a new meaning for literacy

via Slashdot, the San Francisco Chronicle reports on November 20, 2008:

Rather than wasting their time, children who gab on Facebook or play online games are gaining valuable social skills and learning some technology basics, according to a study to be released today.

The report, sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, contradicts the idea held by many educators, parents and policymakers that children should be blocked from online social networks and video games like Halo, which allow users in different locations to play together. Instead, children should be encouraged to use the technologies to gain a certain level of digital literacy, the study said.

… But critics have called social networking a distraction and, in some cases, a danger because of the potential for children to befriend strangers. Hoping to limit children’s use of the services, some schools now block access to such sites.

and why not build online social networks for schools?

Open Access online research links

This is a collection of free, almost-free and sometimes-free websites that publish peer-reviewed articles and studies that relate to education, learning, web technology and the online world.

Many of these links were found in posts from Online Learning Update, which also exists here.  Some links were found via the Directory of Open Access Journals.  This list will be updated when additional resources are found, and readers are encouraged to add suggestions in the comments.

Free:

Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education ( CITE )

“Established with funding from a U.S. Department of Education … grant, CITE Journal makes possible the inclusion of sound, animated images, and simulation, as well as allowing for ongoing, immediate dialog about theoretical issues.”

The European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning ( EURODL )

“an online journal on distance and e-learning, publishes the accounts of research, development and teaching” “free to readers and contributes to the Open Content movement.”

“A Vision of Students Today”

is the title to this video by Dr. Michael Wesch and the students of Introduction to Cultural Anthropology,  Class of Spring 2007 at Kansas State University:

which presents a question about how to effectively employ web technology in the classroom.

Obamagogy

image via Consumerist, from MoveOn

“What we’ve been doing is trying to teach people to do what Obama does during his speeches — to tell their own stories to motivate others,” he says. “You’re building this sense of commitment to both the values and people, but you’re structuring it purposefully to achieve goals like, ‘In this district, we need 2,000 votes.'”

Via Wired on October 29, 2008:

Obama is the first to successfully integrate technology with a revamped model of political organization that stresses volunteer participation and feedback on a massive scale.

The Internet can make you “smarter” if you learn how to use it

update: The BBC reports on October 14, 2008:

Areas activated by reading a book in the brain of an experienced web user:

Web use stimulates much more activity in the same brain:

Brain activity in web newcomers: similar for reading and internet use:

dynamic collaboration and thoughtful citizenship

From the New York Times on October 11, 2008, with emphasis added:

The same chatting software that, when mismanaged, give us fits in our classrooms, enables us to collaborate in dynamic ways. Students now continue fiery classroom debates when they get home from school. They now walk each other through difficult readings of “The Odyssey” and “Hamlet” and return to class with stronger understandings. Our projects are regularly published — which leads to comments and ongoing conversations with the outside world.

As important as it is for students to expand their sense of community and learn to collaborate — it is more crucial that they learn how to sift thoughtfully through increasing amounts of information. The Internet presents a unique challenge to scholarship — many of the questions that once required extensive research can now be answered with 10-minute visits to Google. The issue now is distinguishing between rich resources and the online collection of surface facts, misinformation, and inexcusable lies that masquerade as the truth. It will be hard for our students to be thoughtful citizens without this ability to discern the useful from the irrelevant.

The practice of education is undergoing a rapid transformation due to web technology.  It appears that the Internet is finding its way into classrooms because it effectively facilitates the goals of education and it is relevant to the real lives of students.

Using the Internet to enhance the learning experience

In research I have been conducting today, I am finding support for the idea that the Internet and web technology can enhance the overall learning experience for students.

From Donnelly, R. (2004). Online Learning in Teacher Education: Enhanced with a Problem-based Learning Approach. AACE Journal. 12 (2), pp. 236-247. Norfolk, VA: AACE.  [pdf] :

Computer mediated communication including web pages, e-mail and web-based discussion boards have been reported by students using them as assisting in increasing satisfaction with their studies, decreasing feelings of isolation and providing better support for their learning processes (Geelan & Taylor, 2001). (241, pdf at 6)

[…] The role of technology in learning is to provide a flexible learning environment that supports student learning rather than the transmission of ideas for passive use in a highly deterministic educational regime. It is this constructivist approach to teaching and learning which is the critical feature of all successful learning environments. (244, pdf at 9)

From Kwan, R., Chan, C., & Lui, A. (2004). Reaching an ITopia in distance learning—A case study. AACE Journal, 12(2), 171-187. [pdf] :

… the Internet is really useful for presenting the multimedia elements as well as providing the capacity to hyperlink to other useful sites to assist student learning. […]

As a matter of fact, students with experience in Learning Space or WebCT tended to ask why all courses were not on them. (179, pdf at 9)

Internet learning communities

I have been looking at studies and reports related to community colleges and have been really surprised by some of the information that I have found.

For example, in Building a Culture of Evidence for Community College Success: Early Progress in the Achieving the Dream Initiative [pdf]  By: Thomas Brock, Davis Jenkins, Todd Ellwein, Jennifer Miller, Susan Gooden, Kasey Martin, Casey MacGregor & Michael Pih — May 2007. New York: MDRC and the Community College Research Center, in the community colleges that were studied, it is reported (at 18, pdf at 44) that:

On average, slightly more than one in ten students at these colleges earned a certificate or an associate’s degree after three years.

In Using Longitudinal Data to Increase Community College Student Success: A Guide to Measuring Milestone and Momentum Point Attainment By: D. Timothy Leinbach & Davis Jenkins — January 2008. CCRC Research Tools No. 2. New York: Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, a study for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) found (pdf at 8):

… for students who enrolled exclusively in college-level classes. … Slightly more than one-fourth (10,423 of 41,339) of all college-level students achieved any milestone within five years.

But wait, there’s hope:

The virtues of online learning

From the introduction to “Students’ evaluations of the use of e-learning in a collaborative project between two South African universities,” by Poul Rohleder, Vivienne Bozalek, Ronelle Carolissen, Brenda Leibowitz and Leslie Swartz, The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning, 20 August 2007:

Amongst the claims and acclaims made about the virtues of e-learning, Johns (2003, p. 431) ascertains that they can be divided into five categories:

1. Material is made more accessible to learners who can log on at any time which suits them.

2. Web-based material offers the opportunity for learners to explore those areas of the work they find difficult to understand, spending as much time as they wish to with these materials.

3. Web-based material can provide bridges between theory and the world of practice through, for example, organisational sites of social service practice on the web.

4. Web-based learning offers more opportunities for active learning, where students would engage with materials rather than passively receiving knowledge from lecturers.

5. This type of learning offers opportunities for learning activities such as problem-solving and information-gathering skills, and, from a pedagogical perspective, being conducive to ‘‘deep learning’’ rather than ‘‘surface learning’’.¹

And that’s not all:

Student attitudes about hybrid online classes

From “Attitudes, beliefs and attendance in a hybrid course,” by E. Yudko, R. Hirokawa and R. Chi, Computers & Education, Volume 50, Issue 4, May 2008, Pages 1217-1227, doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2006.11.005:

Student attitudes towards combining distance learning techniques with traditional lecture tend to be positive.

While students may believe that these hybrid courses have a negative impact on attendance, they do not self-report an actual impact.

Students do believe that they benefit from this technology, but the belief is strongest in those who are most computer/Internet literate.

These conclusions support the idea that the integration of online technology with traditional classes can enhance the learning experience for students.  This study notes:

An important result because students spend more time engaged when they have positive attitudes about the delivery method (Pan et al., 2005).

The “positive” reaction reported in this study suggests an answer for how educators can improve motivation in their students: design classes to reflect how students use the Internet.  The conclusion that the perception of a “benefit” from the hybrid course increases in students with greater computer and Internet literacy seems to underline this idea.

These conclusions suggest that efforts to increase computer and Internet literacy can improve the student learning experience in hybrid online courses.  For example, this study notes that “students who are most appreciative of these additions to a course are those with the best computer skills” and:

… students tend to recommend a greater level of computer/Internet preparedness prior to taking online courses (Richards & Ridley, 1997). In other words, helping students to develop strong computer/Internet skills prior to taking distance education classes may be critically important to improving student engagement.