LAIBS Learning and Teaching Conference

Innovating our curriculum through social media and technology

Dr Helen Webster, Anglia Learning and Teaching

Dr Debbie Holley,Dept of Education

Why do we need to innovate the curriculum?• Knowledge gets out of date faster and faster – it has

a shorter half-life• Knowledge is growing exponentially and there is

more knowledge than can ever be contained in the curriculum

• The knowledge is out there on the Internet anyway• Core skills are changing or becoming redundant• Students are not learning in the way we expect,

sometimes circumventing or undermining processes

All of this has something to do with digital technology

A Clash of Two Cultures

Question:

What annoys/irritates/frustrates you most about your students’ use of Digital Technology in their Learning?

Clash of Two Cultures

Academia Digital, Social Media• Teacher-created, student

consumed• Large scale broadcast• Authority, one-to-many• Final, authoritative version• Closed, determined• Individual lone scholar• Plagiarism, possession of

ideas• Academic Text (some images)

• User-created and consumed ‘produser’

• Small scale narrowcast• Peer, many-to-many• Early release, perpetual

beta• Open, emergent• Networked, collaborative• Frictionless creation and

sharing• Multi-media, multi genre

URL available on request as it contains a rude word!

Synergy of Two Cultures

Digital Social Media Education• User-created and

consumed ‘produser’• Small scale narrowcast• Peer, many-to-many• Early release, perpetual

beta• Open, emergent• Networked, collaborative• Frictionless creation and

sharing• Multimedia

• Student as active partner in learning

• Tailored, personalised learning

• Collaborative, constructivist

• Assess process, not product

• Dynamic, creative curriculum

• Peer learning• Capturing and sharing

learning • Multimodal learning

Digital Openness

Think creatively…

Affordances and technological determinismVs Emergent, creative use in tune with digital culture and good pedagogy

Digital TechnologyAre we talking about…

• Using technology to enhance how we teach, learn and assess? (do things differently)

• Reviewing how and what we teach, how and what students learn, in a world which is altered by technology? (do different things, flip the classroom!)

Definitions: Social Media

•Web 2.0•User generated content*•Networked and shared, many to many

•*Content: ▫Multimedia (including text)▫Metadata and curation▫Edits, additions and comments

What do you create as teacher?

Curriculum

Assessment design

Presentation

materials

(Annotated) Reading

lists

Guides and

Handbooks

Assessment criteria

and feedback

Handouts

What students create:

• Notes from teaching and reading

• Anything they need to process learning (more notes)

• Assignments

Some ideas….Bibliograwiki•Discussion forum/Twitter suggest

search terms, likely formats and databases, crowdsource suggestions

•Mendeley/Delicious Collate and curate a reading list, tag with metadata

•Wiki Summarise and annotate reading list

•Blog Critique articles/books•Wiki Synthesise debates and trends

Some ideas…Hack the Lecture• Wiki develop the curriculum and keep it updating

throughout• Twitter/Discussion Forum Crowdsource questions and

topics to cover in module/lecture• Powerpoint/Dropbox students research and create a

slide each• (Lecture, using student-created slides) Looking things up

on mobile devices• Blog/Twitter/mindmap software Liveblog or livetweet

the lecture• Wiki/Storify lecture notes into a collaborative version• Youtube/lecturecapture/Audacity Student-edited clips

of the main points of the lecture (audio/video)

Some ideas…The social assignment• Wiki/discussion forum Students suggest and discuss

assignments, materials and assessment criteria• Blog: Students select assignment, and blog weekly

progress: ▫Question analysis▫Essay plan▫Search strategies and reading notes▫Rough draft ▫Revised draft▫Anticipated feedback▫Response to feedback

• Students share exemplars and annotate

Issues:Ethics and legalityDigital natives or digital divide?

Opportunity to develop Digital Literacy