Individual reflection Valentin Sch

Topic 1 – Digital Literacy

What is it about?

This first topic deals with Digital literacy based on the following Scenario:

“I have just signed up to do an online course and I am excited to be there. But I have little experience with online courses and it feels really challenging to get started to connect and find my way with all these new sites and tools. I guess that other participants will be more experienced than me and I feel stupid asking about things. We are asked to create a reflection on the web; it feels a bit scary to do this. I do share things on Facebook with friends, but here, in the open? I want to keep my private life separate from my professional life. But on the other hand, my students seem to share and discuss all sorts of things on social media and use all kinds of tools and resources.”

To start reflecting on the scenario, a seminar was given by David White to help us recognize our visibility on the Internet with the Visitor & Resident Map. It is useful to clarify which app you use in different circumstances, Personal or Institutional.

“The mapping process is a Visitors and Residents based group activity which is designed to explore individuals engagement with the Web” David White

After reflection, I made my own Visitor & Resident Map and it looks like this.

Digital visibility is quite a blurry zone for me where personal and work activities are mixed. Even if we are not using the same tools for the same purpose, it remains online by using your own profile, making the line between privacy and work environment not so clear anymore. I am trying to use these apps for a specific purpose but it can overlap as we can see with Emails, or Whatsapp for example. I like to have some blocks on each side of the map and keep them apart.

This map might be not complete right now and updates will be necessary as everybody changes with time. I could create this map during the seminar, but then I wondered how can I self-assess my skills in digital literacy.

So, I found this useful European tool that gives an overview of your knowledge by answering questions on this topic (approx. 25min): https://europa.eu/europass/digitalskills/screen/home
Results are divided into 5 categories and a grade between 1 to 8 can give you an idea of where are your strengths and weaknesses, what you can improve, and where you feel comfortable.

“Each of the 8 levels of the EQF is defined by a set of descriptors indicating the learning outcomes relevant to qualifications at that level in any qualifications system.” (https://europa.eu/europass/en/description-eight-eqf-levels)

My Digital competences report

The quiz adapts the questions depending on your skills. I am now an advanced learner in digital literacy with a level of 6. But the road is still ongoing and the tools available online are many and can fit several of these categories.

I think it is time-consuming to get used to a new one, that’s why even if you are a digital native, it doesn’t mean you will know everything at the beginning, and ask help/advice for first contact is always useful. This help is a great help for everybody who wants to continue to learn new things.

To link this reflection with the scenario, even if you are not familiar with digital literacy, it is always the time to learn and everybody should access new tools and are more than welcome to join online learning/teaching where they can find help needed to improve their skills. The assessment should play on the balance to be involved or not, otherwise, people will never learn new methods.
So, the self-assessment can give you an idea of your level that can push you to go deeper in this subject and so improve your digital literacy. But all people don’t have the same skills with digital tools and it is on us to be careful and be present with people who are in need with patience.

7 Categories of Digital Literacy

 

Digital literacy is also defined through seven different elements shown in the following image: I wanted to focus on one specific point:

Digital scholarship: Participate in emerging academic, professional and research practices that depend on digital systems

In this element, digital literacies are used for collaboration by disseminating research or professional practices. It can engage interdisciplinary and public by using digital technologies and tools to support them. It makes the research more accessible.

Possible tools:

  • In academia, one of the most knows tools for literature management is called Mendeley. It can help you to organize your work in a more efficient way when reading and writing research papers: https://www.mendeley.com/guides/desktop/
  • To write in a collaborating way in real-time, Google doc or Drive are often used, and Overleaf for LaTeX writing. Social platforms like GitHub or Code platforms such as Matlab forum or Jupyter notebook can be a good solution to sharing your own code and finding help online. 
  • To brainstorm and give tasks, it is possible to use Notion that recently includes AI that can help you on any topic like ChatGPT
  • The Conversation is a network platform that regroups the journalistic and research world. It is an independent online media that put in open-access research reports with accompanying expert opinions and analysis.
  • Some archives for research are also available to keep a memory of world research such as Archivematica which allows institutions to preserve long-term access to trustworthy, authentic, and reliable digital, and ArXiv which is an open-access archive for research papers in some domains.

These tools are used to make research accessible to everybody around the world. In our digital world, it becomes easier to collaborate across the world with them and extend our understanding of the world. The visibility and access to this information are more than important to help people understand how it works and why. Moreover, these tools facilitate the researcher’s life by improving networking and collaboration but also data/literature management which is essential. It also participates to make the research open access and open science to be transparent and avoid fake news and bias. It then improves researchers’ skills in their professional development providing new opportunities. The problem is it can lead to technology anxiety because of information overload which needs to be considered when you are willing to help a new learner [1].

[1] Phillips, G. A., Bordelon, D., & Kapral, T. T. (2023, February). “Push That Button and See What Happens”: Addressing Technology Anxiety in Library Digital Scholarship Pedagogy. In Digital Humanities Workshops (pp. 106-116). Routledge.DOI: 10.4324/9781003301097-13

The emergence of AI tools

Recently, many tools using Artificial intelligence became accessible to the public that questions our ability to teach and also help in our own research. One fundamental question is then, are teachers still useful in our future world? Indeed, students can now access all information possible from anywhere, and humanity is building tools to make it easy for everybody. We are in a world of digitalization and it might scary in some aspects, but I think it helps many people every day now by saving work time and then focusing on different aspects.

On one aspect, AI can be used as cheating and plagiarism tools and also bring some individualism in some way which is the opposite of the main idea of digital scholarship and collaboration between people. Indeed, you can discuss directly with the AI which brings less discussion with other people and so less creativity in new solutions for what the AI is not trained for.
In another way, AI can bring solutions faster for existing issues and be a help for your daily work to solve problems, it can give you ideas on how to develop your course and bring solutions by involving more students in your course and becoming more active. You can start to learn a tool and bring new questions that could be answered with the AI. It can be more powerful than existing tools and help you to organize your teaching and learning in a better way.

We shouldn’t reject this new technology and implement it in our teaching. It is our role to find solutions and help students as much as we can by bringing curiosity, debate, and discussions.

Our presentation is based on this reflection and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNI7FiGkqrU&ab_channel=AnaMariaVargas

To conclude, I am glad I could discuss this topic within my group, interesting reflections on how could be the future of teaching have been discussed and are now part of my daily reflection to improve my teaching. I will continue to learn using new tools and self-assess my digital literacy from time to time to keep an eye on my skills and on what I should complement.

Valentin Scheiff

 

 

 

 

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4 Comments

  1. Lotta Fröjdfeldt March 30, 2023

    Hi Valentin,

    You start off this topic by describing the conext of the cours every well, and also adding your own visitor and resident map. Interesting! I can see that you use YouTube a lot for your work, that make me curious about: How? You point out that using the same app for different purposes can blur lite private and institutional life. How do you handle this? You also say that “I like to have some blocks on each side of the map and keep them apart.”. This makes me want to learn more about this: What do you really mean and why is this?

    Then you have also used a tool, Europass, to really assess your levels. That’s interesting. Did you get what you thought? Another tool for you could be the DigCompEdu tool: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/CheckIn_HE_v2021_EN. It would be interesting if you could compare the results and share your thoughts. You also point out so truly that you are never fulfilled, and the development is hard to keep up with.

    You then use the “7 categories of digital literacy” and select the area of Digital scholarship. This makes me curious. Why? Then you give concrete examples of what tools can be used for this and also describe why you find it useful to share research results.

    The last paragraph is about AI. Here you really question a lot by asking “…are teachers still useful in our future world?”. I think as tools like AI develop our role very true changes, but maybe it also becomes even more important? To guide students how to use AI and other tools in a good way for work, research, and learning. I think source criticism is a big and developing field and we all need to know a lot more now, than we needed even 10 years ago. This is both to be a good learner but also to be a democratic citizen. You point out that AI can be a discussion partner and can help solve complex problems. You also see possibilities to help you as a teacher. Have you seen these tolls here?: https://view.genial.ly/63ec8abdc804dc0018561bbe/interactive-content-generative-ai-in-education?fbclid=IwAR0-9DqH2tYKfjgV9PTdwxSX9VSh_yFfV_Ns_a9Al98HfMf19D2mO7vHp8c

    -Thanks for sharing so openly!

    /Lotta

  2. Visa Penttilä April 5, 2023

    Hi Valentin,

    I think your reflection brings to the fore one of the most important aspects of digital literacy: the capability to reflect on your own relation with the tools. That is, it’s not only about the skills of using those tools but also seeing how they affect you in different roles (as teacher, student, private person). The different ways of self-assessment are an excellent way of doing such reflection. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

  3. Valentin Scheiff August 9, 2023 — Post Author

    Hi Lotta,

    Thank you for the comment, I will try to answer them.

    I like this kind of course where we can discuss in a community openly without judgment and I think it is important to not only say it but also write it. Most of the time, you can put your ideas on the paper with more reflection. Using WordPress is then a great opportunity for me.

    Youtube is one of the platforms I am using the most for music, news, my hobbies, and curiosity but also for work and mostly natural science. I am working in an experimental lab and I always need new ideas to build new experiments or see how things are working. I enjoy showing people how my world works and the need to communicate with people. So in a sense, it is part of my work and hobbies.

    Regarding the other app, I try to have a community around me that could be interested in what I am doing so try to draw a limit between privacy and work (when it is not for scientific communication). LinkedIn for works, colleagues, and collaborators, Discord, Messenger, and Whatsapp for private discussions with close friends. I mixed both once and I didn’t have a good experience in the end.

    I used EuropaPass to see how well I know the digital world, I think the test is quite relevant and it shows exactly what I am capable of. The problem is things are changing so fast that it is not easy to follow every new tool or method. I hope I will keep in the future these skills as communication between people is the most important to improve yourself. I might be shy and not so comfortable at oral but this kind of course helps me to understand better how it works.

    In our group, we decided to split each point between us. I choose Digital literacy because this is something I need for my working life. I always need to find new research to keep me updated, and so I need to use tools to help me organize all my reads. I am also in favor of open research, and it is important to find the right tools to share your ideas and analysis with the world.

    I agree with the fact teachers will always be needed, It is not because you have access to all the human knowledge that people will know how to do things. My main problem with AI is just that people need to remember to criticize it all the time and to find real sources. But I hope the teacher will not be there just to show how to use AI, it is also a matter of communication and collaboration, you always learn from other people, even in a world where fake news is going fast, it is always interesting to share opinions and debate them (even if we disagree).
    I am glad this kind of AI exists, powerful but already scary.

    Thanks for the last link, I didn’t know it exists in this way. I know some of the AI is used for some purpose but not all of them, very interesting.

    Valentin

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