Preamble/Introduction: flux in digital spaces

My reflection on digital literacies will be from the perspective of how I position myself in the digital landscape which David White describes as a horizontal and vertical continuum conceptualized in 4 quadrants (see V& R maps from various sources below).

A selection of V& R maps from a range of sources (https://docs.google.com/document/d/0B_sfm89i9DC9STZxY3E4RVhsUVU/edit?resourcekey=0-4O2NtK2ES_Y-VZ_KsobwoA#)

I can say I used to clearly be a visitor who only used social media or technology for purely transactional purposes – emailing, purchasing items, posting information and the such. This was definitely not the space in which I would spend time creating my identity or building relationships as the residents of this space would. My ideas about this space recently have started evolving as I am beginning to see how I could potentially use the space to create my professional identity and build my professional networks as I seek to rebrand myself from a traditional lecturer to  an educational consultant/researcher with expertise in curriculum and literacy

Apart from recognizing the potential of digital spaces to build my unique academic identity, I also see it as a  space where I can build learning and professional communities with clients and peers.

From the perspective of using the space to create learning environments, I see great potential. While the face-to-face platforms have huge advantages in terms of facilitating social, cognitive and teacher presence (Garrison, 2007) required for creating learning environments for students to thrive in, the digital space provides other benefits that if harnessed with the right tools, can potentially take learning even further, making it available to a wider audience who can access learning anytime and anywhere.

I see how the digital space offers students the platform to co-construct knowledge and be reviewed by peers, helping them to straddle to the more resident-institutional space of White’s quadrant. In addition, the digital footprints left by learners can potentially provide opportunities I can use for developing critical thinking and more academic personas for them. These footprints also provide very valuable evidence for evaluating the impact of our own teaching. While our students are familiar with the personal uses of these spaces, we can stretch them toward using them for academic purposes such as constructing cogent arguments/ points and allowing themselves to be peer reviewed or constructively critiqued by others.

For me as a literacy specialist in academic and professional writing who infuses twenty-first century capabilities such as critical thinking and problem solving in my courses, this space provides a tangible one which records thinking and writing processes (digital footprints) as I facilitate the development of skills/capabilities which are being recognized as the top ten to be growing in prominence in the next five years by the world economic forum. It provides a space for students to cultivate their voice and an environment which is well moderated; one in which students can be enculturated into the practices of the academic and professional communities they a aspiring to enter.

The two illustrations I’ve provided in this preamble reflect a gradual movement for my students from the resident-social to visitor-institutional quadrant and for me from the resident-institutional to visitor-social quadrant. I would imagine that eventually, we would be occupying one another’s traditionally inhabited spaces as our motivations for using online tools changes.

Motivation for participating in ONL 212

My awareness that I’m transitioning from one space to the other enables me to recognize the potential of the digital space in learning and teaching and in my rebranding journey. The recognition of my transition motivates me to learn about tools that in my hands can be used to achieve these ends. My interest in developing knowledge in technological tools hence is driven by pedagogy and purpose because tools can only be effective if we can understand their potential to achieve our purposes e.g., to facilitate better learning and to build academic identities in learning and professional communities. And to me, this is how I strike the balance among the constructs of technology– pedagogy -purpose. This has become my motivation for joining ONL212 when invited by a former colleague, Alan Soong .I want to learn about the issues that surround the digital spaces, identify what tools are available and the potential they have in enabling me to achieve the aspirations I’ve alluded to earlier within the digital space.

Implications of moving into the digital space

Rebranding in the digital space: time, perseverance and lots of patience

The journey into the digital space for me was initially not a comfortable one. This was because I was not well connected to reliable knowledge sources to build a systematic and sound foundation of knowledge required for the switch. It took me much time to search through web and LinkedIn sites to locate people who possessed the knowledge I was looking for to fill my knowledge gaps.

After much time, perseverance and patience, I struck one or two people who had ‘solid’ and academically credible knowledge bases. This helped me launch off to action. As I had been used to showcasing my expertise in conferences, academic articles and training sessions run by universities, I decided to begin to think about how an academic could extend their reach by capitalizing on LinkedIn and Blog spaces to showcase their expertise. This is what I’m learning about right now – working out how I can present my academic persona (without compromise) in the new space to draw the desired traffic who could benefit from my expertise.

Building learning and professional communities: time, tools, pedagogy, boundaries

In terms of building learning communities, I grapple with issues sues such as maintaining effective engagement and motivation in an online learning platform. This makes the learning curve steep for me as it is not only about developing awareness of the available tools for engagement and collaboration as I acquire in ONL but also about the need to find the space and time to acquire their use and the underlying pedagogical theories to infuse them into the lessons in my repository. It is a balancing act for me as I learn to manage the many things on my plate during this transition phase.

In terms of building professional communities, I grapple with having to sieve through massive amounts of information to identify the communities I want to be known in and be a part of. Unlike working in the F-to-F space, this is very time consuming. For one, the online space seems to have no boundaries unlike the traditional institutional space I’ve worked in. This means that initially, I need to spend more time than usual to establish my presence and build relationships with the target groups I select. There are two things I need to get better at to achieve the goals I mentioned earlier: work out where to draw boundaries and determine realistically how much time I should invest in building these online relationships.

Conclusion

As I develop my competence in digital literacies, I’m fully conscious that I’m dealing with “a set of academic and professional situated practices supported by diverse and changing technologies”(JISC guide, 2014). I also recognize that this literacy potentially covers key literacies (media, communication & collaboration, career and identify management, ICT, learning skills, digital scholarship, information literacy) that are relevant to my context. There are no shortcuts and the development begins with identifying the technologies and acquiring the skills to use them for the purposes that are important to achieving social good I’m after.

It is also realistic to acknowledge that acquiring this literacy is a lifelong project which is in constant flux. It is likely to require constant the remixing of the 8 elements (cognitive, constructive, communicative, civic, critical, creative, confident and cultural) which Belshaw alludes to in The essential elements of digital literacies

Finally, it is unlikely that we can claim to be resident or visitor in the long run as our motivations, roles and use of the digital space continues to evolve.

References

Developing digital literacies (2014) JISC guide.

Garrison, D. R. (2007). Online community of inquiry review: Social, cognitive, and teaching presence issues. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 11(1), 61-72.

White, D. & Le Cornu, A. (2011) Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9)