The first topic in the course focused on online participation and digital literacies, and with this first post I will reflect on my own relationship with digital media and online engagement.
Digital media relates to both my research and my teaching. In research, I am interested in how digital media is used for various purposes – how it can help achieve goals that are beneficial for individuals and societies, and how digital media can also be used to create confusion and disunity. Digital media offers a lot, but humans give it meaning, in the way they use digital media tools and the goals they achieve with them.
In teaching, I also find it important to talk about the opportunities digital media provides for various actors for various reasons. I often feel behind in terms of the various platforms that emerge all the time and the opportunities they provide. To keep up with the platforms and their uses requires time and mental energy, so this is something to consider (and perhaps, a reason, why people are slow to engage with technology). I reflect on the Diffusion of Innovation theory that explains how people engage with new “things” and how societies adopt new practices. The theory outlines five groups: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and late adopters, and I reflect on where I fit. I do believe that innovators and early adopters are those that invest time into learning new technology and implementing it in ways that has not been implemented before.
It is common, with so much emphasis on research in universities, that adopting new technology in teaching is not necessarily a priority and thus the time to be spent learning those technology is simply not worth it for researchers. As a consequence, university educators often end ups as “late majority” or even “late adopters” with students far ahead with using digital media. In my experience, when I use digital media in teaching, I get close to the students, as I learn to speak their language, learn about their digital habits, and help make the bridge to other uses of technology.
In taking this ONL course I look to learn more on digital participation, how to effectively use time in learning new technology, in helping to bridge the gap between students and lecturers.
