Unit 2: Technological Pedagogy in Higher Education
Course Home Page: Digital Literacy Skills for Teaching with Technology
Unit 2: Technological Pedagogy in Higher Education
Goal: Discuss differences between traditional learning methodologies and 21st Century technology enhanced learning
What are your thoughts
(The questions in this section are solely for your consideration and do not require written responses)
I've heard teachers refer to students as more digitally inclined than themselves. Have you heard that said or maybe feel that way yourself? Do you think growing up in the 21st century—the technological age—instinctually make you more digitally literate? What about people born before the age of technology? Are they less capable of digital literacy because they had less exposure to the current systems of technology growing up?
Digital Literacy and Student Learning
Now that we've established what digital literacy is and what it entails, let's look at how it applies to higher education. In the development of advanced digital literacies, higher education should place a greater focus on technical skills, critical reflection, and professional knowledge-generation processes (Hoadley & Favaro, 2015). These literacies are extremely important in the context of a college environment, especially after leaving formal schooling. For educational purposes, digital literacy refers to a student's ability to differentiate between high-quality sources, comprehend authorship rules such as those governing copyright and plagiarism, comprehend how to obtain online information, evaluate the validity of online content in relation to an assignment, and develop social responsibility through social media interaction.
When it comes to digital literacy, some believe that so-called digital natives are already so familiar with technology that they do not require additional training.
Are Digital Natives Digitally Literate
The term "digital native" was first coined by Prensky (2001) to describe those born after 1980 who were the first generation to grow up immersed in digital technology. Now, more than 40 years later, our present age is steeped in technology, and cannot recollect a life without it. It has been suggested that digital natives learn differently than previous generations due to the culture of connectivity and online creating and sharing they engage in daily such as social media, blogging, online gaming, downloading music, and purchasing and selling of items. They are perceived as more active, experiential learners who prefer receiving information quickly, are multitaskers, and like graphics over texts. Today people of all ages, not just digital natives, engage with informal and formal information via technology. So does growing up in the 21st century—the technological age—instinctually make you more digitally literate?
Numerous researchers have argued that age should not be a criterion in assessing digital literacy, but rather characteristics such as availability of technology, breadth of usage, previous experience, self-efficacy, and education (Ng, 2012). It is also essential to understand how digital natives utilize technology since their usage is often for amusement, and they lack the abilities and methods to use technology for learning. Finally, there is no factual evidence to imply that the brain structure of digital natives differs from that of prior generations reared without today's technology.
A study conducted by Ransdell et al. (2010) found that digital natives had lower knowledge application skills and were more self-reliant than older adults. Digital immigrants, on the other hand, exhibited stronger knowledge application skills and were more socially-reliant learners than younger students in an online course. This confirms numerous researcher assertions that age and growing up in a technological society does not result in improved digital literacy (Ng, 2012). Rather, it is learning to work with a repertoire of tools and possessing the cognitive abilities to remain relevant and competent in a technologically driven culture that compels one to adopt new technologies or adapt to changes in existing ones.
Do Traditional Teaching Methods Work Today?
The purpose of this section is to look at the general features of learning environments in light of current advancements in learning research. The educational aims of the twenty-first century are vastly different from those of previous eras. Previous educational objectives, as we learned in Unit 1, relied primarily on students graduating with the ability to produce an end product. Today's students, on the other hand, must grasp the present status of their knowledge in order to build on it, enhance it, and make judgments in the face of ambiguity.
Traditional Teaching Methods
Traditional teaching techniques are often teacher-centered, which means the instructor is seen as the expert ready to transfer their expertise to students via lectures and direct instruction while the students passively listen and absorb information ( Mascolo, 2009). While teacher-centered techniques have been demonstrated to improve core abilities like memory recall, they aren't always the greatest way to build critical thinking skills. Traditional teaching techniques do not allow students to develop critical thinking abilities because they concentrate on short-term memory (STM) information retrieval for test preparation rather than long-term memory (LTM) storage required for a continuous process of reasoning (Tularam, 2018). Active student-centered teaching, on the other hand, is as much about the students' learning experience as it is about the information offered for learning. Active learning encourages students to gain autonomy while also improving their learning abilities, making them more likely to become lifetime learners who continue to build knowledge beyond graduation. Instructors that use active learning teaching methodologies with digital technology may help students enhance their content synthesis, interpretation, application, and evaluation.
Modern Learning Theory
A "student-centered" approach, on the other hand, transfers the emphasis of action away from the instructor and onto the students. The instructor takes on the role of facilitator, paying great attention to the interests, talents, and learning styles of each student. The following are examples of student-centered learning activities:
- active learning (problem solving, answering questions, discussing, formulating questions, debating)
- cooperative learning (collaboration with classmates)
- inquiry-based instruction
- project-based learning
Because learning is a social and active process, participation in social interaction is required for effective and meaningful knowledge. Collective knowledge, also known as distributed cognition, emerges as a consequence of social interactions. Distributed cognition is a collaborative learning process in which learners think about a subject or issue jointly, sharing ideas and coming to conclusions or devising solutions together. Student-centered learning helps students become active participants in their own learning rather than passive recipients of information (Student-centered learning, [ISTE] 2021). What students learn, how they learn it, and how they judge their learning are all influenced by their individual needs and skills. Students may utilize their curiosity to work through and overcome real-world situations when they become actively involved and take responsibility for their own education. Social and active student learning are well-complemented by technological education.
Any teaching style that involves the student in the learning process, fosters reflection on the topic, and inspires critical thinking is referred to as active learning (Kim et al., 2016). Through self-reflection, collaboration, and inquiry based learning students should perform better in terms of analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing information, as stated by Bloom's Taxonomy's higher-order abilities, according to the notion of active learning. All of the abilities needed for digital literacy in the twenty-first century.
Unit 2: Reflection
How does teaching in a student-centered classroom vary from traditional education? If you now teach in a traditional classroom, what concerns do you have about transitioning to a student-centered environment? What concerns do you have about integrating technology into your teaching practices? Is there a pedagogical approach listed in figure A that you are interested in learning more about and implementing into a lesson?
Share your reflection here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yZQydCHi7X4akyAfe35wv2wBShsOA7w3AtD0ObEUjcU/edit?usp=sharing
Next: Unit 3: Information and Communication Technology in Education
Looking ahead we will consider
Course Home Page: Digital Literacy Skills for Teaching with Technology
Unit 2: Technological Pedagogy in Higher Education
Unit 3: Information and Communication Technology in Education
Unit 4: Integrating Technology into Pedagogical Practices
References and Resources
Hoadley, C., & Favaro, S. (2015). Digital Literacy in Higher Education. In J. M. Spector (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Educational Technology (Vol. 1, pp. 221-223). SAGE Reference. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX6197800099/GVRL?u=cuny_nytc&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=2f8347e5
Kim, Y. M., Yoon, Y. S., Hong, H. C., & Min, A. (2019). Effects of a patient safety course using a flipped classroom approach among undergraduate nursing students: A quasi-experimental study. Nurse Education Today, 79, 180–187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2019.05.033
Mascolo, M. F. (2009). Beyond Student-Centered and Teacher-Centered Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning as Guided Participation. Pedagogy and the Human Sciences, 1 (1), 3-27. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.merrimack.edu/phs/vol1/iss1/6
MISHRA, P., & KOEHLER, M. J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017–1054. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9620.2006.00684.x
Ng, W. (2012). Can we teach digital natives digital literacy? Computers & Education, 59(3), 1065–1078. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.04.016
Student-centered learning | ISTE. (2021). International Society for Technology in Education. https://www.iste.org/standards/essential-conditions/student-centered-learning
Tularam, G. A. (2018). Traditional vs Non-traditional Teaching and Learning Strategies – the case of E-learning! Traditional vs Non-Traditional Teaching and Learning Strategies – the Case of E-Learning!, 19(1). https://www.cimt.org.uk/ijmtl/index.php/IJMTL/article/view/21