Abstracts
Collaborating With First Year Students to Develop Sustainable Digital Literacy in a Communication Degree
Monday 4 May 2009, 1030 - 1100
Presenter: Peter Kandlbinder
University of Technology Sydney, NSW
Presenter Biography
Peter Kandlbinder is a Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Interactive Media and Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney. He has been working in the field of academic development for over 15 years with experience in support academics in developing their capabilities in assessing student learning, problem-based learning, postgraduate supervision and other forms of small group learning. Peter’s broad research interest is in using the research traditions from the arts and humanities to investigate questions in higher education teaching and learning. His current research projects are focussed on curriculum design, particularly the impact that decisions made during course and subject design have on student learning.
Abstract
With digital media being ubiquitous in youth culture there is an expectation that students entering university courses will have well developed digital literacy. At the same time low cost digital communication and information technologies are making it possible for curriculum designers to consider using multimodal forms of communication beyond the traditional written forms to assess students’ communication abilities. Yet, in spite of being classified as digital natives, a survey of first year students at UTS showed that many entering communication degrees are still relatively unskilled in creating and editing digital audio or video and have had no experience of keeping their own blog or creating significant online content. Without the ability to record sound and image (still and moving), edit, and publish online, students will find that they are no longer be able to satisfactorily participate in the first year of their course.
Digital literacy in the university context can be seen as possessing the skills needed by students to use and produce digital media, including the ability to learn to use new technologies throughout their course. This paper describes the outcomes of a project to prepare students for multimodal forms of assessment in a communication course at UTS. The project achieved this aim by ensuring all students who enter the program have the foundational digital literacy needed to complete the multimodal assignments that have been introduced in the redesign of the course. This involved a test of digital literacy on entry into the program and streaming students into appropriate learning experiences to develop competencies in digital communications and information technology. The user-driven approach of the project ensured that students collaborated in designing which staff and student workshops would be appropriate for a sustainable resource needed to develop their peers’ digital literacy.
The move to multimodal forms of assessment also has implications for the sustainability of the communication and information technologies that support the course. In addition to discussing the skills needed to consider today’s students to be digitally literate and how they can be developed, the paper outlines the challenges faced by the project team in creating a content environment to support the changes in the curriculum. This entailed developing an interface to the courses learning management system that enabled as many as 1500 students to read, write and publish complex and unique media-rich work to the web and incorporate sophisticated tag, search and network functions in way that showcases their capabilities.
