Beyond Access and Skills: From Moodle Evaluation to Digital Literacies in Situated Practices

Below is the abstract for a presentation given by the Middlesex project team at the Academic Practice and Technology Conference 2015 themed 'Flipping the Institution: Higher Education in the Post Digital Age' co-hosted by the University of Greenwich and the London School of Economics.

Presented by Tarek Zoubir, Phil Barter and Kirsteen Macdonald

Abstract

Key words: Digital Literacy, Access, Skills, Situated Practice

This paper considers the ‘frame of reference’ for the discussion and evaluation of technologies for learning and teaching in Higher Education. As gaining access to existing and emerging technologies become easier to achieve, there is a need to upskill staff and consider ‘digital literacies’ as inherently interdisciplinary and situated practices.

“Digital literacies are those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society” (JISC, 2013). This definition acknowledges, albeit implicitly, that technical and pedagogical distinctions are blurred, open to interpretation and influenced by context.

  

Institutionally, an evaluation of digital literacies as an interdisciplinary and situated practice is multi-layered and includes an account of access and skills related issues. The extent to which these issues dominate the discourse will influence any proposed improvements. For example, a focus on providing access and skills training to use Moodle as a system will affect the design of staff development and possibly result in a technologically deterministic approach. Conversely, a focus on how course objectives can be better achieved through the use of technologies will encourage programme teams and learning technologists to think beyond the technology and more about learning design.

This tension between an access-skills (Epstein et al., 2011) and skills-situated practice (Hinrichsen and Coombs, 2014) discourse was partly observed when reflecting on data collected from a Moodle Evaluation of staff and students. The evaluation took place 6 months after the first phase of the implementation of Moodle and involved 50 members of staff and 600 students who took part from April 2013 to April 2014. Data from staff was predominantly gathered through structured conversations, focus groups and email feedback, whilst data from students was gathered via an online anonymous survey and focus groups.

Findings allowed for improvements to be made to the Moodle installation such as navigation (fewer clicks to arrive at course space), access (on mobile devices) and also resulted in a formal request for a new learning, teaching and assessment video solution.  However, the findings revealed a predominantly techno-centric focus with little information garnered about the complex and dynamic nature of negotiating digital practices alongside engagement with disciplinary content.  This was more consistent with transferring rather than transforming the curriculum as it had existed within the previously adopted system (Blackboard Vista). 

These observations paved the way for a working group of Teaching Fellows and Academic Developers to scope and understand how staff across services, schools, departments and in distinct roles, define and implement digital literacies in their practice. A questionnaire has been distributed to scope and collect definitions of digital literacy, example uses of technologies for teaching and learning, and to identify drivers and recommendations for enhancing digital literacies among staff and students. This has been followed up with interviews and focus groups aimed at exploring how identified themes and examples can be harnessed to enhance digital literacies through improved collaboration between academics, learning technologists/academic developers and students.

Executive summaries of analysed data will be made available. Equally important is the qualitative account of the journey and findings of one Higher Education Institute moving from an access, skills oriented discourse to one of digital literacies not limited to the ‘virtual’, but extended to the “learning environment” (Istance and Kools, 2013) more generally.

References

Epstein, D., Nisbet, E.C., Gillespie, T., 2011. Who’s Responsible for the Digital Divide? Public Perceptions and Policy Implications. The Information Society 27, 92–104. doi:10.1080/01972243.2011.548695

Hinrichsen, J., Coombs, A., 2014. The five resources of critical digital literacy: a framework for curriculum integration. Research in Learning Technology 21. doi:10.3402/rlt.v21.21334

Istance, D., Kools, M., 2013. OECD Work on Technology and Education: innovative learning environments as an integrating framework. European Journal of Education 48, 43–57. doi:10.1111/ejed.12017

Jisc., 2013. Developing digital literacies infoKit. [online]. Available at: http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/whole-infokit/?infokit=11013 Accessed: 03/12/14.