a facilitator who guides, shapes, and extends the conversation—to move the conversation along without being intrusive. This role can sometimes require walking a fine line to achieve balance. Gao (2014) suggested five ways for instructors to facilitate online discussions: x Elaborate and clarify (e.g., ask students to provide additional information, expand their arguments, or restate their positions) x Make connections (e.g., encourage students to pay attention to others’ opinions and find links between their points of view and the arguments or resources presented by their classmates) x Challenge students’ views (e.g., raise concerns or alternative points of view in relation to a discussion post) x Build on students’ views (e.g., encourage comments on discussion posts that exemplify the kind of thinking and writing that is expected and desired) x Question (e.g., help students go deeper through carefully crafted questions and content inquiries) Online conversations are effective ways to encourage students to think about and process course content beyond the confines of in-class learning experiences. Furthermore, interactions and relationships developed in online forums can spill over into face-to-face classroom settings, creating an added learning benefit.

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Creative Prompts in Discussion Forums Although the discussion forum is one of the most commonly used LMS tools, faculty often tend to create discussion prompts that elicit factual responses but do not extend to the intended purpose of creating dialogue. Prompts that are designed to elicit fact-oriented responses tend to transform “discussion” forums into open-book tests (e.g., “Cite three reasons for this phenomenon as stated in Chapter Three of your textbook”). Lloyd (2011) shared a clever discussion prompt that can serve as an excellent example of an open-ended and intriguing invitation to online thinking and dialogue. In an undergraduate course entitled Learning Networks, students were presented with a hand-drawn image of six fish. This graphic design appeared prominently on the course website and study guide. Students were asked the question, “Why six fish?” Interestingly, in their response to this question, students made frequent references to Bloom’s Taxonomy, multiple intelligences, and various theories of learning networks. Responses represented a range of reasoning skills including elementary clarification, in-depth clarification, making inferences, judgment, and application of strategies. This study illustrates a best-practices example and a creative approach to generating discussion forum prompts. Prompts should be viewed by students as invitations to share, connect with the thinking and ideas of classmates, and align their conversations with guiding principles and course content. Questions can be generated in any academic discipline. So ask yourself, “What are some of the most creative metaphors that I could use to invite my students into a dialogue about the courses I am teaching?” The prompts used in discussion forums are typically presented in a narrative format (e.g., question, request for an opinion, response to a scenario). Faculty can also consider, however, the power of using other formats as a way to prompt lively conversation in a discussion forum, for example, by including links to video clips, current news stories, quotations, or comics and illustrations that invite diverse opinions and perspectives. Slotnik and Schulten (2012) published a list of 163 thoughtprovoking questions that could be used to start an online discussion, and these could be easily adapted for different academic disciplines and topics in a variety of courses. One final thought on discussion prompts relates to the value gained by creating opportunities for students to become better acquainted. I recently taught an undergraduate course in a blended format. The class was scheduled to meet face to face, once a week, for 85 minutes. The rest of the course content was delivered through the LMS. At first, I was

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concerned about the level at which it would be possible to create a sense of community in the classroom in that short amount of face-to-face time. As part of the blended model, students were invited (i.e., required) to participate in one or more online discussions each week. To facilitate the process of students getting to know one another, I included several early discussion prompts related to the course topics of conversation that also served as an invitation for students to share parts of their own personal stories. The students were remarkably transparent and connected their life experiences with the topics presented in the class. They also transferred their online relationships to their face-to-face classroom discussions. The online portion of the class became a conduit for classroom conversations and community building.

Using Discussion Forums as a Venue for Peer Review Discussion forums are typically viewed as places where students respond to verbal prompts provided by faculty members. It’s possible, however, to extend the use of discussion forums so that students can critique and respond to varied types of stimuli that go beyond words. Consider the following examples: x Sociology students are asked to create videos in which they express their opinions on a social issue related to course content. x Art students are asked to take and post photographs that capture their passion about a particular topic. x Nursing students provide links to websites they have created to provide information on particular medical conditions. x Music students share audio files featuring their performances of original compositions. x History students share drafts of slides for presentations focusing on political figures of their choosing. In each of these examples, students respond to a discussion forum by posting media samples (e.g., picture, audio file, video file, link to website, slide deck) for review and comment by classmates. In these examples, students could use rubrics to assess and provide helpful comments about the quality of the work, indicating where it is strong and how it might be improved. Because the LMS provides a tracking system for student responses, faculty know the level at which students are participating and can evaluate the quality of their observations.

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Surprising Comments Indeed: Looking Deeper In the classroom, it is common to have at least one student who is reluctant to engage in discussion. When that occurs, I often jump to the conclusion that the student is ill prepared, not interested, or unmotivated. The practice of including discussion forums in my classes has completely changed my thinking on this matter. Granted, there are students in my classes who are ill prepared, not interested, or unmotivated, but in the past I often misjudged students who were introverts or who needed time to process questions before responding. Many students who are unwilling to share in classroom discussions provide amazing and thoughtful responses in discussion forums. They also interact with classmates in meaningful ways. Adding a discussion forum to your courses creates a means for introverts to become active members of the learning community.

Online Quizzes as Learning and Accountability Tools A key feature found in every LMS is an online quizzing tool. Quizzes can be created in a number of formats (e.g., multiple choice, true/false, matching, short answer), they are automatically graded, and the results are immediately posted in the course gradebook. In planning for the use of online quizzes, faculty can stipulate the opening and closing dates for quizzes and the number of times that students can attempt a quiz. Johnson and Kiviniemi (2009) explored the use of online quizzes as a way to enhance performance on the final examination as well as to enhance overall learning in the course. The quizzes were described as multiple-choice “mastery based” exercises and focused on one chapter of content from the textbook each week. Students could complete the quizzes an unlimited number of times, and their highest attained score was recorded in the gradebook. Results indicate that on the final examination, students performed better on questions and topics that had been addressed in the weekly quizzes. There was also a positive correlation between the number of quizzes completed and the students’ final grades in the course. In a similar study, Pennebaker, Gosling, and Ferrell (2013) required students to participate in daily online quizzes related to the topics of classroom lectures. This approach, which significantly improved overall student performance, helped students to focus on the most salient points of the lecture presentations (i.e., content later translated into quiz questions). One important aspect of using online quizzes is accountability. By requiring students to complete online quizzes that focus on the course content (e.g., classroom presentations, assigned readings, digital

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engagements), students are reminded to attend class on a regular basis and to remain abreast of course content.

Extending Cognitive Skills through Online Quizzes When discussing online quizzes, some faculty express skepticism about whether these objective assessments ever move beyond the levels of remembering and understanding (e.g., multiple choice, true/false, matching). Reid and McLoughlin (2002) described this dilemma as follows: Computer-based assessment may suffer an ‘image problem’ as some assume it is capable only of summative testing using multiple choice tests derived from item-banks. Increasingly, computer-based assessment is enabling innovative approaches to formative assessment that close the gap between actual and desired levels of performance. (6)

These authors studied various online quiz formats in a linguistics class and offered suggestions for ways that traditional multiple choice questions can be altered to promote higher levels of thinking: (1) create multiple choice questions where several of the alternatives are correct (and the student must identify all of them to receive full credit), (2) negatively weight incorrect alternatives, resulting in point deductions if those options are chosen, and (3) expand use of short-answer questions that require synthesis and application of content. These suggestions can guide faculty toward thinking about new and expanded ways to create questions that tap into higher levels of thinking. It is important to maintain some perspective about the role that online quizzes should serve in relation to the entire span of assessment activities included in a course. Online quizzes provide an efficient way to document the level at which students have mastered basic course content (e.g., vocabulary, key principles, factual details). Mastery of this content is always a prerequisite for moving forward to higher levels of thinking (e.g., analyzing, evaluation, creating). Other assignments (e.g., essays, research reports, presentations) can round out the assessment picture and include rubrics that encourage students to go deeper and think more critically about course content.

Authenticating Student Participation in Online Quizzes Along with the rapid growth of online courses has been an increased level of concern about the need to validate the identity of students as they

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participate in online quizzes, examinations, and other digital submissions. Watson and Sottile (2010) investigated the prevalence of cheating (e.g., submitting work other than their own, receiving answers to quizzes from someone else, copying another student’s work) among students in face-toface and online classes. They found no significant differences in the levels at which students reported cheating in these two venues. Quite remarkably, however, the survey respondents reported they were almost four times more likely to consider being dishonest in an online class. Berkey and Halford (2015) provided a context for the concerns that have arisen: In a famous 1993 New Yorker cartoon, a dog at a computer quipped, ‘On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.’ We are still haunted by concerns about whether remote learning can ever be conducted fairly. Of course, the Internet didn't invent dishonesty. For years, students have been reporting anonymously having cheated and plagiarized—more than 70% in most studies. The public believes, along with many faculty, that cheating is easier to do, and likely even more common, in online courses than on campus. While many online leaders agree, they do not see cheating as a major challenge or barrier to program success. (1)

Ultimately, the decision to cheat lies with the students, whether they are learning in a face-to-face classroom or in an online course. So, in some ways, this is a bigger question than simply “Where are students most likely to cheat?” At the same time, it is important for faculty to remain aware of this challenge and create safeguards that limit the opportunities to cheat and, if possible, identify instances of cheating and administer the appropriate remedies. In the past few years, a growing number of state agencies and accrediting bodies have started to require authentication procedures as a means of verifying that students are doing their own work (McNabb 2010). In response, and as might be expected, a number of new services can assist colleges and universities in verifying the identity of students as they participate in online learning. Strategies for identity verification include biometrics (e.g., fingerprints, facial recognition), face-to-face and video proctoring, keystroke typing samples, signature identification, and challenge questions (Bailie and Jortberg 2009). It is likely that this technology will continue to increase in sophistication and availability.

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Plagiarism Detection Tools Software applications can also assist faculty in identifying instances of student plagiarism. To help faculty members discuss plagiarism in a more precise manner, Howard, Rodrigue, and Serviss (2010), relying in part on the work of Howard (1992), asserted a taxonomy for the use of original sources: (1) copying (i.e., directly duplicating content word-for-word), (2) summarizing (i.e., restating and compressing the original content), (3) paraphrasing (i.e., restating the original source in a new way using different words, and (4) patchwriting (i.e., using the original source with some words added or deleted). They concluded that “students are not writing from sources; they are writing from sentences selected from sources” (187). As an additional complication, the process of defining and enforcing instances of plagiarism varies widely across individual faculty members and institutional policies. Emerging data suggest that the frequency and the volume of plagiarism are increasing among college students at a dramatic rate. Badke (2007), citing the work of the Center for Academic Integrity (www.academic integrity.org/cal_research.asp), indicated that 40% of a sample of 500,000 college students reported that they had copied information from the Internet. Perhaps more alarming, however, is the fact that 77% of the sample expressed the belief that plagiarism was not a “serious” matter. Parry (2011), citing the studies done by The Citation Project (www.citationproject.net), revealed the following results from an intensive review of 174 student papers: x x

x x x x x

77% of cited quotations came from the first three pages of the original source, regardless of the length of the source. 96% of the cited material came from two or fewer sentences extracted from the original source. This is indicative of a pattern in which students seek out brief snippets that support the contentions they are trying to support in their written assignments. This practice reflects a lower level of complexity and involvement than actually engaging with longer portions of the original text. 91% of the papers included materials copied from original sources and correctly marked as quotations. 19% of the papers included materials that were copied but not cited as quotations. 52% of the papers contained at least one instance of patchwriting. 78% of the papers included at least one section where content was paraphrased. 48% of the papers included at least one instance of summarizing. (A14)

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From these data, it would appear that college students need additional information and guidance for the correct and proper use of source citations in writing. With increasing frequency, electronic tools are becoming available to assist faculty in the detection of inappropriate source citation and plagiarism. They typically scan the Internet for phrases, sentences, and content for matches to students’ written work. These tools are often connected with campus-based learning management systems (e.g., Blackboard and Moodle have plug-ins for plagiarism detection) and allow both faculty and students to check on the prevalence of plagiarism in written work. In addition, a number of free and low-cost programs can be downloaded for faculty and student use, including Dupli Checker (http://www.duplichecker.com/), Plagiarisma (http://plagiarisma.net/) and Viper (http://www.scanmyessay.com/plagiarism-detection-software.php). Although not foolproof, these tools greatly enhance the efficiency with which faculty can identify suspicious content. As we continue on this digital journey, the tools to detect plagiarism will continue to be enhanced. More important, perhaps, these tools will serve as resources for students, alerting them to instances where they need to make revisions or become more diligent in citing references.

Social Networking Sites (SNS) SNSs provide a variety of venues for you to connect with your students outside the classroom and for them to connect with one another and with course content. As we have discussed, SNSs are highly popular destinations for our students. The SNSs that are available and widely used by our students can serve as natural places to create interactive learning experiences connected to course learning outcomes and content. However, as with all the web-based tools that we discuss, there is always a need for faculty to learn how to perform the necessary operations and to be able to communicate step-by-step directions to their students. As we have discussed, faculty still have a healthy level of skepticism about the utility and wisdom of actively employing SNSs in higher education (Selwyn 2011). Siemens and Weller (2011) wisely suggested that faculty should evaluate the value of using SNSs based on the level at which they contribute to student learning. They also advised the faculty and their institutions to consider the following questions during the implementation process:

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Does the promotion of a particular SNS represent endorsement? For example, will a university have to justify its choice of Facebook over Twitter or a group-based network site such as Ning? To what extent does promotion suggest support? If a university promotes the use of one SNS and students encounter problems, is there an obligation on the university to offer technical support? Are universities responsible for activity with a chosen SNS? For example, if a university promotes the use of a particular SNS and subsequently another student bullies a student in that space, to what extent is this the concern and responsibility of the university? Is the university or the SNS responsible for privacy issues? There have been many problems surrounding privacy in SNSs, particularly with Facebook, yet if a student feels obliged to use such a site for their study, is the university in effect endorsing these privacy policies which may be in conflict with its own? Does the promotion of a particular SNS make it obligatory? Will students be disadvantaged if they elect not to use it? (168)

These questions should neither encourage nor discourage the use of SNSs. They do, however, provide a thoughtful framework for thinking through the manner in which SNSs are chosen, deployed inside courses, and used during the instructional process. These and other questions will continue to focus and refine the use of SNSs in higher education. One perspective to consider when exploring a particular SNS as an option for your students is whether that SNS will provide a new collection of tools that expand students’ skill sets. Granted, many of the functions that one might consider in SNSs could be easily accommodated inside your LMS (e.g., interactive dialogue, posting videos, announcements and updates, sharing completed assignments with classmates for peer review). The advantage is that in addition to completing the assigned activities, the students are experiencing a new, structured, purposeful way to use SNSs.

Facebook as a Tool for Peer Feedback Social media has great potential for students to engage in peer review. Demirbilek (2015) used Facebook as a venue for students to provide feedback to their classmates on a variety of projects. Students were assigned six projects to review and then were asked to post their comments on Facebook. They had positive comments about the experience of having a Facebook group created for their class and the opportunity to gather feedback and comments on their completed projects. This ease of use, even for this new purpose, was aided by the students’ familiarity with navigation and posting conventions. Beyond the

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technological elements, the researchers commented on the course-related learning that occurred: Through this activity, they reflected critically on the posted photos of projects for which they were providing feedback, as well as on their own projects and how they could be improved in a similar manner. This process involved learners in thinking about rules, quality, design elements, and criteria that students use to evaluate others’ projects, which helps them become critical thinkers and reflective learners. (221)

It is also important to note that students experienced some feelings of anxiety while participating in this process. These feelings were largely related to the challenge of sharing negative feelings about the work of their classmates. It is important to validate these feelings. This experience helps students to grow and to develop a new set of skills that they will find useful throughout their lives (e.g., providing constructive feedback, word choice, looking for positive and negative aspects of a product).

Wikis and Blogs for Collaborative Work Wikis and blogs can serve as approachable web-based tools that allow students to collaborate asynchronously on investigations and writing projects. One common complaint is that wikis, as open-source documents, lack oversight and, therefore, the validity of reported information is always suspect. This belief has been particularly true of Wikipedia (see also Chapter Two). According to their website, over five million wikis are in operation, with 880 new articles each day (Wikipedia Statistics 2016)! Wikipedia describes itself as a free-access, free-content Internet encyclopedia, supported and hosted by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Those who can access the site can edit most of its articles. Wikipedia is ranked among the ten most popular websites, and constitutes the Internet's largest and most popular general reference work.

Clark and Stewart (2010) provided an excellent overview of the various components of wikis and the procedures that can be used to incorporate wikis into the instructional process. Wikis can serve as learning experiences and assessment tools. Additionally, wikis include a mechanism that allows a faculty member to track the timing and contribution of each member of an assigned wiki development team. Churcher, Downs, and Tewksbury (2014) described a case study in which students participated in a collaborative wiki-based effort to create

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examination questions. During the initial phase of this process, students were asked how many questions should be included on the examination. Consensus was reached that the exam should include 40 questions. Students were then tasked to use the provided wiki to create a bank of 80 questions, 40 of which would constitute the final examination. This process involved creating the questions, tweaking the wording, and ensuring the viability of the correct answers. As an additional note, if a question was selected for the final exam, the student who wrote it was granted extra credit equivalent to the value of one examination question. This process actively engaged students in understanding and applying course content. Student comments regarding their level of learning and participation were positive: x x x

x x

The more we are involved, the more we want to read and learn, especially for people who need a more hands-on approach. Posting the questions prior to the exam gave us more motivation to study because it feels like the exam was primarily in our hands…. I was able to aptly study and be prepared…Creating and studying for this exam definitely helped reinforce the concepts because we were constantly looking up the answers to these questions. I was forced to go back to the readings and re-read things…so I got more out of studying for the exam [than in traditional exams]. It seems to almost mandate student participation in the exam. (43)

Consider inviting your students to participate in sharing their thoughts, opinions, and knowledge in a wiki or blog.

Twitter as a Tool for Meaningful Conversation Twitter is a highly popular social media outlet. Launched in 2006, Twitter now has over 300 million active users (Twitter 2016), with an active following among traditional-aged college students. Junco, Heilberger, and Loken (2011) used Twitter as a tool to engage with students enrolled in a first-year seminar. It is worth noting that prior to participating in this study, the students were not Twitter users. As a starting point, the students received a one-hour orientation to Twitter use. Then, during the semester, the authors served as administrators of a Twitter account and circulated information on a wide range of topics (e.g., continuations of class discussions, opportunities to ask questions, book discussions, class reminders, campus event reminders, academic and personal support, connecting students with one another and with faculty, organizing service learning projects, optional and required assignments).

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The conversations on Twitter were described as “thoughtful and meaningful” (128). Students engaged with one another, with faculty, and with course content. The use of Twitter in this study was intentionally connected with Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) seven principles of good practice in teaching (much the study by Lai and Savage 2013, reviewed earlier). In this context, Twitter was recommended as a tool to help students connect with faculty and one another, engage in active learning, receive prompt feedback, maximize time on task, communicate high expectations, and show respect for diversity. Although no data were presented to support these contentions, the overall results of the study illustrate the level at which Twitter can have a positive impact on the learning experience for participating students. The results of this study indicate that Twitter can provide a pathway to building a digital community with our students. The level of reported engagement among students and faculty makes it obvious that the participating researchers spent a significant amount of time connecting with their students on Twitter. Like all digital tools, Twitter has a learning curve, followed by a period in which the users can engage with it in a seamless way. The decision each of us must make as faculty members is whether Twitter is the right tool for our purposes.

Instagram for Sharing Content Instagram offers yet another pathway to connect faculty with students outside the classroom. Founded in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Instagram is one of the fastest growing SNSs. The elements of this social media tool were described on Wikipedia (2016) as follows: Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing, and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, and share them on a variety of social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr.

As of December 2014, Instagram had over 300 million users and was showing a growth rate higher than Facebook (Wikipedia 2016). When determining the social media tools that will be used in college classes, a faculty member should always be driven by what will best promote the accomplishment of learning outcomes and by which tools are most commonly used by the students. These two factors, considered simultaneously, will create a learning environment in which students naturally connect with course content while using a tool that is a part of

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their normal daily routine. This formula necessitates, however, that faculty likewise remain abreast of what their students are doing digitally. Salomon (2013) reviewed the manner in which Instagram can be used to invite students to use the resources available through a university library—for example, by posting pictures or videos and by asking provocative questions (also connecting this venture with Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr). This process creates a pool of followers and provides students with opportunities to gain “Likes” on Facebook. Consider three possible ways to include Instagram in a course: x Students are asked to post pictures or videos related to a particular lecture or classroom discussion. x In exploring how students might convert their knowledge into social action, the class decides to identify pictures and videos that capture their passion about a particular issue. The class then vets the collection and decides what should be posted in their Instagram collection. x Students are assigned the task of creating a collection of pictures and videos for Instagram to supplement a classroom presentation on a topic of interest. As part of the assignment, students distribute an annotated guide to their Instagram collection. This process is designed to help students consider what should be presented “live” and what should be posted as an additional resource. Explore the possibilities of including Instagram as a resource for your students and as a teaching tool.

Presentation Tools It is probable that presentation tools (e.g., PowerPoint, Prezi) are the most commonly used forms of technology used by faculty in higher education. Sadly, these tools are also probably among the most misused forms of technology. Consider this potentially frightening piece of data: Since Microsoft launched the slide show program 22 years ago, it’s been installed on no fewer than 1 billion computers; an estimated 350 PowerPoint presentations are given each second across the globe…. (Parks 2012)

Even if this is just a “projection” of the level at which PowerPoint is prevalent in business, industry, and education across the globe, the question of quality looms large. Consider your own anecdotal history on

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this topic. How often have you sat in a conference session where the presenter persistently read each and every slide to you? The answer for most of us would be, “Once is much too often!” Take hope. There are strategies for enhancing the quality of PowerPoint presentations!

Five Rules for Effective PowerPoints Best-selling author and entrepreneur Seth Godin focuses much of his energy on how to market ideas effectively in a digital world. As part of this effort, Godin (2016) articulated some basic rules for the creation of effective PowerPoint presentations: 1. No more than six words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken. 2. No cheesy images. Use professional stock photo images. 3. No dissolves, spins or other transitions. 4. Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have. If people start bouncing up and down to the Grateful Dead, you’ve kept them from falling asleep, and you’ve reminded them that this isn’t a typical meeting you’re running. 5. Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They don’t work without you there.

It is not difficult to make a connection between marketing ideas and teaching students. Faculty are, in fact, in the business of marketing ideas to their students on a daily basis. Effectively designed and delivered PowerPoints can energize that process.

Making PowerPoints That Will “Thrill” Your Students! Berk (2011) began his article with a clever reference to a presentation by May Allen (2011). In this presentation, Allen reported the results of a survey showing that people would rather forgo sex tonight (24%), do their taxes (21%), go to the dentist (20%), or work on Saturday (18%) than be forced to watch a PowerPoint presentation. Berk also reported that there are over 300 million PowerPoint users in the world. A scary statistic indeed! Berk used the Michael Jackson music video Thriller as a starting point for his suggested approach for improving the quality of PowerPoint presentations. He then proceeded to provide a strategy for thinking about the process of slide development:

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x Point? (i.e., the intent and focus of the presentation) x What? (i.e., the content of the presentation, with an admonition that less is best) x How? (i.e., chunking and grouping slides to tell the story). Berk also recommended and provided guidance for the use of movement (i.e., animations), music, and videos as a means to enhance the level of engagement. Make your own “Thriller” presentation today.

Classroom Response Systems The use of classroom polling systems provides a process for gathering information about student opinions and their understanding of course content. Faculty create questions and project them onto the screen. Students respond by using a clicker or, more recently, by texting their chosen response using a cell phone. As this is a web-based system, student responses are instantly displayed on the screen. Done well, classroom response systems promote critical thinking. Additionally, they create opportunities for students who would never share an opinion verbally to do so by texting or clicking their responses to the questions presented. Students respond anonymously, and the group’s results are made available. This process creates a prompt for discussions and exploration. Sullivan (2009) provided the following definition for active learning: Active learning occurs when students participate in activities such as reflecting on their experience, applying knowledge, and solving problems, thereby allowing for the construction of knowledge. (336)

From this vantage point, the author provided a mechanism for accomplishing this task by combining the power of good questions with the advantages of the technology. Sullivan also offered the following caution: Creating questions that are well designed and target higher order thinking is a task that involves effort to learn to do well. Beatty, Gerace, and Dufresne (2006) accurately advise that learning to operate the technology is the easiest part of mastering clicker-based instruction. Question development is by far the most critical and difficult aspect of integrating clickers into your teaching repertoire. (338)

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She then proceeded to provide an insightful and thorough review of the steps for creating questions that target specific objectives, assess students’ prior knowledge, and elicit student opinions.

Digital Media We live in a culture with an overwhelming abundance of digital media that can be connected effectively with virtually every academic discipline, tied to course learning outcomes, and included in the collection of learning resources available to students. Consider, for example, the level at which students are streaming (and often bingeing) on the television programs, movies, and documentaries that are available with services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Students use these services primarily for entertainment and diversion. What if students were asked to view a particular movie because it is relevant and connected to the topic of a college course? Moran, Seaman, and Tinti-Kane (2012) reported that, of the faculty they surveyed, 87.5% reported using videos as part of their classroom teaching. These include videos found online (83.3%), videos provided by educational publishers (69.5%), videos provided by the institution (41.1%), and videos they created themselves (33.8%). Videos are usually shown in class, but many faculty reported that their students are required to watch videos outside of class (78.8%) or to create their own videos (25.4%). As a quick example, I taught a course recently that focused on advocacy in the field of human services. One of the topics that we discussed was homelessness. As part of the course, students were required to watch the movie The Soloist starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx. I provided several choices as to how they might accomplish this (e.g., rent the movie, watch the movie on YouTube for a small fee, watch the movie on iTunes for a small fee). The students were totally enamored with this assignment and, more important, provided some very insightful responses to the prompts that were included in the course discussion forum. Think for a moment about the variety of documentaries, commercially produced films, and other digital media products that are available to you and your students via the Internet. With some basic research, you could generate a list of the films that have a connection to your courses and contain imagery, plots, and characters that could serve as wonderful examples of the content that you are teaching. This is an instructional win–

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win. Consider the following examples of the ways in which digital media can enrich the processes of teaching and learning in higher education.

Using Movies to Prompt Critical Thinking Movies can invite us to both think and feel. Kennedy, Senses, and Ayan (2011) did a study in which students in a sociology class were asked to watch two full-length feature films. The movies Ten and Hotel Rwanda were chosen because of their connections with the issues of gender, sex, and prejudices. Additionally, students were asked to watch A Short Movie About Killing, which focuses on the death penalty. All three movies could serve as lenses through which students could ponder and address social issues that exist in their own country. After watching the movies, students were asked to write short essays describing how the content of each movie connected with the issues they were exploring in class discussions and assigned readings. Asked to reflect on the assignments, some students suggested that it would have been helpful to engage in a class discussion immediately after viewing each movie, when feelings and insights were fresh and new. Overall, the authors proposed that the viewing experience is an excellent addition to the pedagogical toolbox of faculty. To balance the positive outcomes of this process, the authors also suggested that: (1) there are occasions where students do not like the chosen movies or suggest that they are too extreme (e.g., violent, erotic), and (2) in some ways, higher education faculty could be restricted in making movie choices in response to the cultural mores of their institutions (i.e., the “perfect” movie to illustrate an important concept is considered inappropriate for classroom viewing). An observation to supplement the work of these researchers: faculty will try some movies and, based on student reaction, never use them again. At the same time, some ageless, timeless films will continue to work year after year, catching the thoughtful examination and imagination of the students. Think for a moment about movies that have moved you to feel and think about local or global issues more deeply. Share that experience with your students, with the additional feature of guided discussions on the topics and issues raised.

Creating Screencasts as Learning Tools The increasing availability of digital technology has led to new and exciting possibilities for teaching. One of the most functional and

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accessible forms of media is the screencast, described as “a digital recording of computer screen output…known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration” (Screencast 2016). Using this technology, instructors can create videos of themselves that include PowerPoint slides or images and sound (Garner 2014). Screencasts promote student learning in the following ways: x Offering supplementary materials that reinforce content included in other aspects of a course (e.g., assigned readings, classroom learning experiences, videos related to a lesson) x Assisting student in learning complex, multistep skills that require practice and repetition (e.g., steps in a lab experiment) x Maintaining course continuity when faculty are unable to conduct a scheduled class (e.g., while attending an off-campus conference) x Creating opportunities for new teaching strategies (e.g., assigning a screencast lecture as homework and having students discuss it during the next class) x Providing a weekly preview of content, assignments, or events to connect with students outside the classroom With some simple equipment and a short list of steps, faculty can create screencasts to enhance the teaching/learning environment. The basic tools include: x Internal cameras and microphones that come with most computers or tablets usually will work fine, but if you plan to create screencasts on a regular basis, you may want to invest in an inexpensive external microphone (i.e., often $15 or less). However, if you want to share your face and voice, you probably should invest in an external camera, which usually is also very inexpensive, to attach to your computer. x To create a video capture of the image on a computer screen, you will not need a camera but will need to connect with an online screencast provider. Many campuses have institutional subscriptions to a video capture and storage service. Faculty should check with the technology offices at their institutions to determine whether their campuses offer this service and, if so, how to access it. If the service is not available, a number of free websites allow users to create a five-minute announcement (with the option of subscribing to produce a series of screencasts or longer productions).

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Consider the ways in which you can enhance your courses and your students’ learning by the use of screencast technology.

One Second Every Day In an inspiring TED Talk, Cesar Kuriyama (2012) put forth the idea of shooting a one-second video every day. Those little snippets can be folded together to form an overall picture of the events that occurred during the video production. To make this process even easier, iTunes has a mobile app that files completed videos into a calendar format. Kuriyama shared his own experiences making a one-second-every-day video. By making a commitment to this discipline, Kuriyama found that he became more aware and sensitive to those little moments that comprise our daily activities, many of which he felt would have been lost if not for the one-second-every-day-video process. This technique could have great possibilities in teaching. Imagine the possibilities if you asked your students to document an internship, service learning experience, or semester-abroad program. In this way, the students can document their learning and capture experiences that will have the greatest impact on their lives and learning.

Avatars and Virtual Learning Environments The development of digital technology has been accompanied by an increase in the availability of tools that help even the most casual digital user create amazing digital learning tools. With these tools, faculty can create virtual characters and scenarios that enhance student learning. Wang (2011) suggested that interactivity can be a core feature of a virtual world because it encourages engagement. He distinguished the virtual world of television, for example, which allows us simply to observe, from virtual learning environments that provide opportunities for “immersion and interactivity” (p. 621). Wang referenced the work of Peng et al. (2009), who conceptualized the genre of interactivity to include learner–interface, learner–self, learner–content, learner–learner, learner– instructor, and learner–context interactions. These dynamics open up entirely new ways of thinking about learning and the role of digital technology. Falloon (2010) cited Antonacci et al. (2008) to present the benefits that can be derived from engaging students in virtual and meaningful learning experiences:

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Virtual worlds’ persistence allows for continuing and growing social interactions, which can serve as a basis for collaborative education. 2. Virtual worlds give users the ability to carry out tasks that could be difficult in the real world due to constraints such as cost, scheduling or location. 3. Virtual worlds can adapt and grow to meet different user needs. (1)

This argument leads us to think about the strategies that might be employed to build and deploy virtual learning experiences for our students. Crisp (2012) created a variety of virtual problem-solving scenarios for students in her criminal justice course (e.g., inappropriate parenting, a drug dealer explaining how she got into that business, a domestic violence episode, police officers responding to a call). In a classroom situation, she systematically showed portions of the scenarios, engaged the students in dialogue and decision making, and then moved on to subsequent portions of the story. It is reasonable to assume that scenarios like these could also be delivered in an online venue with opportunities for the students to participate in discussions. An interesting element in Crisp’s description of her journey in creating these learning tools is the manner in which she taught herself (with tutorials and support provided by the software company) how to build the required virtual characters and locations. This part of the process is a prerequisite to effective digital tool use. Crisp was also quick to observe the manner in which her students responded to this novel approach to learning. For faculty, that is the main payoff: observing how our students benefit from the learning experiences that we create.

Creative Venues for Students to Display Their Learning If you are just starting on the journey toward including digital technology in your courses, one great way to begin is by providing your students with the opportunity to submit assigned work in clever and engaging ways using digital technology. The chosen technology should always be appropriate to a course’s learning outcomes. The value of using creative technological venues during the instructional process is to help students think, learn, and demonstrate their accomplishments in a variety of technological formats. You might want to consider one of the following platforms as way to integrate technology into your courses: Pecha Kucha, Glogster, or Pinterest.

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Pecha Kucha Pecha Kucha (pronounced pa-check-a-cha), which means “chit chat” in Japanese, is an electronic presentation format composed of exactly 20 PowerPoint slides with exactly 20 seconds of narrative for each slide (for a total presentation time of 6:40). These presentations can be performed live or can be recorded using available computer software (e.g., iMovie, Movie Maker). Given a topic to explore and present, students must consider the facts and concepts to include (or to omit) and then create visual and auditory displays within the time constraints of the Pecha Kucha format. Pecha Kuchas are fun to create but also require careful planning and mastery of the topic. You can do an Internet search for “Pecha Kucha” to see hundreds of examples of Pecha Kucha presentations that have been created and recorded. In some parts of the world, Pecha Kucha presentations are a regular form of entertainment in local pubs. I was recently asked to prepare a Pecha Kucha as a demonstration format at a national conference. I must admit, this was one of the most challenging presentations I have ever made. Typically in a conference presentation it is customary for the presenter to talk (often randomly and endlessly) in reference to a PowerPoint slide, but in a Pecha Kucha presentation the presenter must be vigilant about each chosen word. Going through the agony of creating this presentation helped me be more precise in describing the assignment to my students. Try one, then assign one!

Glogster Glogster is an online option that allows students to create a free multimedia electronic poster or glog (i.e., graphic blog) on its website (www.edu.glogster.com). Within the space provided, students can insert graphics, pictures, words, and links to audio and video resources. Faculty can register on the website and then announce the assignment to their students. There is a slight fee for this service, but it provides an excellent way for your students to apply their creativity to a course topic. Once again, it is helpful to use the digital tool before assigning it to your students. In this way you can talk knowledgeably about the process and be better equipped to provide technical support should trouble arise.

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Pinterest One of the newest electronic social media and sharing tools, Pinterest (www.pinterest.com) is a website that provides students with the opportunity to collect and organize pictures, video and audio clips, and articles for an assigned topic. Messner (2012) reported that Pinterest was at that time attracting almost 10 million visitors each month and was growing faster than Facebook and Twitter. Students can develop a Pinterest display for a course-related topic and then share and pool the acquired information to review and process key concepts. Within the context of a course, students could be assigned related topics, with the goal of gathering the information and resources necessary to teach their classmates the most salient content and principles related to the topic. The accumulated Pinterest displays then may become a databank for learning and review for the entire class.

One More Strategy to Help You Get Started At this point, you may be wondering how to get started in the process of including digital technology in your courses. Consider the a la carte approach to the assessment of student learning (Garner 2004) as a way to dip your toe in the digital waters. Imagine that you are extremely hungry and have just been given the opportunity to partake of a meal at one of your favorite restaurants. The food at this eatery is extraordinary! You have decided to throw caution to the wind and ignore your everyday concerns about calories, fat content, and carbohydrates. As the waiter approaches, you struggle because there are several items on the menu that you really enjoy. You hesitate, then describe your dilemma to the waiter. Much to your surprise, he invites you simply to pick and choose from a variety of meal options based on your own personal preferences. Let the meal begin! Next consider this illustration in relation to course design, student learning, and the integration of digital technology. As faculty, we all strive to provide instructional opportunities that will maximize the degree to which our students gain new information, understanding, skills, and concepts. Quite, often, however, course syllabi reveal a one-size-fits-all mentality: although we know each student learns differently and brings unique competences and skills to the classroom, everyone is required to do identical assignments and task over the course of a semester. There is an alternative—teaching a la carte! In this approach to course design are the following features:

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x Individual differences are acknowledged. x The demonstration of learning can occur in a variety of ways. x Students are provided with an opportunity to select their own learning activities from a menu of choices. x Students have the opportunity to choose digital learning and assessment tasks from the menu based on their current skills or the desire to learn how to use a new tool effectively. Implementation of the a la carte approach can be completed in three easy steps. First, set a point total for the course. For example, imagine that in your course, students will have the opportunity to earn 1,000 points. You have decided that half of those points can be earned by engaging in activities required for all students: x x x x x

Class attendance and participation (100 points maximum) Online discussions (100 points maximum) Quizzes (100 points maximum) Midterm examination (100 points maximum) Final examination (100 points maximum)

Second, create a menu of additional learning activities that students can choose to demonstrate and apply their learning: x Create a two-minute video on a topic related to course content (200 points maximum) x Create a Glogster on a topic related to course content (150 points maximum) x Present a Pecha Kucha on a topic related to course content (150 points maximum) x Create a website on a topic related to course content (150 points maximum) x Write a research paper, 15 pages in length, on a topic related to course content (200 points maximum) x Prepare an annotated bibliography, with a minimum of 20 entries, on a topic related to course content (200 points maximum) x Interview a professional in the field on a topic related to course content. Summarize the content and insights gained from this interview (200 points maximum)

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The length and complexity of this list is left to the discretion of the faculty member. Choices should be based on the instructor’s digital skills and knowledge (which should be expanding every semester) and the requirements of the academic discipline. Note that some of these assignments require the use of technology, whereas others are more traditional types of learning and assessment activities. At the end of the day, however, students will need to select learning activities that have a total maximum point value of 500 points (allowing for a grand total of 1,000 points including the required activities). Third, allow students to declare their preferences and commit to a plan of action for the semester. Their total points (including both required and menu-driven choices) will determine their final grades in the course. This strategy provides a way to give students greater control over their own learning and allows them to begin to dabble with and learn new digital skills.

Talking Points The purpose of this chapter was to whet your appetite for the possibilities that exist when you make a commitment to include digital technology in your course design and delivery. The truth is, however, that we have barely even scratched the surface of what is possible. There are new and exciting digital possibilities emerging virtually every day. When reflecting on the possibility of moving in a digital direction with the courses you teach, consider the following steps as a way of moving forward: x Examine the learning outcomes in one course that you teach. x Imagine an assignment that is related to those learning outcomes and that provides your students with the opportunity to engage with digital technology. x Begin searching the Internet for possible tools that connect with the assignment that you are visualizing. x Spend some time exploring more deeply those digital tools and assets that come closest to what you hope to accomplish and select what seems to be the best choice. x Learn to perform the steps and procedures for the tool that you select. Remember, this may take some trial-and-error efforts on your part. Pay attention to your own frustration level, as it is likely that one or more of your students will have the same feelings. x Write down in detail the steps to perform the required tasks.

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x Do a field test with a trusted friend or colleague (e.g., have them follow your written directions and observe how well they did and if the final product was what you had envisioned). x Implement your chosen digital tool inside one of your courses. x Evaluate the final products created by your students as well as their observations about the learning that occurred. x Make any necessary adjustments and try again in this or another class. You are now ready to continue your journey as a digital explorer quickly and easily.

Reflective Questions 1. Make a list of the varied digital tools that you can use seamlessly and, with little thought, accomplish the tasks that you need or choose to perform. Which of these tools would be best to include in your courses as a way of helping your students move toward digital citizenship? 2. Talk with respected colleagues who are always searching for new and better ways to improve the art and craft of teaching. Ask them what they think: x What have they learned recently? x In what ways are they choosing to use or not to use digital technology in teaching? x What are their observations about the ways in which technology is affecting their work (or might in the future)? These types of conversations help keep us grounded and provide a frame of reference for what we are thinking and learning.

CHAPTER SEVEN THE SENSE OF URGENCY

Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own. —César Chavez, Civil Rights Activist

In the preceding chapters, we have focused our attention on those factors that promote and inhibit the access and use of digital technology. Our attention has been focused primarily on the role that faculty can play in promoting digital citizenship with their students. In closing, however, we take a more global perspective on digital citizenship and the future, examining the following: x Global initiatives and opportunities to bridge the digital divides to promote digital citizenship x Systemic change in higher education related to the integration and use of digital technology x Faculty initiatives to promote student learning, digital citizenship, and lifelong digital engagement

Global Initiatives and Opportunities Digital citizenship is an issue of global concern. By advocating for change and action in this arena, millions of people could gain access and the skills necessary to take full advantage of the information, communication, and learning tools available in digital contexts. It is encouraging to observe the level at which this concern is gaining coverage in mainstream publications and the professional literature of higher education and individual academic disciplines. Somewhat unclear, however, are the strategies that will lead to demonstrable levels of change and progress. Promoting access to technology as a tool for learning is not a new concept. Hansen and Reich (2015) pointed out some of the previous claims made for promising technological panaceas:

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For almost a century, technology enthusiasts have promised that new innovations can democratize education. In 1932, Benjamin Darrow, founder of the Ohio School of the Air, argued that radio would ‘make universally available the services of the finest teachers.’ In 1961, the Ford Foundation’s Teaching by Television report declared that TV would provide poor students with ‘instruction of a higher order than they might otherwise receive.’ (1245)

Radio and television have made an impact over time, but probably not to the extent envisioned or promised by their advocates. We now find ourselves in a digital age with the Internet as a centerpiece. The potential power of the Internet as a means of reaching the world is a game changer unlike any other in the history of civilization. With consideration of the Internet as a primary mode of delivery, two potentially promising tools have emerged as means of closing the digital divides and expanding digital accessibility and use: smartphones and MOOCs. The smartphone is viewed by some as a means of access, and MOOCs are seen as low-risk, high-yield learning opportunities and resources. As we will see, these two potential remedies have far from unanimous support. As Selwyn (2004) observed, countless “politicians, technologists, and other enthusiastic commentators” (358) entered into the fray with their own surefire solutions to the digital divides. He also suggested that the current model of framing the digital divides (i.e., haves, have-nots) typically leads to a series of political discussions when what are really needed are serious research studies on the issues and possible solutions. Before we explore this topic further, it is important to identify the ways in which people typically respond to a strategy nominated as a means to improved access and use of digital tools. Do this little experiment. Google any digital tool or strategy (e.g., smartphone, MOOC, tablet, social media) along with the words “and digital divide.” This web search will undoubtedly yield a variety of resources, typically couched with rather extreme language (e.g., ______ has closed the digital divide, _______ creates a new digital divide, teens using _____ encounter the digital divide). We are all looking for the same outcome, but we routinely fail to collaborate, share data, and work toward reaching that destination. It is safe to say that one solution will not meet the needs of vastly diverse people, groups, geographic regions, and political climates. More important than whether any particular approach is the magic digital bullet that will close the digital divides, however, are the healthy dialogues that continue to emerge. These dialogues and the open exchange of ideas ultimately will promote the building of bridges across the digital divides. The following examinations of smartphones and MOOCs are intended as

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ways to think about two possible strategies for closing the digital divides and whether they may or may not be useful…or, perhaps, useful in some situations but not others.

Smartphone Technology and Digital Divides As conversations regarding the digital divides have become more common, one of the emerging themes is the way in which smartphones might serve as a means to enhanced global access to the Internet. On the whole, and from a practical perspective, smartphones are less expensive than tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. They are also incredibly portable and have the ability to connect the user with the Internet. Lunden (2015) reported that current estimates predict more than six billion global smartphone users (or 70% of the world’s population) by the year 2020. Further, the greatest growth markets are predicted to be in Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa. Granted, it is hard to get one’s head around numbers like these. Some will celebrate the data as an indication that progress is being made, whereas others will simply shake their heads in disgust or doubt. The high number of people who can access the Internet with their smartphones is pivotal. It suggests that smartphones may be a path toward closing the digital divides. That is one side of the digital divide equation. The other issue of concern is usability. Yelton (2013) noted that smartphones have a level of usability but also a degree of inadequacy: Cell-only Internet access is good for entertainment and social connection and some forms of current awareness. But it’s terrible for many forms of research and civic engagement. The cell phone Internet experience can be hostile in a way that’s totally invisible to people whose experience of the Internet is desktop- or laptop-only. And much of our Internet—including public institutions such as government, schools, yes, libraries—is hostile in this way. (8)

These observations tie the issues of access and usability together to the point of codependence. So although we can celebrate the fact that billions of people are gaining access to the Internet by using their smartphones, we also need to have a deep and immediate discussion about whether that access is affording the user a level of satisfaction in relation to their informational, communicative, social, learning, and vocational needs. Park and Lee (2014) illuminated this concern by examining what they called the multidimensionality of smartphone use. They dig deep into the

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realm of smartphone use to reveal several possible challenges and inequities: x Socioeconomically, smartphone users tend to be male, younger, better educated, and with a higher income than nonusers. These data invite conversations about how to encourage other groups of individuals who are less typical smartphone users. x Intergroup differences appear between users and nonusers, as do intragroup differences between users of varying skill levels. These differences suggest a need to provide differentiated learning resources related to digital literacy and digital citizenship. x The phenomenon of leapfrogging can occur. Park and Lee used this term to refer to “providing cheaper and more accessible resources to those who are not able to access costlier computers with broadband access.” (83) x There are also a number of what the authors called consequential divides—situations in which smartphone users may experience information gaps and divides in relation to social relationships, lifestyle, and political participation (as compared with users of other, more sophisticated devices). The observations provided by Park and Lee are incredibly revealing and helpful. Harkening back to Selwyn’s (2004) call for additional research, however, we can see that the needs are great. Think, for example, about smartphone users. For some collection of reasons, there are people around the world who have the right combination of resources, inclinations, and learning support to seek out, purchase, and use a smartphone effectively. These individuals are represented in the use data that are celebrated as a response to the digital divides. But what about people in geographic, economic, and political climates where that option is simply out of reach? Those people could serve as the most meaningful participants in research studies. What might happen, for example, when a group of individuals who, under regular circumstances, have no way of getting smartphones or learning how to use them in a meaningful way are provided with smartphones and personalized instruction on use? How does this experience affect their lives? Does access to a smartphone affect their quality of life, and if so, in what ways? Those are the questions that must be explored moving forward.

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MOOCs, Information, and Learning MOOCs have been characterized as a disruptive phenomenon, at least according to many of the pundits and commentators in higher education. The world at large now has immediate, free, and ongoing access to the knowledge, information, and skills that typically have been reserved for individuals who choose to enroll in a college or university. Class Central, a website that describes itself as a “free, online MOOC aggregator,” estimated that over 35 million individuals participated in MOOCs during 2015 (By the Numbers 2015)! Daphne Koller, one of the co-founders of the MOOC platform Coursera, reports quite a different story: One early prediction about MOOCs was that they would undermine or even replace the traditional college education….And it hasn’t happened— only 15 percent of our current learners are college age. The other 85 percent fall largely into two categories. The first are adults looking to expand their horizons. The second—nearly half of our learners—are working adults looking to build critical job skills for a better career. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. The world around us is changing rapidly, and many of the skills you need today—data science, mobile apps, digital marketing—didn’t even exist a decade ago. (10)

Christensen et al. (2013) found, in their survey of MOOC users worldwide, that extremely diverse groups of people are actively participating: x 34.52% of MOOC participants were from the United States, and 65.48% were from a variety of other countries including Great Britain, India, China, Ukraine, Netherlands, and several others. MOOCs are truly a global initiative. x 24% of the participants were age 30 or under, 37% were between 31 and 50, and 39% were age 51 or above. x 6.6% of the participants were unemployed. x 14.4% of the participants were retired. x An overwhelming majority of the participants already had college degrees. x Participants had most commonly taken classes in business, economics, and social sciences (with a 7.2% completion rate), science and math (with a 4.6% completion rate), arts and humanities (with a 3.6% completion rate), and public health (with a 6.3% completion rate).

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x 44% of the participants reported taking a MOOC to seek jobrelated skills, 17% sought skills that might lead to a new job, and 13% reported taking a MOOC to gain knowledge that would help them earn a degree. x A majority of the participants reported that they would generally be unwilling to pay for a MOOC. Another frequent criticism of MOOCs is the low completion rate. Liu et al. (2014) examined MOOCs from the perspective of participating students. Their survey of MOOC users suggested that the students’ reasons for enrolling in the MOOC were consistent with the results obtained by Christensen et al. (2013)—to learn more about a topic, to learn more about a possible career, curiosity about a topic, to get credit for certification or a degree. Students who failed to complete the MOOC in which they were enrolled reported a variety of reasons (not unlike those often provided by traditional college students): lack of time, too much work, language barrier, technical problems, and that the topic was “not interesting.” These authors concluded that learning in a MOOC requires the participants to be, perhaps, more self-motivated and self-directed than students participating in a face-to-face learning venue. If MOOC providers hope to strive for improved completion rates, they must explore more creative and engaging instructional designs. Keramida (2016) suggested that MOOC participation and completion could be improved through the inclusion of some very basic instructional design modifications, including x increased use of formative assessments, x progress bars to let the learners know where they are in the process of completing an assignment or course, x gamification strategies as a tool for motivation and engagement, and x electronic badges as motivational tools. Returning to our examination of the MOOC as a source of information and learning and thus a component of efforts to close the digital divides, we can see that MOOCs could serve as a way to democratize information and knowledge. Veletsianos and Kimmons (2012), using the term open scholarship, suggested that this process x is rooted in an ethical pursuit of democratization, human rights, equality, and justice;

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x highlights the importance of digital participation; x is co-evolutionary with technological advances; and x is capable of achieving a socially valuable scholarly aim. These authors also reported that open scholarship will not be without its challenges, including the need for contributors to understand the nature of an open culture of scholarship and for colleges and universities to prepare future scholars for a rapidly changing culture of information sharing. In this environment, the flow of information sharing will quicken so that global scholars, who may never meet face to face, will collaborate and learn from one another on a daily basis. It must be remembered that a MOOC is still a relatively new way of delivering knowledge and information. Revisions and improvements are inevitable. As these changes emerge, it is reasonable to expect improved levels of efficiency, an increase in the number of engaging and interactive learning tools, and new ways for participants to collaborate and learn from one another. Greater numbers of people around the world can thus gain access to the learning and information they need in a variety of easily digestible and accessible formats.

Systemic Change in Higher Education These are incredibly fascinating times to be engaged in higher education. As changes sweep through the academy, colleges and universities find themselves in a position where their very survival may depend on the ability to adapt quickly and modify longstanding, historically valued practices and traditions. In the midst of this maelstrom, predictions are rampant as to what the future may hold. Some of the terms used to describe the future of higher education include an “avalanche” (Barber, Donnelly, and Rizvi 2013), a “revolution” (Butler 2012), and “the end of the university as we know it” (Harden 2013). A thousand-year-old institution might now find itself in need of an extreme makeover. Creating change in higher education, at an individual institution or in the larger academy, is typically arduous and very slow moving. Anderson, Boyles, and Rainie (2012) provided an insightful observation on the difficulty that may be observed by those hoping to facilitate change: For a millennium, universities have been considered the main societal hub for knowledge and learning. And for a millennium, the basic structures of how universities produce and disseminate knowledge and evaluate students have survived intact through the sweeping societal changes

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created by technology—the moveable-type printing press, the Industrial Revolution, the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, and computers. (2)

The newest challenge faced by higher education is the influence of digital technology. At the macro level, the creation and proliferation of online learning opportunities was immediately perceived as a challenge to traditional, residential campuses. Online learning also invited the participation of adult learners, many of whom pursue a college degree in the midst of work, family, and community responsibilities. Then, as we have discussed, came the arrival of the MOOCs, with their astronomically large numbers, offered by leading universities around the world for free! All indications are that technology will continue to be a pervasive cultural force and a significant influence in higher education. Thomas and Brown (2011) conceptualized these emerging developments as a “new culture of learning” (17), where engagement with information happens everywhere, not just in the classroom. In this new milieu, higher education moves from a stable infrastructure (i.e., learning as the acquisition of a defined collection of knowledge) to a fluid infrastructure creating novel applications for existing bodies of knowledge. Gumport and Chun (2005) provided a cogent context for this interaction among technology, the culture, and higher education: technological change can be seen as emblematic of other social changes facing higher education, in addition to being a yardstick for marking how well higher education is keeping up with changing societal expectations…inasmuch as technology is not a magic wand but merely a set of tools, its ultimate challenge to higher education may involve not only positioning and investing amid various social, political, and economic considerations but also nurturing the imagination for harnessing its power, its as-of-yet unimagined educational potential. (421)

It is safe to say that the influence of technology is growing at a much faster pace than the pace of change typically occurs in higher education (Esterburg and Wooding 2013; McCluskey and Winter 2012). This dilemma, however, is not simply an academic discussion. Colleges and universities that do not or cannot adapt to this changing environment will not survive the current changes and those that may lie ahead (Harden 2013; Schifrin 2013; Selingo 2013; Wood 2014). Lucas (2013) provided context for this observation: What do Borders, Kodak, and Blockbuster have in common with American higher education? All three organizations failed and are currently in bankruptcy. Borders is gone, Kodak is suffering a lingering death, and

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This litany of doomsday messages is not intended to scare or anger the reader (although, perhaps, this disclaimer should have been made a bit earlier). Rather, it is intended to set the stage for a critically important conversation. It should be a point of agreement, or at least a topic for discussion, that higher education is at a critical juncture. Dialogue about these topics is critically important. Readers are encouraged to reflect on the levels at which their institutions are embracing the realities of digital technology and taking proactive steps to assure the inclusion of high-quality digital experiences in their course offerings. The answer to this inquiry may be a reasonable predictor of what the future may hold for that college or university.

Once Again with Gusto: The Bottom Line is What Faculty Do with Their Students One of the ongoing traditions in higher education is that faculty have a significant amount of autonomy in relation to how they create and deliver course-based content to their students. This scenario is not likely to change at any discernible level. As the availability of technology continues to increase at dramatic rates, a bottleneck may develop if faculty refuse to engage with digital technology or fail to explore the ways in which the collections of available digital tools and aggregated web-based content might enhance learning for their students. With all due respect to faculty choice in course design and delivery, we must also express an equivalent level of concern for their students. Decisions made by faculty can result in collateral damage in the form of graduates who have a grasp of academic content but have no real understanding of how to apply and use that content in a digital framework. Fleischmann (2013, 3-4) cited several key course content questions that have been raised in the context of research studies in the area of teaching and learning:

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The digital has exploded our expectations, blurred our boundaries, and rendered obsolete what we thought we cared dearly about. What are now “the basics” in teaching and learning design? (Staples 2001) Can we meet the challenges of the 21st Century holding on to the educational ideologies of the 19th Century? (Barnes-Powell 2008) In a world of growing complexity, what is the right thing to teach? (Steane 2010) How can we prepare our students to meet today’s challenges in the global economy, ever changing technologies and complex social and political conditions? (Min 2011) (3–4)

Technology continues to emerge as a highly influential force in higher education. All indicators suggest that this trend will continue and, in fact, accelerate in the years ahead. Computers, tablets, smartphones, apps, social media, podcasts, web conferences, blogs, eBooks, MOOCs—these technological elements have become integral parts of our everyday world. A body of research that addresses the intersection among technology, students, and faculty is also growing. Quite often, this collision is depicted as part of an environment in which technology is an unstoppable force that is swallowing up traditional expectations of higher education. Students are either celebrated for being digital natives or criticized for not actually having any discernible or useful technological and digital skills, and faculty are unwilling to embrace technology or change the ways in which they teach. There are some elements of truth and fiction within each of these generalizations. In any event, higher education must take a proactive stance on equipping both students and faculty for the effective use of technology and digital tools in learning. This pattern of continuing change is inevitable. The good news is that individual faculty members can assume a proactive stance as they think about their individual courses and provide learning experiences that capitalize on the best elements of new and emerging technologies. By moving in this direction, everyone wins. Faculty are lifelong learners who stay current with both the content of their academic disciplines and the technology that can enhance the learning experience for their students. Students have the experience of learning in ways that are compatible with their digital native predilections and, by engaging with digitally relevant tasks, also enhance their own digital competence.

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Why the Sense of Urgency? The often-quoted phrase “think globally, act locally” has multiple implications for our conversations about digital literacy, digital citizenship, and higher education. This admonition has been attributed both to activist and town planner Sir Patrick Geddes and to David Brower, founder of the environmental organization Friends of the Earth (Wikipedia: “Think Globally, Act Locally” 2015). Regardless of the context, these four words remind us always to be agents for change where we are and to keep an eye on the bigger global context. In reflecting on the issues of digital literacy and digital citizenship, higher education faculty can have a direct impact on the students they are teaching (i.e., local) while serving as advocates for the creation of digital opportunities across the academy (i.e., globally). To be sure, higher education is not the center of the universe, but faculty have opportunities to have a big impact on the level at which their students are digitally capable. Faculty also serve as thought leaders as they consider the ways in which digital technology can become increasingly available and accessible to people around the world. We share that responsibility.

Talking Points In this closing chapter, we have examined several issues related to the global context of the digital divides and the level at which institutions of higher education, and the faculty they employ, can be agents for change. This assumption of agency comes in three flavors: 1. In course design, the classroom, and online venues, consciously work to equip students with not only the best thinking in our academic disciplines but also the skills to apply and further that knowledge in a variety of digital contexts. 2. On our campuses, and in conversations with our colleagues and university leaders (both formal and informal), provide words of encouragement and inspiration to expand and further the influences and uses of digital technology as a tool for communication, evidence-based practices, teaching, learning, research, and creative endeavors. 3. In every venue, speak out on behalf of those around the world who are prevented from or are being deprived of access to the vibrancy of digital technology. Speaking out should include not only written

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and verbal messages but also research and advocacy efforts that we encourage and develop.

Reflective Question 1. What will you do next?

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NAME INDEX

Ajian, H., 45, 144 Al Sharbatti, S., 156 Allen, I., 39, 40, 57, 58, 144 Allen, M., 120, 144 Anderson, J., 138, 144 Anderson, W. A., 9, 149 Andrews, D. H., 85, 144 Angelo, T. A., 87, 144 Antonacci, D., 125, 144 Arnett, A. A., 44, 144 Aviram, A., 74, 145 Ayan, P., 123, 157 Badke, W., 113, 145 Baek, Y. M., 46, 145 Bagozzi, R. P., 8, 145 Bailey, G., 81, 165 Barnes-Powell, 141, 145 Berk, R. A., 120, 121, 146 Berkey, D., 112, 146 Bichsel, J., 38, 39, 150 Bluestone, C., 52, 146 Blumberg, P., 59, 146 Bok, D., 19, 146 Bonzo, J., 50, 147 Boutwell, C., 85, 161 Bowen, J. A., 107, 147 boyd, d. m., 42, 147 Boyles, J. L., 138, 144 Bradley, C., 91, 149 Brenner, J., 164 Brass, P., 20, 147 Brink, A., 154 Brooks, C., 38, 39, 150 Brown, J. S., 139, 168 Bush, G., 68, 147 Btrandtzæg, P., 5, 147 Campbell, A., 47, 165 Camilleri, A. F., 64, 148 Carmean, C., 38, 148

Carreiro, E., 24, 148 Casserly, C. M., 62, 167 C.G.W., 55, 148 Chase, Z., 72, 148 Chickering, A., 39, 40, 118, 148 Cho, Y., 47, 160 Christensen, G., 136, 148 Chuang, Y., 164 Chun, M., 139, 153 Churcher, K. M., 116, 148 Cialdini, R. B., 20, 148 Clark, T., 116, 149 Clump, M., 91, 149 Cockburn, C., 10, 149 Cooper, J., 9, 10, 149 Costello, B. K., 55, 149 Cotten, C. R., 9, 149 Cox, E., 162 Creasy, B., 162 Crisp, A., 126, 149 Cross, K. P., 87, 145 Cueto, E., 56, 150 Dahlstrom, E., D., 38, 39, 150 Dale, R., 22, 150 Dalgarno, B., 11, 12, 157 Davis, F. D., 4, 8, 145, 150 DeAndrea, D. C., 44, 150 Demirbilek, M., 115, 150 Diamond, D. M., 87, 150 DiBartolo, S., 145 Donnelly, K., 138, 145 Downs, E., 116, 148 Doyle, W. R., 58, 150 Dresang, E. T., 10, 150 Duffy, D. K., 97, 150 Dufresne, R. J., 121, 146 Durwin, C., 41, 150 Edwards, N., 144 Egan, K. G., 162

Engaged Learners and Digital Citizens Egea, J. M., 150 Ehrmann, 39, 148 Elias, T, 47, 157 Ellison, N. B., 42, 47, 147, 150, 151 Enis, N., 56, 151 Epstein, D., 36, 151 Eshet-Alkalai, Y., 71, 74, 145, 151 Esterburg, K. G., 139, 151 Eynon, R., 11, 12, 154 Fadde, P. J., 32, 169 Falloon, G., 125, 151 Faulkner, W., 10, 151 Feliu, J., 10, 152 Ferenstein, G., 32, 151 Ferrell, J. D., 110, 164 Findlen, P., 20, 151 Fink, D., 84, 151 Fiore, A., 150 Fitzgerald, H. E., 155 Fleischmann, K., 140, 152 Fleming, M. F., 162 Fritch, K., 144 Fuller, R. B., 19, 152 Gaebel, M., 32, 152 Garner, B., 94, 97, 124, 128, 152 Gee, J. P., 36, 152 Gentzler, A. L., 162 Gerace, W. J., 121, 146 Gil-Juárez, A., 9, 152 Giles, J., 29, 152 Gillespie, T., 36, 151 Gilster, P., 71, 152 Gonzalez, V. R., 150 Goode, J., 36, 37, 153 Goodson, J. A., 85, 144 Gorney, S. E., 158 Gosling, S. D., 110, 164 Greenfield, P. M., 47, 159 Greenwood G., 43, 152 Grey, C., 20, 153 Gross, M., 10, 150 Gumport, 139, 153 Gunkel, D. J., 2, 153 Haeftner, J., 148 Halford, J., 112, 146 Hansen, J. D., 132, 153

173

Harden, N. 138, 139, 153 Hargittai, E., 2, 4, 10, 36, 153 Harold, R., 155 Harpel-Burke, P., 44, 154 Hartshorne, R., 45, 144 Hartson, R., 90, 154 Hawes, G., 56, 162 Hazard, W., 44, 171 Heilberger, G., 117, 156 Heilbroner, R. L., 20, 154 Heim, J., 5, 147 Helsper, E.J., 11, 12, 154 Herschbach, T. R., 158 Herther, H. K., 11, 154 Higher Education Research Institute 47, 154 Hill, G. B. N., 94, 154 Hmolpedia, 20, 154 Hoffman, D. L., 2, 154 Holt, M., 10, 150 Holthaus, M., 10, 164 Horrigan, J. B., 6, 154 Howard, R. M., 28, 113, 155 Howe, N., 11, 155 Hsi, S., 64, 163 Huang, S., 163 Hurst, S., 164 Hwang, 163 Inside Higher Ed., 30, 144, 155 International Telecommunications Union, 3, 155 Ipri, T. A., 68, 155 Isin, E., 79, 155 Jackson, L. A., 155, 169 James, J., 14, 80, 155 Janikian, M., 168 Jelenewicz, S. M., 36, 149 Jennings, N., 88, 155 Jinha, A. E., 27, 156 Johnson, B., 110, 156 Johnson, S., 19, 94 Johnson-Yale, 47, 156 Jones, C., 147 Jones, S. 20, 47, 156 Jortberg, M. A., 112, 145 Joseph, C., 168

174 Judd, T., 11, 12, 157 Junco, R., 13, 117, 156 Kacvinsky, L., 162 Karahasanoviü, 5, 147 Karsenti, T., 33, 156 Karuppasamy, G. A., 47, 156 Katz, J., 77, 78, 156 Kendall, G., 90, 156 Kennedy, N. F., 123, 157 Kennedy, T., 8, 9, 157 Keramida, M., 137, 157 Kharbe, A. S., 20, 157 Kidder, R. M., 20, 157 Kim, H., 46, 145 Kim, J., 47, 157 Kimmons, R., 137, 169 Kiviniemi, M. T., 110, 156 Kleinfeld, S., 55, 157 Klement, K., 8, 9, 157 Knight, L. V., 27, 157 Knobel, M., 71, 145, 158 Kolenic, A., 155 Koller, D., 136, 157 Kolpashnikova, K., 3, 157 Kuriyama, C., 125, 157 Kurzweil, R., 19, 20, 158, 171 Laccetti, J., 168 Lai, A., 38, 39, 40, 118, 158 Lampe, C., 47, 151 Lankshear, C. 71, 145, 158 Larose, R., 150 Laufenberg, D., 72, 148 Lazaroiu, G., 28, 158 LeBar, M., 32, 158 Le Cornu, A., 11, 170 Lederman, D., 39, 144, 155 Lee, Chunsik, 47, 157 Lee, Cuba, 156 Lee, S., 134, 135, 163 Lei, S. A., 91, 158 Li, S., 10, 158 Lichy, J. 43, 158 Lindkvist, H., 155 Linkon, S., 16, 158 Liu, A., 67 Liu, M., 137, 159

Name Index Loken, E., 117, 156 Longstaff, E., 32, 159 Lopes, V. T., 171 Lord, T., 22, 159 Lovett, S, 155 Lucas, H. C., 139, 159 Lunden, I., 134, 159 Madden, M., 163 Manago, A. M., 47, 159 Manning, R., 23, 159 Martin, A., 68, 159 Martin, E. J., 56, 160 Martin, F., 95, 160 Maslow, A., 77, 160 Mason, B., 168 Masterson, K. 44, 160 Mathew, R. E., 156 Mayer, R. E., 96, 160 McCluskey, F. B., 19, 139, 160 McCracken, H., 12, 160 McCracken, J., 59, 160 McDaniel, T. R., 88, 161 McHaney, R., 83, 161 McLoughlin, C. 111, 164 McMullen, B., 144 McNabb, L., 112, 161 McTighe, J., 85, 86, 95, 170 Menendez, M. R., 150 Merlot, 64, 100, 145, 166 Merrill, M. D., 85, 161 Merson, D., 13, 156 Messner, Kate, 128, 161 Messner, Kevin, 164 Millar, E., 44, 161 Miller, Jeff, 160 Miller, John, 26, 161 Miller, W. J., 77, 161 Mills, S., 168 Min, W., 141, 161 Montgomery, C., 171 Moore, D., 2, 161 Moore, J.C., 62, 161 Moran, M., 45, 122, 161 Moreno, M. A., 47, 162 Morey, J. N., 46, 162 Mossberger, K., 78, 162

Engaged Learners and Digital Citizens Muir, L., 56, 162 Murch-Shafer, R., 144 Ng, W., 70, 162 Nisbet, W. C., 36, 151 Noble D. F., 58, 162 Ohler, J. B., 79, 80, 163 Oke, L., 97, 152 Ólafsson, K., 168 Osnos, P., 24, 163 Özad, B. E., 46, 163 Pappano, L., 31, 163 Parchoma, G., 50, 146 Park, E. A., 134, 135, 163 Parks, B., 119, 163 Parry, M. 28, 113, 163 Peña-López, I., 36, 163 Peng, H., 125, 163 Pennebaker, J. W., 110, 164 Postman, N., 23, 164 Powell, L. F., 94, 154 Prensky, M., 11, 12, 164 Pullinger, K., 168 Purcell, K. 164 Rahman, M., 47, 164 Rainone, A. M., 44, 164 Raphael, J. R., 7, 164 Rashid, M., 156 Records, H., 10, 158 Reich, J., 132, 153 Reid, N., 111, 164 Reju, S., 171 Remmele, B., 10, 164 Revelle, A., 55, 164 Rheingold, H., 49, 164 Ribble, M., 67, 81, 165 Ridout, B., 47, 165 Rizvi, S. 138, 145 Richardson, C., 168 Richardson, J. V., 54, 165 Richardson, W., 51, 165 Robinson, A., 20, 165 Rodriguez, J. E., 45, 165 Rogalevich V., 26, 165 Rossman, D., 44, 171 Rowley, J., 54, 169 Ruppert, E., 79, 155

175

Sajjad, B.S., 156 Salter, D. W., 13, 156 Savage, P., 38, 39, 40, 158 Scharber, C., 11, 163 Schifrin, M., 139, 165 Schlosser, A. E., 2, 154 Schmoller, S., 171 Schoenmakers, T. M., 168 Schulten, K., 108, 166 Scott, I., 86, 165 Seaman, J., 44, 45, 57, 122, 144, 161, 165 Seckin, G., 13, 166 Selingo, M., 139, 166 Senses, N., 123, 157 Serviss, T. 28, 113, 155 Shafer, S., 10, 67, 153 Sharif, A., 160 Sharpe, R., 37, 76, 77, 146, 166 Sherman, W. M., 41, 150 Shrimplin, A., 164 Siemens, G., 149, 166 Simsek, A., 80, 166 Simsek, E., 80, 166 Sittenfeld, 48, 166 Smith, A., 13, 14, 23, 40, 46, 166 Smith, M., 62, 166 Soker, Z., 13, 151 Sottile, J., 112, 179 Sreedharan, J., 156 Staples, L., 141, 167 Steane, J., 141, 167 Steinbach, T. A., 28, 157 Steinfield, C., 47, 150, 151 Steinmetz, A., 148 Stewart, J., 116, 149 Strauss, W., 11, 155 Stucker, H., 11, 167 Sullivan, G., 121, 167 Suskie, L., 86, 167 Sutter, J. D., 21, 167 Swingle, J., 155 Tagg, J., 88, 167 Taylor, T., 47, 159 Tarrés, J. P., 9, 167 Technorati, 30, 50, 167

176 Ten Dam G., 154 Tene, O., 48, 167 Terras, V., 20, 168 Tewksbury, D., 116, 148 Thayer, S. J., 20, 168 Thomas, D., 139, 168 Thomas, M., 20, 168 Thomas, S., 68, 168 Tien, F. F., 36, 168 Tufekci, Z., 9, 149 Twigg, C. A., 5, 168 Tyler, R. W., 85, 168 Uygarer, G., 46, 163 UNESCO, 72, 100, 168 van Deursen, A., 7, 10, 75, 76, 169 van Dijk, J., 4, 7, 10, 75, 169 Vassiliou, M., 54, 169 Veletsianos, G., 137, 169 Vitores, A., 9, 152 Volman, M., 154 von Eye, A., 155 Vu, P., 32, 169 Wang, J., 46, 169 Wang, T., 125, 169 Warren, L., 20, 169 Warschauer, M., 3, 169

Name Index Watson, G., 112, 169 Watson, J., 44, 164 Waycott, J., 157 Weaver, K. D., 9, 149 Weisberg, R., 20, 170 Wellman, B., 8, 9, 157 Wenger, E., 36, 170 Wergin, J. F., 87, 170 Westerman, D., 162 Whetten, D. A., 84, 170 White, D. S., 11, 170 Wiggins, G., 85, 86, 92, 93, 95, 170 Wikipedia, 1, 29, 30, 32, 38, 52, 116, 118, 142, 170 Wiley, D., 62, 170 Wilson, B., 160 Wilson, C. D., 44, 171 Winston, H., 43, 171 Wolf, G., 19, 171 World Health Organization, 14, 171 Wright, C. R., 171 Young, H., 170 Young, S.W.H., 45, 171 Zhong, Z., 47, 171 Zickuhr, K., 13, 14, 23, 46, 164, 171

SUBJECT INDEX

A La Carte, 128, 129, 152 Acceptable evidence, 86, 87 Aggregation, 26, 35, 41, 65, 165 Alignment, 59, 95, 96, 146, 160 Assessment strategies, 25, 42, 68, 87, 88, 89, 93, 95, 103 Avatars and Virtual Learning Tools, Environments, 104, 125, 151, 169 Backward design, 85, 86 Blended and Online Learning, 35, 57, 65 Blogs, 21, 30, 31, 34, 45, 50, 51, 80, 116, 141, 150, 161, 165, 166 Callings, Closings, and Openings, 79 Chronological age, 8, 10, 11, 12, 17, 20, 30, 51 Classroom Response Systems, 104, 121 Cognitive affordances, 90-92 Cone of Experience, 22, 150, 161 Content management, 29, 35, 41 Course design, 25, 39, 40, 41, 49, 59,60, 61, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 92, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 102, 105, 106, 128, 130, 142, 170 Course pacing, 97 Coursera, 31, 32, 136, 149 Crap-detection, 23, 164 Creative Commons, 62, 63, 100, 149 Demographic Groupings, 4, 8, 9 Developmental Model for Effective E-Learning, 37 Developmental Progression of Skills, 68

Digital Citizenship, 17, 67-69, 71, 77-83, 99, 131, 132, 135, 140, 162, 163, 166 Digital Divide, 1-4, 10, 13-18, 35, 36, 67, 75, 76, 78, 82, 100, 133135, 137, 142, 147-149, 151, 153-155, 163, 166, 168, 169, 171 Digital Immigrants, 11-13, 101, 164 Digital Literacy, 67, 70-78, 82, 135, 142, 145, 146, 148, 152, 158, 159, 162, 168 Digital media, 54-56, 127 Digital natives, 11-14, 146, 152, 162, 171, 173 Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), 3, 155 Digital Residents, 11 Digital tools, 12, 39, 41, 60, 65-71, 73, 80, 83, 89, 95, 96, 99, 102, 103 Digital Visitors, 12 Discussion Forums, 105, 106, 108110, 122, 159 Discussion prompts, 90, 106-109 eBooks, 39, 40, 54-57, 65, 141, 150, 151, 157, 160-162, 165, 166 Education level, 43 Eigenfactor, 28, 29, 146 Ethnicity, 4, 8, 13, 17, 151, 154, 156 Facebook, 1, 21, 33, 42, 44, 47, 48, 80, 115, 118, 119, 128, 150, 151, 159, 161, 162, 166 Functional Access, 37, 77 Gender, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 17, 36, 37, 123, 149-151, 153-158, 165, 166 Glogster, 126, 127, 129 ICT Opportunity Index (ICT-OI), 3, 9, 154, 170 Identify the desired results, 86

178

Subject Index

Impact Factor, 28, 29 Income, 3, 4, 10, 13, 14, 17, 43, 135, 156, 166 Instagram, 42, 118, 119, 170 Knowledge Doubling Curve, 19, 34 Learning Management Systems, 36, 38, 39, 40, 58, 104-106, 108, 109, 116, 125 Learning outcomes, 19, 41, 42, 53, 60, 81, 87-90, 93, 95, 99, 101, 102, 107, 114, 118, 122, 126, 130 Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), 32-35, 138, 141-143, 154, 155, 159, 162, 164, 165, 166, 167, 172 Media-User Typology”, 5, 154 MOOCs, 21, 31-34,133, 136-138, 141, 147, 148, 152, 154, 156, 157-159, 169 New culture of learning, 139, 168 One Second Every Day, 125, 157 Online quiz, 90, 105, 110-112, 164 Open Educational Resources, 42, 62-64, 99, 100, 144, 146, 148, 170 Pecha Kucha, 126, 127, 129 Peer review, 64, 101, 108, 115 People with disabilities, 14, 15, 36, 60, 61, 171 Pinterest, 42, 126, 128, 161 Plagiarism, 45, 113, 114, 145, 155

PowerPoints, 41, 119, 120, 124, 127, 144, 146, 152, 163 Pre-potency, 77 Presentation tools, 42, 54, 59, 8891, 94-97, 103-105, 109111,119-121, 127 Psycho-Technical Variables, 70 Quality Matters, 59, 60 Quality Scorecard”, 60, 61, 161 Race, 13, 36, 155, 166 Scholarly Journals, 21, 27, 34, 146, 156 Screencasts, 123-125, 170 Second-Level Digital Divide, 4 Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, 39, 40, 118, 148 Smartphone, 1, 14, 29, 40, 68, 133135, 141, 159, 163, 167 Social Networking Sites (SNS), 4247, 49, 50, 104, 114, 115, 118, 145, 158, 164, 171 Socioeconomic, 2, 8, 36, 37, 135 Three lenses, 67, 71 Transliteracy, 67, 68, 155, 168 Twelve Key Features of Multimedia Learning, 96 Twitter, 1, 21, 42, 80, 115, 117-119, 156 Wikis, 21, 29, 30, 32, 38, 45, 50-52 79, 91, 116-118, 142, 149, 150, 152, 161, 165, 170