Director of Teaching and Learning Strategy at Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK. His research interests include critical theory and education, information practice and information literacy, and philosophy of learning and communication (webpage). Live Stream link: https://mediasite.uit.no/Mediasite/Play/a7fff339906746d48635b1d5b04a30271d. Light refreshments will be served.
" /> Director of Teaching and Learning Strategy at Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK. His research interests include critical theory and education, information practice and information literacy, and philosophy of learning and communication (webpage). Live Stream link: https://mediasite.uit.no/Mediasite/Play/a7fff339906746d48635b1d5b04a30271d. Light refreshments will be served.
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Guest lecture: "Talking the Digital Habitat into Being"

The University Library invites you to an open guest lecture by Dr Drew Whitworth, Director of Teaching and Learning Strategy at Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK. His research interests include critical theory and education, information practice and information literacy, and philosophy of learning and communication (webpage). Live Stream link: https://mediasite.uit.no/Mediasite/Play/a7fff339906746d48635b1d5b04a30271d. Light refreshments will be served.

In the higher education sector, information and digital literacy are often defined as sets of competencies and skills seen as relevant to academic study. For example, the ability to conduct literature searches, to distinguish between academic and non-academic sources, use ICT to process data and present course work, and so on. Many writers in the field (e.g. Lloyd, Limberg), as well as policy think tanks and public research bodies (e.g. JISC in the UK) have recognised that this approach does not necessarily help students to bridge the gap between their studies and the kinds of information and technology practices that are relevant in workplaces and public life, where learning is more informal, more collaborative than individual, and which is supported by a complex environment that potentially encompasses a very wide range of technological solutions to learning — what Wenger, White and Smith call the “digital habitat”.

However, while this more practice-based view of information and digital literacy is becoming increasingly accepted, it remains a difficult realm to study. Notions such as “navigating the information landscape” (Lloyd), the “stewarding” of the digital habitat (Wenger et al) or “learner-generated contexts” (Luckin et al) are potentially useful frameworks for explaining information and digital literacy as dynamic and collaborative processes, but neither have been the subject of much empirical work designed to reveal how these processes play out in higher education settings. The interactions that shape the habitat are ephemeral and often momentary, thus can be hard to see — both by researchers, and academic support services — yet may carry great significance when it comes to configuring technologies-in-use.

 This seminar discusses a research project which was able to capture these interactions within an online discussion environment in which students were asked to collaborate on a design task. The generated data provide a rich picture of how these student groups collectively “talked the digital habitat into being”: how a series of informal, but collectively validated judgments were constantly generated by the discussion and how these judgments shaped the technologies and informational resources each group drew on to fulfil its task. These judgments were, in turn, contained within the parameters of the design task, which constrained, but also gave direction to the learning. In summary, these data reveal the very fine detail of how students select information technologies and resources as relevant and reject others, often regardless of institutional guidance on these matters. Thus, the project sheds light on how HE institutions can enfold information and digital literacy into their teaching in a much broader sense than is usually considered.

 

Når: 09.03.17 kl 10.15–11.30
Hvor: TEO-H1 1.413
Sted: Tromsø
Målgruppe: alle
Lenke: Klikk her
Ansvarlig: Helene N. Andreassen
Telefon: 77645735
E-post: helene.n.andreassen@uit.no
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