Why universities should acquire – and teach – digital literacy

Students are digital natives. Photograph: Alamy

Sebastian Faulks observed recently that ease of access to the internet is leading to a "net loss of knowledge" in this generation of adults, leaving the modern intellectual world in a "kind of catastrophe". But is there another side to this gloomy story? Once time and brainpower are freed up from memorising, will other skills come into play, bringing hitherto unimagined benefits?

One such skill is broadly labelled digital literacy. The phrase is used to cover everything from grasping the basic functionality of a computer/tablet/smartphone, to mastering the sophisticated techniques and attitudes needed for online collaboration and communication through social media. Widely understood to be essential to success in the workplace and modern life, it is a subject that is beginning to emerge as key in the world of higher education.

Higher education usually happens at an intermediary stage between childhood and adulthood when students acquire some of the life skills that will be needed after graduation. Part of what a university can do is provide new graduates with the skills and knowledge to take them into the workplace.

Current undergraduates have never known a life without the internet – it is the glue that holds their personal and social lives together. It makes sense that universities should be nurturing students' familiarity with technology, encouraging its use in teaching and learning, and paying attention to developing broader digital literacy skills.

However sensible this might seem, the reality is somewhat different. Lecturers (who are powerful role models for students) can be very resistant to adopting new digital teaching practices, and will vary in their ability to engage with the online world. Few universities seem to have adopted a digital literacy agenda in a widespread or meaningful way.

While the use of online courses and e-books is growing in UK education, they are still a minority interest. Lectures are often delivered using traditional methods, with a great reliance on dead tree materials, and physical core textbooks continue to hold ground over digital versions.

Raised tuition fees may be the factor that forces change in the UK higher education sector. Universities, now competing more intensely with one another for the best students, are increasingly seeing their own technical preparedness as a differentiating factor, and some are offering technical enticements to prospective students – free devices or free e-books.

At the HE Academy annual conference in 2012, the vice-chancellor of the Open University, Martin Bean, reflected these sentiments in his keynote speech. He noted: "In an era of raised fees, when students need to see the value of their loans, we need to find ways to bring to life the magic of high quality teaching."

Once an institution buys into a digital or e-book platform for the delivery of core course materials, they begin to discover just how much it can help with teaching and learning. Interactive resources, audio and video can all be embedded into the e-textbook, bringing the materials to life and giving instant feedback.

Textbooks can be built in the university virtual learning environment, linking to online course materials already prepared for the student. In some cases, university administrators are able to use analytics to monitor overall usage and engagement with e-textbooks supplied to students.

Digital literacy starts with the mechanics of using digital resources and digital devices. It's through e-textbooks, library resources, online databases, or even the web that an expertise in searching, finding, critiquing, absorbing and referencing multiple sources is learned.

Students also find out how to handle information overload, shutting off distracting online sites long enough to focus on one piece of work that they need to get done on time.

Additional layers of digital know-how can to be added as the student moves to a deeper lever of expertise. With all the facts at their fingertips, students can learn to collaborate to add context and meaning to the facts, drawing analogies, preparing theories, and building conclusions. They can learn how to communicate and present their ideas expertly through social networks to colleagues and peers inside and outside their usual network. They can practise working with feedback, and conversing in an iterative loop.

Universities can do more to teach the basic digital literacy skills that students are seeking to prepare them for the workplace. They can recognise that digital literacy skills in their broadest definition will bring great benefits to students, to their eventual place of employment, and to their lifelong working and personal life.

Students, already expert users of technology, need direction to turn their technical skills into skills for learning and employability. They will recognise the value of an advanced digital literacy agenda provided by a university.

• Fionnuala Duggan is managing director for CourseSmart International, where she oversees its e-textbook platform and digital course material for international markets.

View the original article here

Should Africa beware tech companies bearing gifts? | David Smith

 Mind the gap … South African students in a solar-powered internet school. Not all projects are so successful in educating Africa's children. Photograph: Samsung

When Erin Hayba began a project to bring computers to solar-powered schools in the world's biggest refugee camp, there were plenty of sceptics. "People said, 'No, this can't happen, you're in a refugee camp, why don't not stick with paper and pencil and chalkboards?'" she recalls.

Two years later, there are 215 computers spread among 32 primary, seven secondary and four vocational schools in the Dadaab complex in north-east Kenya, home to more than 400,000 people, mostly from nearby Somalia. Each school has a solar panel.

The Dadaab camp was set up in 1991 and contains about 280,000 children, some of whom were born there. Only about 70,000 attend the camp's schools. But the new technology could boost numbers, according to Hayba, who works works for the UN high commissioner for refugees.

"Many of the youth told me they want to learn computers so they can get a job when they go back to Somalia," she told the eLearning Africa international conference in Windhoek, Namibia, last week. "Teachers are saying some students are coming back to school who might have dropped out."

The project was only officially launched last month, and much has to be improvised. One enterprising student, who had swotted up from books, held the fort by giving lessons to both fellow students and teachers until a specialist arrived. Then there are worries about security.

Hayba added: "This hasn't been done before. I have conversations with refugee leaders under a tree. How can we keep the computers safe in an environment that is very risky? They suggest hiring more watchmen and training them in computers so they understand why it's important."

Hayba emphasised the need to involve members of the community in every aspect from planning to implementation and beyond. She praised Microsoft for providing training and a grant of $250,000 and HP for its support.

But the intentions of the world's leading tech companies came under scrutiny during last week's eighth conference on ICT for development, education and training, attended by 1,500 participants. Efforts to close the gap between California's Silicon Valley and the specific needs of millions of African children were not always successful.

Microsoft's Mark East gave a presentation entitled "Helping to transform education in Africa", featuring a slick video depicting an entire classroom wall composed of a computer touchscreen and an affluent family choosing cooking recipes on a futuristic tablet. He extolled the virtues of the Windows 8 tablet, insisting: "The devices are becoming more affordable, about $300."

That provoked some dissenting murmurs in the audience. Later, Joel Kaapanda, Namibia's ICT minister, chuckled at the notion. "$300 for a tablet is very expensive," he told the Guardian. "It is not affordable for African countries."

Having extended fibre optic cables to every village, Namibia is seen as ahead of the game. But, Kaapanda added, the country suffers from a lack of funds, equipment and content development. "The other inhibiting factor is lack of skills. There are schools that have computers but they don't have anyone to teach computers. We need to embark on massive training."

As Microsoft's East looked on, Donald Clark, a British tech investor who worked in e-learning for 30 years, warned the audience: "Be very careful of people who want to sell you tablets. There have been some disaster stories in the UK with tablets going out of the classroom."

Research shows that typing on a tablet is 20-30% less efficient than on a keyboard, he argued, and "kids end up writing in shorter sentences". In a separate seminar he described tablets as "teacher unfriendly", offering no feel for keys, slow text editing, and difficulties in networking.

"We must be careful in terms of thinking all of this is good," Clark said. "There is research that the tablet manufacturers don't want you to read that suggests they inhibit literacy. The keyboard is very important in terms of developing literacy."

In the closing debate of the conference, he took swipes at education tech gurus such as Sugata Mitra and Nicholas Negroponte and urged: "Don't let educational colonialism sneak in through the backdoor with bucket loads of hardware and content that is inappropriate for your children."

A recurring theme was past mistakes in which corporations have thrown technology at grateful African countries like a blunt instrument, offering little training, backup, or reference to a wider ecosystem. The continent has become a graveyard of abandoned laptops and good intentions.

Another tech giant, Samsung, displayed one of its mobile classrooms, donating it to the host nation. Its corporate citizenship manager, Kea' Modimoeng, admitted: "As companies we came to your countries and dumped laptops and we've run away. That's not sustainability. There needs to be collaboration. We are avoiding that situation by coming up with schemes that allow us to monitor implementation."

A smaller California-based company, NComputing, was promoting small black boxes that, fitted on the back of computer monitors, enable one PC to be shared by 100 users. The company claims the devices operate at a third of the cost of a PC, can save 90% on energy, and are less vulnerable to dirt, dust and theft while also reducing e-waste.

"There's been a lot of technology dumped in Africa and it's not always useful technology," said vice-president Mark Pilgrim. "The NGOs could spend their money more effectively."

There were also calls for more educational content to be delivered in indigenous African languages, since the dominance of English in the tech world can be an extra barrier. Professor Kwesi Kwaa Prah, director of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society, told delegates: "No society on Earth progresses on the basis of someone else's language. No society progresses on the basis of a language only spoken by 10% of the population."

He drew a contrast with Asian countries, which have prospered while retaining their own languages. "If you want to make your profits," he told tech companies, "you have to work in depth with the people, not just counting numbers of mobile phones."

Other projects mentioned involved delivering computers to embattled rural schools in Zimbabwe while training more than 800 headteachers, bringing maths and Arabic computer games to Sudan's 3 million children outside school, and using online video to preserve endangered African oral literature. The biggest buzzword, however, was Moocs: massive open online courses, described as "the latest craze in Africa".

A survey of e-learning practitioners in Africa found that 83% use laptops daily to support learning, followed by mobile phones (71%), standalone PCs (67%), TVs (34%) and radios (31%). Tablets were down the list on 20%. Nearly half the respondents admitted they have experienced failure.

Shafika Isaacs, editor of the report, said: "We've had abundant examples of failure. The vast majority pointed to infrastructural and technological shortcomings. In Rwanda, as part of the One Laptop per Child project, I went to a rural school that claimed to have electricity. But when we got there, we found it only had one plug. We were meant to charge 1,200 laptops from that one plug."

Much work and research still has to be done to win over politicians to the e-learning cause, she added. "There is not yet a compelling case of the benefit of technology in education in an African context. There is anecdotal evidence. There is hype. There is PR."

View the original article here

Should 'real' students do an online course on the side?

Boost your cv with a mooc. Photograph: Alamy

Universities have started giving away their content free as "massive open online courses", with the satisfyingly ridiculous acronym mooc (I challenge you to say it three times with a straight face).

Eleven top UK universities recently announced they were joining the Open University to launch FutureLearn, in a bid to catch up with the elite US institutions that have led the way in teaching huge numbers online.

It all sounds great for people who, for one reason or another, can't go to a traditional university. But do moocs have anything to offer students already studying at a bricks-and-mortar institution? People like me, who hate the niggling feeling that they might be missing out on a bargain?

Well, I've signed up for a mooc in microeconomics. I did it because I'm thinking about whether to do a masters, and what to study. I'm testing my resolve: if I enjoy it enough to study in my own time, maybe I'm ready for masters. Better to find out before I hand over the money.

Why else would a university student consider a mooc? You could use it to boost CV – it shows you're motivated, you have a variety of interests and you're not struggling with your workload. Although before you sign up for 10 (I mean, they're free, right?) have a read of Leonie Veerman's blog on why you shouldn't live for your CV.

And before you can use an online course to help you get a job, employers have to learn what they are and respect them. University isn't just about what you learn but proving you know it. The only proof you did your mooc is that you clicked on "I promise not to cheat" on the honour code. This is changing though: one of the biggest mooc organisers, Coursera, is trialling facial recognition software to monitor students, and charging a small fee for verification.

Moocs are extra tuition from a different perspective. Dreading that compulsory class you know you'll suck at, the one with the 50% fail rate? Mooc to the rescue. Free preparation: better than failing and suffering the consequences to your grade point average and student loan.

Do moocs pose a threat to old school universities? Should we fear that, before we've even paid them off, traditional university degrees will go the way of floppy disks?

Probably not. As Patrick McGee writes, they are a long way from ready to replace traditional degrees. A mooc v trad uni mega-battle to the death is unlikely – instead online courses offer another option on higher education's menu of delights.

Moocs still have teething problems. A Coursera course – oh so ironically about planning online courses – crashed recently, unable to cope with the thousands of students trying to join online discussions. Moocs are limited to subjects that can be assessed with multiple choice exams, marked automatically. Written any essays in your degree? Your professor's critique of them can't be replicated by a mooc – yet.

As for me, despite not making a single friend in a cohort of 37,000, I revelled in the chance to learn what I was interested in, on my own terms. Moocs are a new take on education – and we traditional university students needn't miss out.

View the original article here

Should Africa beware tech companies bearing gifts? | David Smith

Mind the gap … South African students in a solar-powered internet school. Not all projects are so successful in educating Africa's children. Photograph: Samsung

When Erin Hayba began a project to bring computers to solar-powered schools in the world's biggest refugee camp, there were plenty of sceptics. "People said, 'No, this can't happen, you're in a refugee camp, why don't not stick with paper and pencil and chalkboards?'" she recalls.

Two years later, there are 215 computers spread among 32 primary, seven secondary and four vocational schools in the Dadaab complex in north-east Kenya, home to more than 400,000 people, mostly from nearby Somalia. Each school has a solar panel.

The Dadaab camp was set up in 1991 and contains about 280,000 children, some of whom were born there. Only about 70,000 attend the camp's schools. But the new technology could boost numbers, according to Hayba, who works works for the UN high commissioner for refugees.

"Many of the youth told me they want to learn computers so they can get a job when they go back to Somalia," she told the eLearning Africa international conference in Windhoek, Namibia, last week. "Teachers are saying some students are coming back to school who might have dropped out."

The project was only officially launched last month, and much has to be improvised. One enterprising student, who had swotted up from books, held the fort by giving lessons to both fellow students and teachers until a specialist arrived. Then there are worries about security.

Hayba added: "This hasn't been done before. I have conversations with refugee leaders under a tree. How can we keep the computers safe in an environment that is very risky? They suggest hiring more watchmen and training them in computers so they understand why it's important."

Hayba emphasised the need to involve members of the community in every aspect from planning to implementation and beyond. She praised Microsoft for providing training and a grant of $250,000 and HP for its support.

But the intentions of the world's leading tech companies came under scrutiny during last week's eighth conference on ICT for development, education and training, attended by 1,500 participants. Efforts to close the gap between California's Silicon Valley and the specific needs of millions of African children were not always successful.

Microsoft's Mark East gave a presentation entitled "Helping to transform education in Africa", featuring a slick video depicting an entire classroom wall composed of a computer touchscreen and an affluent family choosing cooking recipes on a futuristic tablet. He extolled the virtues of the Windows 8 tablet, insisting: "The devices are becoming more affordable, about $300."

That provoked some dissenting murmurs in the audience. Later, Joel Kaapanda, Namibia's ICT minister, chuckled at the notion. "$300 for a tablet is very expensive," he told the Guardian. "It is not affordable for African countries."

Having extended fibre optic cables to every village, Namibia is seen as ahead of the game. But, Kaapanda added, the country suffers from a lack of funds, equipment and content development. "The other inhibiting factor is lack of skills. There are schools that have computers but they don't have anyone to teach computers. We need to embark on massive training."

As Microsoft's East looked on, Donald Clark, a British tech investor who worked in e-learning for 30 years, warned the audience: "Be very careful of people who want to sell you tablets. There have been some disaster stories in the UK with tablets going out of the classroom."

Research shows that typing on a tablet is 20-30% less efficient than on a keyboard, he argued, and "kids end up writing in shorter sentences". In a separate seminar he described tablets as "teacher unfriendly", offering no feel for keys, slow text editing, and difficulties in networking.

"We must be careful in terms of thinking all of this is good," Clark said. "There is research that the tablet manufacturers don't want you to read that suggests they inhibit literacy. The keyboard is very important in terms of developing literacy."

In the closing debate of the conference, he took swipes at education tech gurus such as Sugata Mitra and Nicholas Negroponte and urged: "Don't let educational colonialism sneak in through the backdoor with bucket loads of hardware and content that is inappropriate for your children."

A recurring theme was past mistakes in which corporations have thrown technology at grateful African countries like a blunt instrument, offering little training, backup, or reference to a wider ecosystem. The continent has become a graveyard of abandoned laptops and good intentions.

Another tech giant, Samsung, displayed one of its mobile classrooms, donating it to the host nation. Its corporate citizenship manager, Kea' Modimoeng, admitted: "As companies we came to your countries and dumped laptops and we've run away. That's not sustainability. There needs to be collaboration. We are avoiding that situation by coming up with schemes that allow us to monitor implementation."

A smaller California-based company, NComputing, was promoting small black boxes that, fitted on the back of computer monitors, enable one PC to be shared by 100 users. The company claims the devices operate at a third of the cost of a PC, can save 90% on energy, and are less vulnerable to dirt, dust and theft while also reducing e-waste.

"There's been a lot of technology dumped in Africa and it's not always useful technology," said vice-president Mark Pilgrim. "The NGOs could spend their money more effectively."

There were also calls for more educational content to be delivered in indigenous African languages, since the dominance of English in the tech world can be an extra barrier. Professor Kwesi Kwaa Prah, director of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society, told delegates: "No society on Earth progresses on the basis of someone else's language. No society progresses on the basis of a language only spoken by 10% of the population."

He drew a contrast with Asian countries, which have prospered while retaining their own languages. "If you want to make your profits," he told tech companies, "you have to work in depth with the people, not just counting numbers of mobile phones."

Other projects mentioned involved delivering computers to embattled rural schools in Zimbabwe while training more than 800 headteachers, bringing maths and Arabic computer games to Sudan's 3 million children outside school, and using online video to preserve endangered African oral literature. The biggest buzzword, however, was Moocs: massive open online courses, described as "the latest craze in Africa".

A survey of e-learning practitioners in Africa found that 83% use laptops daily to support learning, followed by mobile phones (71%), standalone PCs (67%), TVs (34%) and radios (31%). Tablets were down the list on 20%. Nearly half the respondents admitted they have experienced failure.

Shafika Isaacs, editor of the report, said: "We've had abundant examples of failure. The vast majority pointed to infrastructural and technological shortcomings. In Rwanda, as part of the One Laptop per Child project, I went to a rural school that claimed to have electricity. But when we got there, we found it only had one plug. We were meant to charge 1,200 laptops from that one plug."

Much work and research still has to be done to win over politicians to the e-learning cause, she added. "There is not yet a compelling case of the benefit of technology in education in an African context. There is anecdotal evidence. There is hype. There is PR."

Why universities should acquire – and teach – digital literacy

 Students are digital natives. Photograph: Alamy

Sebastian Faulks observed recently that ease of access to the internet is leading to a "net loss of knowledge" in this generation of adults, leaving the modern intellectual world in a "kind of catastrophe". But is there another side to this gloomy story? Once time and brainpower are freed up from memorising, will other skills come into play, bringing hitherto unimagined benefits?

One such skill is broadly labelled digital literacy. The phrase is used to cover everything from grasping the basic functionality of a computer/tablet/smartphone, to mastering the sophisticated techniques and attitudes needed for online collaboration and communication through social media. Widely understood to be essential to success in the workplace and modern life, it is a subject that is beginning to emerge as key in the world of higher education.

Higher education usually happens at an intermediary stage between childhood and adulthood when students acquire some of the life skills that will be needed after graduation. Part of what a university can do is provide new graduates with the skills and knowledge to take them into the workplace.

Current undergraduates have never known a life without the internet – it is the glue that holds their personal and social lives together. It makes sense that universities should be nurturing students' familiarity with technology, encouraging its use in teaching and learning, and paying attention to developing broader digital literacy skills.

However sensible this might seem, the reality is somewhat different. Lecturers (who are powerful role models for students) can be very resistant to adopting new digital teaching practices, and will vary in their ability to engage with the online world. Few universities seem to have adopted a digital literacy agenda in a widespread or meaningful way.

While the use of online courses and e-books is growing in UK education, they are still a minority interest. Lectures are often delivered using traditional methods, with a great reliance on dead tree materials, and physical core textbooks continue to hold ground over digital versions.

Raised tuition fees may be the factor that forces change in the UK higher education sector. Universities, now competing more intensely with one another for the best students, are increasingly seeing their own technical preparedness as a differentiating factor, and some are offering technical enticements to prospective students – free devices or free e-books.

At the HE Academy annual conference in 2012, the vice-chancellor of the Open University, Martin Bean, reflected these sentiments in his keynote speech. He noted: "In an era of raised fees, when students need to see the value of their loans, we need to find ways to bring to life the magic of high quality teaching."

Once an institution buys into a digital or e-book platform for the delivery of core course materials, they begin to discover just how much it can help with teaching and learning. Interactive resources, audio and video can all be embedded into the e-textbook, bringing the materials to life and giving instant feedback.

Textbooks can be built in the university virtual learning environment, linking to online course materials already prepared for the student. In some cases, university administrators are able to use analytics to monitor overall usage and engagement with e-textbooks supplied to students.

Digital literacy starts with the mechanics of using digital resources and digital devices. It's through e-textbooks, library resources, online databases, or even the web that an expertise in searching, finding, critiquing, absorbing and referencing multiple sources is learned.

Students also find out how to handle information overload, shutting off distracting online sites long enough to focus on one piece of work that they need to get done on time.

Additional layers of digital know-how can to be added as the student moves to a deeper lever of expertise. With all the facts at their fingertips, students can learn to collaborate to add context and meaning to the facts, drawing analogies, preparing theories, and building conclusions. They can learn how to communicate and present their ideas expertly through social networks to colleagues and peers inside and outside their usual network. They can practise working with feedback, and conversing in an iterative loop.

Universities can do more to teach the basic digital literacy skills that students are seeking to prepare them for the workplace. They can recognise that digital literacy skills in their broadest definition will bring great benefits to students, to their eventual place of employment, and to their lifelong working and personal life.

Students, already expert users of technology, need direction to turn their technical skills into skills for learning and employability. They will recognise the value of an advanced digital literacy agenda provided by a university.

• Fionnuala Duggan is managing director for CourseSmart International, where she oversees its e-textbook platform and digital course material for international markets.

View the original article here

Should 'real' students do an online course on the side?

 Boost your cv with a mooc. Photograph: Alamy

Universities have started giving away their content free as "massive open online courses", with the satisfyingly ridiculous acronym mooc (I challenge you to say it three times with a straight face).

Eleven top UK universities recently announced they were joining the Open University to launch FutureLearn, in a bid to catch up with the elite US institutions that have led the way in teaching huge numbers online.

It all sounds great for people who, for one reason or another, can't go to a traditional university. But do moocs have anything to offer students already studying at a bricks-and-mortar institution? People like me, who hate the niggling feeling that they might be missing out on a bargain?

Well, I've signed up for a mooc in microeconomics. I did it because I'm thinking about whether to do a masters, and what to study. I'm testing my resolve: if I enjoy it enough to study in my own time, maybe I'm ready for masters. Better to find out before I hand over the money.

Why else would a university student consider a mooc? You could use it to boost CV – it shows you're motivated, you have a variety of interests and you're not struggling with your workload. Although before you sign up for 10 (I mean, they're free, right?) have a read of Leonie Veerman's blog on why you shouldn't live for your CV.

And before you can use an online course to help you get a job, employers have to learn what they are and respect them. University isn't just about what you learn but proving you know it. The only proof you did your mooc is that you clicked on "I promise not to cheat" on the honour code. This is changing though: one of the biggest mooc organisers, Coursera, is trialling facial recognition software to monitor students, and charging a small fee for verification.

Moocs are extra tuition from a different perspective. Dreading that compulsory class you know you'll suck at, the one with the 50% fail rate? Mooc to the rescue. Free preparation: better than failing and suffering the consequences to your grade point average and student loan.

Do moocs pose a threat to old school universities? Should we fear that, before we've even paid them off, traditional university degrees will go the way of floppy disks?

Probably not. As Patrick McGee writes, they are a long way from ready to replace traditional degrees. A mooc v trad uni mega-battle to the death is unlikely – instead online courses offer another option on higher education's menu of delights.

Moocs still have teething problems. A Coursera course – oh so ironically about planning online courses – crashed recently, unable to cope with the thousands of students trying to join online discussions. Moocs are limited to subjects that can be assessed with multiple choice exams, marked automatically. Written any essays in your degree? Your professor's critique of them can't be replicated by a mooc – yet.

As for me, despite not making a single friend in a cohort of 37,000, I revelled in the chance to learn what I was interested in, on my own terms. Moocs are a new take on education – and we traditional university students needn't miss out.

View the original article here