Instructional Design

I often think about the ways in which people are using technology, and how the emergence of the Internet has impacted things such as bullying, where when I was young, you used to be able to escape bullying by going home after school. For these reasons (and more), I wanted to chat a bit about the concept of Digital Citizenship.

What is digital citizenship?

Digital citizenship is relates to societal norms and responsible use of digital technology and the Internet.

Who is a digital citizen?

A digital citizen can be considered any individual who is using technology and the Internet to participate socially (e.g. reading and writing blogs/wikis, participating in social media, etc.).

What constitutes responsible use?

Responsible use as it relates to digital citizenship would involve using digital technologies in a manner that will not negatively impact other individuals or which are illegal. For example, cyber bullying negatively impacts those individuals on the receiving end of the bullying, plagiarizing someone’s work is unethical, and downloading pirated films/tv shows/software is illegal.

But there’s so much more!

Digital citizenship isn’t just about being a responsible user of digital technology, it also involves being responsible when it comes to how you use digital technology. For example, using ergonomic principles and best practices, you can set up your workstation so that it does not negatively impact your muscles and body.

Resources

Nine Themes of Digital Citizenship from digitalcitizenship.net

Digital Citizenship: Developing a Culture of Trust and Transparency by A. Marcinek

5-Minute Film Festival: Teaching Digital Citizenship by A. E. Borovoy

 

Piggybacking on last week’s discussion of digital literacy, I’m going to discuss digital natives…a topic somewhat inspired by the ‘free wifi’ at a resort my friends and I stayed at several years go.

Digital Natives

Marc Prensky originally coined the term Digital Natives when looking for a term for a new generation of students: the first generation of students to grow up with digital technology. My generation, Gen Y – commonly referred to as Millenials, grew up with the emergence of digital technology. We were there for enormous CRT monitors, 14.4k dial-up modems, shouting at our parents for picking up the telephone when we’re trying to use the Internet, and have experienced many of the technological hiccups that have helped shape digital technology today.

Today, this group of digital natives seem to innately understand how to use technology. Which brings me back to my Mexican resort experience in 2013 – the resort claimed to have ‘free wifi’ in the main lobby, but neither myself nor three of my other millennial pals, who work with technology every single day, could figure out how to get connected to this elusive wifi. Meanwhile, children between the ages of 2 and 8 surrounded us, as if we had entered some digital playground, successfully connected to the Internet and doing more than the least of which we wanted to do…I just wanted to check my damn email!

Why Do I Need to Know This?!

Understanding Digital Natives is important! Why? Because as Learning and Development professionals, we need to better understand how to effectively develop training for our target audiences. This is a fact that is important for anyone working in Education. In my day-to-day, I come across individuals who are very out of touch with how their students are learning, and refuse to adapt their traditional methods of instruction (e.g. stand up lectures/chalk and talk) to address the needs of these individuals. I do see movement to adapting these teaching methods, but there’s still a great amount of resistance and frustration.

Ultimately, it’s important to understand that digital natives seem to be more comfortable when working in the digital realm than they do in more traditional contexts. While this doesn’t mean that we need to trash traditional methods entirely, it certainly does mean that we need to make certain adaptations.

When you consider digital natives in tandem with online learning, making these adaptations may also stand to increase overall accessibility to high-quality education, so while digital natives may view these educational means as an environment in which they can thrive and are eager to enrol in, we will inadvertently address accessibility issues for other generations!

Resources:

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky

Born Digital Book Chapters from Harvard.edu

Dawn of the Digital Natives by S. Johnson

When I was working through my undergraduate degree, majoring in Linguistics, I was always fascinated my the broad concept of literacy, particularly I lived in an industrialized country that still had high instances of illiteracy. As technology becomes more prevalent in our society, the issue of digital literacy is of equal interest to me.

Digital Literacy

Digital literacy involves having the general knowledge/skills/behaviours to use digital technology such as computers, smartphones, and tablets that are (in most circumstances) connected to the Internet. For even the most novice of digital literates, one should be able to troubleshoot digital technology issues, even if that troubleshooting involves a simple google or youtube consultation.

In the Learning and Development (L&D) community, digital literacy should be a priority. With an aging workforce, our training really does need to cater to the younger demographic. However, we need to ensure equal access for those in the workforce who are not considered ‘digital natives’. The younger generation is accustomed to using and troubleshooting technology; some of these individuals may not even remember dial-up internet or corded telephones, but they are most often than not extremely literate when it comes to using digital technologies.

This is why, in developing e-learning, content should be geared toward the digital literate, but should also consider elements that are important to those not so literate, such as navigation help, interface explanation, etc.

When I think of digital literacy (which I often take for granted), I think of my parents. My mom who is fairly literate in the technology world, but keeps a bag of computer cables ‘just in case’ (most of which have become obsolete and will never be needed), and my dad who has maybe done an internet search 10 times in his entire life.

In taking for granted my own digital literacy, I’ve noticed that my mom can now outperform me when it comes to getting around on her Android tablet, and my dad is keeping me updated on all of the latest media streaming services and how to use them. In considering this, I realized just how important it is to be continually learning, as even though I work in a technology-driven industry, my skills and knowledge can become just as outdated just as quickly as technology.

I suppose my point is this: digital literacy might be taken for granted, especially in the world of L&D professionals, who are entrenched in creating cutting edge training programs. As professionals, we need to ensure we’re being just as inclusive to those non-digital natives as we would be for programs requiring 508 compliance. Just because it seems logical to us, it might not be as straight-forward to our learners.

Continuing on with theories related to thinking, I’ve seen several articles in recent weeks discussing Design Thinking, so I figured it would be a timely term to discuss.

Design Thinking

The concept of design thinking came to be as a method for solution-based thinking. This idea ties in with last week’s discussion of convergent and divergent thinking (considering one, solitary, correct solution, and considering many solutions), as design thinking begins with divergent thinking to identify many potential solutions and ends with convergent thinking to identify one of the many potential solutions that will be employed as THE solution.

The process of design thinking includes several phases (define, research, ideate, prototype, choose, implement, and learn), which in education can be easily compared to Instructional Design models, such as ADDIE. Define/Research = Analysis, Ideate = Design, Prototype = Develop, Choose/Implement = Implement, and Learn = Evaluate. Very familiar, no?

If you’ve participated in workshops or interactive conference sessions, you’ve likely witnessed design thinking first hand. Last year, I was involved in a workshop-style presentation of research findings. In this presentation, participants were prompted to provide some guided feedback at several junctures. At the end of the presentation, it was then revealed that the researchers were conducting data collection throughout the workshop, and our feedback would be used within their research. Genius! Design thinking in action!

Design thinking isn’t a new concept, and it isn’t always employable within our organizations and/or institutions, but it is a great method for eliciting creativity to solve broader problems.

Interested in reading more? 

‘Design thinking’ is changing the way we approach problems big and small by T. Johnson

Design Thinking and How it Will Change Management Education: An Interview and Discussion by D. Dunne and R. Martin

When we come decisions, we most often employ a process for making those decisions. We may weigh the pros and cons, we may jump immediately to a ‘correct’ solution, or we may choose the wrong solution and have to go back to the drawing board. However you make decisions, there’s more going on inside your brain than you might realize.

Convergent Thinking

Convergent thinking is a process where you tend to choose the ‘correct’ response, given very little mental output. Think of multiple choice exams as an example (now, I know this isn’t the case for all multiple choice exams, but how many times have you ever guessed a response?).

With this method of making decisions, the individual is often focused on patterns, responding in a way that is most probable based on previous experiences. It is a method that tends to be entrenched in logic and familiarity and is often the quickest route to making a decisions.

Divergent Thinking

Divergent thinking is a decision making process that emphasizes the consideration of many ‘correct’ or potentially correct solutions to a problem, which tends to require increased mental output. This method may not be as fast as convergent thinking, but it tends to generate many options and is often viewed as spontaneous, emphasizing principles of free association, brainstorming, and critical-thinking.

Using this method, individuals provide an initial spew of ideas, and then use logic to critical connect various concepts related to the problem in an effort to reach the most appropriate solution.