Digital Literacy Adobe Grants

The project allowed my graduate students to not worry so much about design and to really focus on the materials and just engage with that aspect. At the end, I thought their sites looked really clean and beautiful. I think if they were given the option to create their own websites in a different form, they would have spent so much time on that.

It was, for my undergraduates, more about creating a portfolio for their work, one that they can take with them, that they can use to showcase their work and hopefully eventually add to. It served a really good purpose in holding everything, because a lot of undergrads will just make the film and then it's gone. But having it all together, showing their work over time, seeing different projects next to each other, I think it was really useful.

I think we assume that there is a generation of young people who are eager and willing to use technology because they have an Instagram account or something like that. Just because you can take a photo and put a filter on top of it, does that make you wildly tech savvy?

This is what we want out of good digital tools: Can I get the job done without having to make a big fuss about what the tool does? Can I learn how to do what I need to do, and how long is it going to take me to do it?

Integrating Adobe tools has been an exercise in providing resources to students on how to best use this platform while also not overwhelming them with those resources. 

In a class that is focused on media, I can get to that higher level of learning. Students are creating a product that lets them flex their analytical skills through this form of media that they have analyzed the whole semester. It really gets to that creative level of assessment. It has created really cool opportunities for them to show off what they have learned in ways that not only a traditional paper wouldn’t, but in ways that are surprising to me – something that I never suggested, that I never expected. It really shows off the strength of a more creative assignment. 

In general, students really like the opportunity to see what they have been doing over the course of the semester in a way that’s very different from a paper. For some, it was a new skill. They were really uncomfortable and they had questions. You could see that, as the posts got a little bit more advanced, they had a chance to get used to it and then self-reflect on the process. I found this really valuable because it gave me feedback on how they felt about the project. 

It changes what you see on D2L. It makes it more dynamic, it gives it more color. There are so many possibilities, so I loved it. Do you want to read 15 papers?

The surprise was just how ultimately easy it was, and how much I thought in the beginning that they might just hate it. But because it was so standard and simple, they finally understood the purpose of it and appreciated it.

I think what surprised me is that folks who I would think are not super tech savvy and may not identify as such ended up producing really cool things and doing things that I didn’t know how to do.

Even when students retained tech anxiety, they took on the challenge of creating this unique product in some pretty cool ways. They've brought creativity and depth that only comes from the novelty of this podcast assignment relative to a paper. I don't think they would take on that challenge in the same way in a paper.

There is some hesitancy to learn these new platforms that has resulted at some points in people asking to use other technological tools that they are more familiar with. It may not be the best tool for the job, but they know it and ask to use it. There’s also tech fatigue. The fatigue itself doesn’t surprise me, but the magnitude of it has certainly been a bit of a challenge. 

What surprised me was that, in a class of 40+ students, their individual expression versus what they talk about at their tables and in their groups – or what they’re presenting as their understanding of the content – was so different, and in such a good way. 

I don't know if my teaching style has changed, but I do think that it's something I'm going to incorporate into all my classes.

I don’t know that my teaching style has changed, because my research is all about educational technology and so it’s always been front-of-mind for me. However, short of teaching a course on digital literacies and new literacies and all the other literacies, it’s really hard to integrate and model. And so, when I did my first project, it was an opportunity to integrate the things that I wanted to do anyway.

The tools themselves change, which is why I’m not hardcore about any company. What I’d rather do is teach our future teachers the sensibilities for integrating technology. Giving folks options and the ability to play around is more important than the branding or the tools themselves. A lot of it is just about the skills and really it’s about the willingness to take chances. I don't expect everyone to be tech savvy or tech willing or tech experts. I would much rather them say, "I am going in with a spirit of creativity and exploration."

Going through the process of integrating this assignment with this digital literacy focus has made me a more digitally literate and empathetic instructor. I have more recognition of the tech anxiety and the tech fatigue that students have. It has made me realize that this is definitely an undertaking and requires a lot of scaffolding. It requires a lot more direction and guidance on my part, and a lot more emotional management as far as the tech stuff goes.

I’ve always been anearly adopter of technology. I know how important it is to lay out the steps. People learn in different ways, and they express what they know in different ways. This is almost the best tool that I can think of to facilitate that. 

My advice would be to not get too complicated with it. Just having it as a vessel for course content serves a lot of purposes. It doesn't have to be too complicated and there's a lot of learning that happens just in that process.

Don't assume students are proficient and that they'll figure it out. You really have to walk them through getting started a couple times. Just don't expect that they're going to understand immediately, because they're a little overwhelmed.

The advice is what I tell my teachers: you don’t have to be the expert in the room. The reality is, these students know enough to get started. You not being the expert also tends to be a benefit to your students if you’re not showing them what you created or exactly what you want. They will do something really fun and creative, and they’ll run with it in ways you wouldn’t even think about. Take a risk, give it a shot.

Scaffolding is the biggest thing. Also, utilize the resources available, like ATO. I have found that, in providing those resources, I have to deliver a lot less hands-on editing guidance. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and fumbling around by building off the expertise of others.

It can easily work, but you have to put in the time structure so everybody knows what steps they need to take. If that’s something you’re comfortable doing, then that is going to make the process much easier. Be really organized, really scaffold all the steps, and make sure that you have some level of comfortability with the tools that you’re having your students use.

I think the structure is really important, and checking in with students to make sure that any of those barriers or frustrations or obstacles are addressed sooner than later. That really impacts the experience of the assignment or the experience of using these different tools. Most of it is laying out the steps, and then you’re going to be amazed by what your students come up with. 

I definitely will, and the main reason why is because it's easy and standard. If I want them to have a digital presence or at least a place to compile their work, I know that they're all on the same page and they're not stressing over web design.

I will continue to use it because I like the projects and what they force our students to think about. Part of it is that it’s nice to have a product at the end, but there is definitely a process element that I think is really important. Ultimately, the use of technology shapes the project in the way we think about the end product. 

It’s a long-term goal to bring on more of these creative assessments as the technologies get more accessible to students. I have all of this work done, the scaffolding updates. The project design ended up being as much of a challenge for me as the technological stuff, but it paid off. 

Yes, definitely. It adds more texture to your course. It gives students the opportunity to try a bunch of things that they might not get to try otherwise. It makes them a little bit more likely to be able to try something when they hit the job market.

I think it's super valuable. It's also really fun. It changes up the energy of what it means to be learning and teaching, and I think that's the way of the future.