My fellow teachers have often asked me why I am so keen on designing and teaching online courses. To me it’s about flexibility, access, inclusion and 21^st century working life skills. After all, digitalization is what allowed me to complete my master’s degree fully online while having a full time lecturer position at the university, running my own business and having two kids under the age of 5. I suppose having positive online experiences as a learner has also given me the confidence to experiment with online courses and different digital tools as a teacher in the past ten years.

Digital literacy is a concept that can be defined in many ways. In 2017- 2019, I was involved in a two-year project called 2digi, and one part of that project was to define digital literacy in our context. This project was born from Mike Nelson’s (2017) research, which showed that only 45% of Language Centre teachers in Finland felt that the concept of digital literacy was clear to them. The digital literacy model created in this project was based on JISC, but we renamed many of the elements. My personal favorite in this model is digital wellbeing, which is missing from the original JISC model, but is extremely important to both students and teachers. On the one hand, digitalization can have a positive effect on wellbeing by providing flexibility, access and inclusion. On the other hand, it can lead to fear of missing out and being available 24/7.

As this first ONL topic was called “Online participation and digital literacies” we also discussed digital identity. I really liked David White’s Digital Visitors and Residents Continuum and it was a fun experience trying to place myself somewhere there. In terms of social media use, I clearly have two separate digital identities: on the personal side I’m more of a resident, but professionally (teaching aside), I’m more of a visitor (and a lurker J). When students or work acquaintances try to approach me through my resident channel (Facebook), I always direct them to connect through LinkedIn. I also have a twitter account and follow several accounts that are of professional interest to me, but I have never posted anything in twitter myself, so I guess that makes me a lurker :-). My professional presence is the strongest in MyCourses (LMS), email and different collaboration tools (depending on what we’re working on).

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So what about my own digital skills? I live my life by the principle that “there is always more to learn” and this also applies to my digital literacy skills. I completed EU’s DigiCompEdu assessment for academics teaching in higher and further education as part of the job application process for my current post. This assessment breaks skills down into six different categories: 1. Professional Engagement, 2. Digital Resources, 3. Teaching and Learning, 4. Assessment, 5. Empowering Learners, and 6. Facilitating Learners’ Digital Competence. Based on the assessment, I’m in the highest category “pioneer”. The digital literacy model for Language Centres created in the 2digi project also has a category called “Digital Learning and Professional Development” which implies that digital literacy is a process. It is not something you learn and are then “ready”. This is also the reason why I am on this ONL course. By some standards, I know a lot, but there is much more to learn. I have already learned a lot in the first few weeks! Not really in terms of digital tools, but the whole collaboration process has been extremely educational. In addition, this course has taken me outside my comfort zone in the form of blogging. But then again, if you don’t’ leave your comfort zone, you’ll never learn anything!

References

EU Science Hub. (2019) The European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators: DigCompEdu. https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/eur-scientific-and-technical-research-reports/european-framework-digital-competence-educators-digcompedu Direct link to the assessment tool in English https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/DigCompEdu-H-EN

FINELC (2019). 2digi project. https://2digi.languages.fi/

JISC. Developing digital literacies http://web.archive.org/web/20141011143516/http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/digital-literacies/

Nelson, Mike (2017). Digital Literacy in the Language Centre Classroom. Kielikeskus tutkii 3, pp.115-134. https://www.utupub.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/143721/Kielikeskus_tutkii_Vol_3_2017.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

White, D., University of Oxford. (2014, March 10). Part 1: Visitors and Residents . YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOG3iThmRI&feature=youtu.be