Engaging Digital Learning in a Globalizing World
"Technology has transformed all aspects of society, including the teaching-learning process” (Resta, 2011). When I look back at my journey with technology, I see a lot of uncertainty and resistance from my end as an educator. This might, understandably, be caused by a fear of losing my job. Imagine a world where technology has taken over and there is no need to teachers? The sad reality is that is where we are headed. Covid has indeed, put into perspective the idea of ‘digital native’ and ‘digital immigrant’, where our learning spaces are reformed and we are mapping and understanding the rapid technological changes (Bayne & Ross, 2011).
Before I started in this course, “Engaging digital learning in a globalizing world”, I associated technology, specifically cellphones with gadgets that students use to talk to each other, send video messages, and tools to use to search up answers for things they don’t understand (although at the back of my head, I always told myself, they are getting lazier and lazier to think for themselves). Technology in class was a distraction, it could still be considered a distraction if used inappropriately. But what I am quickly learning or what I have been learning for the last 7 weeks is, it is a good distraction. There are positive aspects to that distraction, a teacher just needs to equip herself/himself with enough knowledge on how to be a “digital native”. Digital native describes someone who was born after 1995 ( Darbha and Rao, 2016). Being born before 1995 would qualify someone as a “digital immigrant”. This means, someone was born before the digital era, they were not born using computers or cellphones.
Going back to what I thought about technology in classes before this course. I remember teaching grade 8 and there was a rule that all the teachers agreed on, that cellphones are not allowed in class. This came from students using cellphones for “wrong reasons”, this means, they’d record themselves behaving inappropriately in the school and send the video around. I remember the COVID-19 pandemic happened in the middle of teachers fighting the new rule to have high school students learn online as opposed to learning in classrooms. This, I always look as a laugh in the teachers’ faces that the one thing you didn’t want, has now become mandatory and in less than a week, teachers had to learn how to conduct and teach online and shift EVERYTHING to online (hahaha). Contrary to popular belief, the reason wasn’t because we were loosing our jobs, yes it was one reason, but the real reason was, the students would not be able have the discipline on their own without the supervision of a teacher. Digital natives are so used to being on their gadgets that it is so easy for them to lose focus and go with the more interesting thing, which is chatting with friends, as opposed to doing school work. My experience on this, comes from seeing my own children and how they interact with technology. They are so hooked on technology that it works perfect when used as a reward, “do your chores and I will give you back your phone”.
This brings me to what articles say about how to motivate students to want to be engaged in their digital learning. One thing I learnt which really stuck with me was how Mayer (2003) describes how the science of e-learning involves three scientific investigation of how people learn in electronic learning environments, and this includes:
Evidence - this is described as a base of replicated findings from rigorous and appropriate research studies.
Theory - This involves a research-based theory of how people learn in electronic learning environments, which yield testable predictions.
Applications - Theory-based principles for how to design electronic learning environments which themselves can be tested in research studies.
This, from a teachers’ angle, guides us on what an effective e-learner should be aware of and the teacher is being used as a tool to help the students master the three concepts. Teachers are there to provide students with opportunities to explore the educational implications of technology use for education especially in current times when e-learning is the only option available. One thing that I am aware of, is how the students need a lot of motivation to learn online and I have been asking my colleagues how they motivate their students without using tangible things like, candy, or a pencil for students. An educational video from edutopia that I watched, explained how to motivate and keep students engaged and I think this helped me in understanding that helping students starts with helping myself. Something as simple as my surroundings, how I am feeling and my motivators can affect how my students learn online.
To support the video, Conrad and Openo’s (2018) article discusses the assessment strategies for online learning. I feel this is important for educators because this is part of their planning. They have to figure out what their assessment will look like as they plan for their online classes. Assessment provides important information about learning outcomes and the quality of education for many decades (Conrad & Openo, 2018). I especially like the idea that assessment is the heart of the students experience. On page 3 of Conrad & Openo’s 2018 article, they state that, assessment “is probably the single biggest influence on how students approach their learning” The one question I get asked, everytime I say, I have work for you to do is, “is it for report card?” As much as this process invokes fear and anxiety in students, learning online allows students to create knowledge and learning through interaction, collaboration and inquiry (Conrad & Openo, 2018).
The GIF below demonstrates what happens when a teacher finds ways to engage students. She is creating an atmosphere where students can teach her new things as well as learning from her.
The previous statement takes us to the topic of education reform through globalizing digital engagement. What this means is, digital learning is probably good for everyone, when we think of digital divide, which means that there are some areas which have no access to internet or people who have never learnt any digital skills. Are we stopping to think of the solutions for those areas which have no access to internet or the people who have never been exposed to technology? It is true that technology has become the focus of learning (Ejikman, 2009). As I mentioned earlier in our class discussion, when web 1.0 was created, it did not really encourage communication or the social aspects of people, it was more convention (Ejikman, 2009). In the hope of globalizing digital engagement, web 2.0 was created to encompass social aspects and interactions of people, which allowed all those discrepancies in education to be neutralized and now, there's a potential that, the world will learn about other unreported countries, who recently acquired technology. Reynolds and Chiu’s (2016) article describes the two types of digital divide, which cause inequality in digital learning. They discussed the inequality caused by lack of access to technology and the lack of knowledge of how to use technology.
This next video (Click “video”) was taken from Mercy Secondary School, Mounthawk , it describes the best way for globalization of digital pedagogy to happen while keeping intercultural-ism in mind.
What I find being shown in the video, is how participation gives students a chance of civic learning opportunities (Kahne et al., 2018). The educators are working with the students’ strengths and this then shifts from a multicultural frame of mind to an intercultural frame of mind, where the students are not only being taught academic English, but they are also teaching the other students their writing and culture. As I discussed in my group forum, the role of culture in virtual learning environments might be to distinguish the differences in learning skills of students from different backgrounds, geographical locations and education institutes, Goodfellow & Hewling (2005). The authors suggest that cultural differences are a cause of miscommunication among participants in online learning, collaborative learning problematic and creates exclusion among online learners. This is shown in the video, when the three new students arrive and initially, their teacher wanted to teach them using a concept that is new to them which they didn’t understand. When the teacher changed her strategy to accommodate their culture, they also learnt new things. This proves a point that, social-constructivism in European and North American educational thinking does not apply to groups with different philosophical traditions. (Goodfellow & Hewling, 2005)
I see in the above mentioned video, collaboration and teacher facilitation, which is discussed by Reynolds and Chiu’s (2016) as constructionism philosophy and framework. The students should be allowed to use their own creativity to acquire the necessary skills needed in digital learning. Although, this looks like it is mostly on the students, a teacher’s keenness and comfort level with technology also determines whether or not a teacher is motivated to incorporate technology in her class (Corwin & Tichavakunda, 2018). This would make most teachers ‘digital immigrants’.
From this course, I have learnt that, technology in class is not a bad thing when the students are well supervised. It is easy for them to get distracted by other fun things in their phones, computers, tablets etc, but if the teacher has a system in place which allows students to use their gadgets responsibly, technology can be a useful tool in class. I have also learnt ways to prepare myself to be an effective online educator and also, the opportunity to teach online during the COVID-19 pandemic put everything I learnt about digital pedagogy to good use.
References
Bayne, S., & Ross, J. (2011). 'Digital native' and 'digital immigrant' discourses: A critique. In S. Bayne, & R. Land (Eds.), Digital differences: Perspectives on online education, (pp. 159-170). Sense Publishers.
Conrad, D., & Openo, J. (2018). The big picture: A framework for assessment in online learning. In D. Conrad & J. Openo, Assessment strategies for online learning: Engagement and authenticity, (pp. 3-20). Edmonton: Athabasca University Press. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120279/ebook/99Z_Conrad_Openo_2018-Assessment_Strategies_for_Online_Learning.pdf
Corwin, Z. B., & Tichavakunda, A. A. (2018). Facilitating digital access: The role of empowerment agents. In W. G. Tierney, Z. B. Corwin & A. Ochsner (Eds.), Diversifying digital learning: Online literacy and educational opportunity, (pp. 66-83). MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Concern = access to technology, including devices and internet, at home, can set students behind
Darbha, S., & Rao, S. (2016). The concept of digital natives & digital immigrants in context of India. International Journal of Managerial Studies and Research, 4(4), pp. 1-5. Retrieved from https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijmsr/v4-i4/1.pdf
Eijkman, H. (2009). Using Web 2.0 to decolonise transcultural learning zones in higher education. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 26(3), 240 – 255.
Goodfellow, R., & Hewling, A. (2005). Reconceptualizing culture in virtual learning environments: From an ‘essentialist’ to a ‘negotiated’ perspective. eLearning 2(4), 335- 367. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/48989680_Reconceptualising_Culture_in_Virtual_Learning_Environments_From_an_'Essentialist'_to_a_'Negotiated'_Perspective.
Kahne, J., Evans, C., Hodgin, E., Choi, Y.W. (2018). Equitable education for democracy in the digital age: A district-wide approach. In W. G. Tierney, Z. B. Corwin & A. Ochsner (Eds.), Diversifying digital learning: Online literacy and educational opportunity, (pp. 25-44). MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Resta, P., & Laferrière, T. (2015). Digital equity and intercultural education. Education and Information Technologies, 20(4), 743–756.
Reynolds, R., & Chiu, M. M. (2016). Reducing digital divide effects through student engagement in coordinated game design, online resource use, and social computing activities in school. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(8), 1822-1835.
