Who you’re gonna call? The development of university digital leaders

In our hyper-connected digitised educational world, university tutors are interested in capitalising on affordances of digital trends in teaching and learning. Students, under the alias of preservice- teachers, walk among them equipped with digital skills in areas of their interest. How can we encourage collaboration between tutors and students that can promote the use of the digital force wisely, support the development of students’ professional identities further and extend tutors’ digital competences? The story of nine tutors and eleven undergraduate pre-service-teachers working together on digital partnerships is set against discussions around digital leadership and citizenship. This case study aims to highlight how universities can respond to technology-driven change by engaging students further and support their awareness of digital citizenship. The overall results showed that the informal learning that students have capitalised outside the classroom can be used to scaffold their development of digital citizenship through offline community engagement. It demonstrates the advantage of using such opportunities as a means to encourage citizenship practices among university student communities and the positive impact that such synergies can have on all the participants

The future of history: towards a meaningful measurement of student learning in regional universities

Regional universities are in a transitional period in which student engagement and learning are re-evaluated. In an effort to maintain course quality, the Australian government introduced the 'Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency', which is tasked with measuring students' acquisition of 'Graduate Attributes and Skills'. This task has particular implications for regional universities, where courses have higher proportions of cross-faculty and cross-programmatic enrolments because of economies of scale and budgetary constraints. This paper focuses on the acquisition of 'Graduate Attributes and Skills' in the Arts Faculty of the regional University of Southern Queensland. The paper suggests different learning expectations of 'Graduate Attributes and Skills' amongst students enrolled in history courses. It points to the implications for these differences in learning outcomes, and the particular pertinence of this given the new framework for measuring learning and teaching in Australian universities

The lessons learnt from Willy Wonka (includes alternate ending)

Despite all that research has taught us, lectures and seminars still continue to be largely delivered in the classroom, with students sat in rows for far too long. Lecturers offer information, which some students choose to absorb. Some students choose not to, or don’t have the nature to be able to. So, what if we change this? What happens? And even more crucially, what can we do to use the ‘student voice’ to enhance how they learn and what they learn? Following a successful pilot in Experiential Education which we presented at the LJMU conference in 2013 we made developments which allow students to shape their own learning experience - truly engaging them in delivery. With Nick changing institutions at the beginning of this academic year we have both continued to explore Experiential Educational but in different ways. This presentation examines these developments and looks at three key areas: 1) The needs of students (which they weren’t shy in making clear to us!) and the differing learning styles they have, to see how teachers can use them to deliver an all-encompassing experience which is interactive, engaging and informative. 2) A taster of the technologies involved in flipped classrooms and the benefits of experiential education. 3) The reflective nature of learning journals to encourage the student voice to be raised (and then heard). Charlie got the Golden Ticket because he dreamt about it, because he did everything he could to get it. So, where did the others go wrong? And what could Wonka have done about this

From Page to Stage to Screen and Beyond

A group of Chicago youth media organizations have embarked on an evaluation process with adult program alumni to assess the degree to which hands-on media production and dissemination contributes to developing productive, independent, and engaged citizens. This report sets the stage for the evaluation, which began in late 2012 and will run through 2013, highlighting the work of youth media organizations in Chicago and exploring six dimensions, or outcome areas, that youth media organizations work within: journalism skills, news/media literacy, civic engagement, career development, youth development, and youth expression

Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action

Outlines a community education movement to implement Knight's 2009 recommendation to enhance digital and media literacy. Suggests local, regional, state, and national initiatives such as teacher education and parent outreach and discusses challenges

Using gaming paratexts in the literacy classroom

This paper illustrates how digital game paratexts may effectively be used in the high school English to meet a variety of traditional and multimodal literacy outcomes. Paratexts are texts that refer to digital gaming and game cultures, and using them in the classroom enables practitioners to focus on and valorise the considerable literacies and skills that young people develop and deploy in their engagement with digital gaming and game cultures. The effectiveness of valorizing paratexts in this manner is demonstrated through two examples of assessment by students in classes where teachers had designed curriculum and assessment activities using paratexts

Preparing millennials as digital citizens and socially and environmentally responsible business professionals in a socially irresponsible climate

As of 2015, a millennial born in the 1990's became the largest population in the workplace and are still growing. Studies indicate that a millennial is tech savvy but lag in the exercise of digital responsibility. In addition, they are passive towards environmental sustainability and fail to grasp the importance of social responsibility. This paper provides a review of such findings relating to business communications educators in their classrooms. The literature should enable the development of a millennial as an excellent global citizen through business communications curricula that emphasizes digital citizenship, environmental sustainability and social responsibility. The impetus for this work is to provide guidance in the development of courses and teaching strategies customized to the development of each millennial as a digital, environmental and socially responsible global citizen

Computer Science Framework to Teach Community-Based Environmental Literacy and Data Literacy to Diverse Students

This study introduces an integrated curriculum designed to empower underrepresented students by combining environmental literacy, data literacy, and computer science. The framework promotes environmental awareness, data literacy, and civic engagement using a culturally sustaining approach. This integrated curriculum is embedded with resources to support language development, technology skills, and coding skills to accommodate the diverse needs of students. To evaluate the effectiveness of this curriculum, we conducted a pilot study in a 5th-grade special education classroom with multilingual Latinx students. During the pilot, students utilized Scratch, a block-based coding language, to create interactive projects that showcased locally collected data, which they used to communicate environmental challenges and propose solutions to community leaders. This approach allowed students to engage with environmental literacy at a deeper level, harnessing their creativity and community knowledge in the digital learning environment. Moreover, this curriculum equipped students with the skills to critically analyze political and socio-cultural factors impacting environmental sustainability. Students not only gained knowledge within the classroom but also applied their learning to address real environmental issues within their community. The results of the pilot study underscore the efficacy of this integrated approach.Comment: 4 figures, 1 tabl