Volume 14.4
SOciomaterialism; educational technology; algorithms; data literacies; higher education & mental health
Written by: Lydia Kokkola, University of Oulu, Finland and Marie Nordlund, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden
Abstract: All school leavers should have efficient online searching skills, defined here as the ability to select suitable search terms, feed them into a search engine, and make active decisions about which options to open from the results page. An additional element in our study includes the ability to search in English. As less than 1% of the Internet is in Swedish and about 60% is in English, this study assumes that Swedish school leavers will need to be able to use both languages. The study provides a qualitative, naturalistic account of the searching activities of Swedish teenagers in English classes from Grade 8 through to English 6 (ages 14-18 years). Screen recordings from normal English lessons were analysed and supplemented with stimulated recall interviews with 40% of the pupils. The study reveals low levels of ambition and limited digital competence combined with high levels of confidence. Most pupils were unaware that they could have achieved more. The same pattern emerged across four school years in eight different classes. We conclude that improvements in digital competence education require more modelling of skills such as searching, so that teenagers recognize the value of aiming high.
Keywords: online searching; digital competence; Swedish schools; L2 English; over-confidence
Written by: Connie Blomgren, Athabasca University, Canada
Abstract: Aspects of copyright literacy and attributing open licenses as scholarly practice inform this commentary. Because citation practices have a much longer history than attribution, an overview of the study of citation and its relationship to the developing practice of attributing open licenses provides a model and trajectory to follow. Copyright literacy as part of attribution knowledge and skills bifurcates from citation scholarship, yet it is part of reconsidering and affirming knowledge connections. Decolonizing perspectives of epistemology and what counts as knowledge, ownership, and sharing are part of this bifurcation that involves attribution, Indigenous ways of knowing, and Traditional Knowledge Labels. There are also tensions involved with properly attributing Creative Commons licenses and the title, author, source, and license process offers an imperfect and sometimes complicated pathway forward. Through this process, accurate and effective license acknowledgement occurs for newly created, reused, revised, remixed, or reshared artifacts. It is suggested to use the online attribution builder and best practices for attribution placement are provided for written documents, presentations, blog posts, videos, and other formats. As part of open education practices, attribution signals contributions to the knowledge commons and are part of copyright literacy and professional digital competence.
Keywords: attribution, Creative Commons, open licenses, copyright literacy, citation practices, Traditional Knowledge Labels, professional digital competence
Written by: Francesca Boyd and Paul Brindley, University of Sheffield
Abstract: This paper presents lessons learnt from research on integrating urban nature into university students’ daily lives for wellbeing benefits. It examines the application of traditional and technological interventions as a way of increasing university students’ engagement with urban nature to support their mental health. It focuses on two research questions: (1) How does a walking intervention and a mobile phone app intervention in urban nature compare - in terms of their effect on nature connection and wellbeing measures? (2) How should engagement with the natural environment be encouraged for university students’ wellbeing? The use of two different styles of nature-based interventions demonstrated the implementation opportunities and challenges amongst the student population. Results analysed the extent of changes over time and differences within groups. This confirmed that the relationship between different aspects of an individual’s relationship with nature is complex and dynamic. The experience of conducting this research highlighted the challenges to implementing novel technological interventions - including creating a nature-based intervention scheme at a university. The difference in outcome measures and unexpected direction of change for connection to nature suggests the need for a holistic approach to improve student wellbeing, including different ways to integrate nature into the university experience.
Keywords: urban nature, university students, interventions, mobile phone app, wellbeing.
Written by: Crystal L. Beach, Donna E. Alvermann, Stephanie Loomis, William Wright, & LaTasha Hutcherson Price
Abstract: Our purpose for researching self-sponsored creative composing online was to explore ways in which the cultural practice of digital remix might mediate connections among participants in a study conducted on a Creative Commons website. Specifically, we asked to what degree, if any, might digital remixes inspire or arouse feelings of connection with and through the creator and the created? A conceptual framework that took into account a case study design, the cultural practice of digital remix, and people’s reported feelings associated with that practice fell well within the realm of a post-intentional approach to studying the phenomenon of digital remix. A total of 82 remixes, 51 fragments, and 56 blogs were available for analysis. Using a five-step analytic procedure developed by the authors, we conducted 26 individual semi-structured interviews. Implications based on the data from those interviews, along with separate content analyses of the digital remixes, are discussed.
Keywords: Remix, Creative Composing Online, Integrating Technology, Digital Culture, Post- Intentional Phenomenology
Written by: Jacob Mickelsson, A-G Nyström, C. Wendelin & J. Majors. Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
Absract: This paper studies how the design of digital platforms can support students’ reflection on professional competence. The authors propose a conceptual framework for analyzing properties and functions that are relevant for digital environments for reflecting on professional competences and apply it in a study analyzing a set of existing digital platforms. The results emphasize the importance of multiple temporal vantage points in the design of the digital platforms, namely reflection-before-action (the future), in addition to the more common reflection-in-action (the present) and reflection-on-action (the past), and considers how digital environment design can support reflection from these temporal vantage points. The article offers tools to guide students in their reflection modes.
Keywords: reflection; professional competence; digital platforms; design; reflection-before-action
Written by: Verneri Valasmo, Antti Paakkari, Fritjof Sahlström, Yvonne Backholm-Nyberg and Joachim Majors
Abstract: This research examines the day-to-day sociomaterial practices adopted during a Zoom distance lesson, enquiring into how student participation is enacted in a video lesson assemblage. The research is based on video data recorded by three students and one teacher during the Covid-19 pandemic on an upper secondary school mathematics lesson and interviews with said participants. We approach the distance lesson as a sociomaterial assemblage, applying Actor–Network Theory as a sensitising device. The results highlight the role of four non-human agencies that emerge in the assemblage—the application interface, webcam, microphone and internet connection—which all significantly reconfigure what is understood as participation. Even though the students visibly seek to participate in the lesson, their attempts often go unnoticed because they are not registered by the webcams and microphones or displayed by the interface.
Keywords: Zoom video conferencing, distance classroom, emergency remote teaching, participation, sociomaterial assemblage
Written by: Yuya Takeda, Kedrick James, Rachel Horst, Esteban Morales (University of British Columbia)
Abstract: This paper is born out of conceptual work stimulated in the construction of a literary search engine for the PhoneMe project (www.phonemeproject.com), social media for spoken-word poetry. Drawing on Hiroki Azuma, we explore the ways in which desires are located and consummated through acts of searching and propose a pedagogy of search literacy which embraces spontaneity and accidents to break out of the algorithmic guidance. Azuma sees the postmodern as an historical period characterized by a shift away from grand narratives to database culture, whereby information is consumed not as a cohesive unit stabilized by collectivized narratives, but as a protean association of data fragments made available through searching databases. Such a cultural shift not only transforms the media, but also subjectivity. We propose a theory based on the idea of inadvertent semiosis we call anti-signs. In the database environment, these anti-signs are aggregated to produce the consumers’ Antibody. This Antibody, or one’s algorithmic guide, begins to direct the user’s desires and attentions. We present a way to bring contingency back into the act of searching through prompting glitches to occur–what Azuma calls misdelivery–and through the aesthetic (as opposed to efferent) textual representation of literary search results.
Keywords: Hiroki Azuma, search engines, subjectification, database
Written by:
Stine Brynildsen, Østfold University College, Halden, Norway
Halvdan Haugsbakken, Østfold University College, Halden, Norway
Abstract: Understanding digital competence in teaching is challenging because technology and teachers’ workdays are moving targets. Previous research suggests using professional digital competence (PDC) as an approach for better understanding how teachers develop a deep understanding of technology, learning processes and subjects. Accordingly, inspired by a short-term design-based research methodology, a project was conceived to have a group of teachers and teacher educators collaborate on developing digital teaching environments using Microsoft Class Teams and OneNote Class Notebook at a lower secondary school in Norway. To investigate the outcomes, this paper adopts an agentic socio-cultural perspective to examine how the teachers enacted digital teaching environments to develop PDC. The results show that the teachers employed negotiation strategies and used different material and immaterial resources in their local school contexts to enact digital teaching environments. The study suggests adding new research to two emerging and relevant research streams—teachers’ digital competence and Microsoft Class Teams and the OneNote Class Notebook—by emphasising a strong human-centric agency approach and that teachers’ digital competence can be made visible through acts of collaboration.
Keywords: professional agency; teachers’ professional digital competence; digital teaching environments; Microsoft Teams; OneNote Class Notebook
Written by:
Daniela Gachago, University of Cape Town
Cheng-Wen Huang, University of Cape Town
Laura Czerniewicz, University of Cape Town
Andrew Deacon, University of Cape Town
Abstract: There are concerns about mental health in academia globally, which is a direct consequence of an increase of a neoliberal entrepreneurial approach, one heightened during the time of the pandemic. This paper uses Skotnicki and Nielsen’s categories of alienation and Fisher’s work on capitalist realism to make sense of academic staff’s responses to a survey on their experiences with Emergency Remote Teaching, collected in 2021 at a large research-intensive university in South Africa. The responses indicate that participants all experienced some form of alienation, though experienced and expressed differently. We suggest expanding Skotnicki and Nielsen’s lens on agency and structure with what we found missing, an element of culture, to ask the question: “How can a university create and rebuild a sense of community and belonging to counter alienation?”. We propose a concerted effort to build spaces for collective encounters to rediscover community, which may allow us to re-imagine a future for the academy beyond conflicting imperatives of responding to the need for socio-economic redress and delivering education as a public good, in times of austerity budgets.
Keywords: mental health, higher education, alienation, South Africa
Written by:
Kurt Thumlert, York University, Canada
Melanie McBride, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
Brittany Tomin, University of Regina, Canada
Jason Nolan, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
Heather Lotherington, York University, Canada
Taylor Boreland, York University, Canada
Abstract: Algorithms are interwoven in the fabric of digital culture. They increasingly mediate our experience of politics, culture, identity, and agency. Building on critical research in other fields, critical educational theorists are exploring the pervasive role of algorithms, AI, and ‘smart learning’ tools in reshaping what and how we learn. This work is articulating new critical literacies adequate to the challenges of ‘algorithmic culture’, where algorithms co-produce, with users, differentiated media experiences, knowledge, affinities, and communities, as well as new patterns of identity and embodied action. This article examines how educational theory is responding to the dramatic shifts in digital experience precipitated by algorithmic systems and explores how educators can support students in developing critical literacies and technical skills for navigating emerging algorithmically-mediated worlds. We offer conceptual and pedagogical heuristics to educational researchers and educators for navigating the challenges of algorithmic culture, as well as identify risks associated with the migration of big data techniques into formal educational spaces.
Keywords: algorithms, algorithmic literacy, data literacies, education, game design, social media
Written by: Tanya Elias, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada
Abstract: This paper argues that the literature of feminized craftwork offers insights for understanding educational technology as a tension-negotiating practice through which we might learn to see and experience alternate possibilities for the field of educational technology. Post-human and socio-materialist education technology researchers have focused on learner usage of existing objects and environments, while educational technologists have emphasized the collaborative and affective labour involved in their work. These realities have sustained boundaries and silences between different theorybased and practice-based forms of educational technology knowledge. Practices from feminized craftwork, including enacting agency, engaging in collaboration, and reworking possibilities, offer an alternative approach that involves actively engaging with the tensions in between essentialistinstrumentalist, object-affect, and individual-collaborative binaries. Practice-based examples of ‘Phonar,’ ‘Domains of One’s Own’ and ‘FemEdTech quilt’ are used to illustrate feminized practice in action, and the tensions of educational technology that require negotiation.
Keywords: educational technology; intra-activity; feminized craftwork; sociomaterialism
Banner image: Pietro Jeng on Unsplash