Within the contexts of online learning its affordances, students and teachers are both consumers and producers of media. Digital citizenship and media literacies emphasize the importance of developing the essential skills and perspectives that enable us to interact with media in meaningful, productive and creative ways. For our students, this is an especially important area of focus, as these are skills that translate beyond the confines of classrooms or schools. Media literacies aim to enhance the sense of citizenship and creative expression that allow us to participate in the production of media while contributing to a collective intelligence, whether that be amongst students or professional colleagues. Building on the foundations of traditional literacy skills, media literacies are skills and approaches that can be applied to new media artifacts, such as blogs, wikis, games, graphics or movies.
The collaborative nature of the wiki, and the wider audience that the wiki entries would potentially reach, create a sense of greater importance for the need to revise and revisit work continually during the process of writing and creating. In my own grade 5/6 classroom, I found that my students took a keen interest in writing their entries initially, but would continue to revise their work as they realized that their entries were receiving an increasing number of views. Through this work, the students placed an importance in the process of writing, and they came to understand that their wiki entries weren’t a finished product, but rather a changing document that continued to be a work in progress. In this sense, the approach to new media literacies supported the students in further developing their traditional literacy skills.
Anderson (2008) discusses the ways through which the affordances of the web can be leveraged to enhance generalized learning contexts, and the importance of the roles that collaboration and reflection play in creating these contexts. The notion of “repackaging” content resonated with me, and I started thinking about how we, as educators, often repackage content for our learners both in terms of classroom and online learning. When we take texts or lectures and make these available to students online, we’ve simply given traditional methods of instruction the appearances of a 21st century look, and Anderson offers guidance as to how we can take the affordances of new media to create transformational learning experiences.
Anderson’s ideas around the overlapping attributes of learning offer insight into how online and blended or flipped learning environments can move us away from the constraints of didactic content and traditional learning models. Teachers and students can benefit from more active, collaborative classroom learning, resulting from more meaningful, engaging conversations and interactions, both in terms of teacher-student and student-student connections. By removing the lecture component from classroom practice and shifting this emphasis onto the students to engage with at home, the time spent by students at school in the classroom environment can be more effectively utilized for inquiry and project based learning. Students access and learn the online content at home, and they return to school prepared with the knowledge to engage in meaningful tasks in the classroom. This places a considerable responsibility and onus on the part of the student (and parents) to ensure that content is learned at home in time for classroom application. For motivated and engaged students, this model seems to hold significant learning potential and possibilities, but for students who lack support or suitable learning environments at home, how would the flipped model appeal to the realities of their social and educational needs?
In terms of assessment, in online environments, students may decide which endeavours are most deserving of their time by determining where the greatest opportunity for reward exists. If the regurgitation of information on an exam is required for this reward, then students will aim to achieve according to this goal, despite the fact that these approaches limit the amount of real learning that takes place. Where the focus needs to be placed is upon providing varied assessment opportunities that allow students to demonstrate their learning in personalized and creative ways. Students are often assessed in situations where they are isolated from their peers, and essentially cut off from accessing information. In these assessment situations, students are not provided with opportunities to develop essential skills, and they are not responsible for taking ownership of assessment. Online learning offers affordances to help overcome these obstacles by allowing for meaningful, collaborative problem solving and the demonstration of creativity in developing a solution. Thereby, students are provided with affordances to further develop their problem solving skills, while continuing to build their personal resilience and perseverance when faced with difficulties or challenges during the learning process.
References
Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University.