Supporting information age literacy in higher education

In this Information Age I think all youngsters have passion for the digital technology. They have passion to learn and use new technology weather its smartphone or website. They can access these devices anywhere any time. As it was shown in the “HOLE IN WALL” article two weeks earlier students get involve with technology and they don’t even need teachers to show them how to do things. Students are always keen to use these devices in class room and as 21st century educator it’s our job to facilitate them and integtegre the digital technology in class room. In my project when I used Camtasia to deliver a lecture, students get really excited and they shown a strong desire for this type of learning. They were excited online lectures as they can access them anytime from their home and they can watch them as many times possible.

Analytical thinking and application and Critical thinking is very important part of leaning. It is not enough to learn the knowledge but students should learn to how use this knowledge in different situations.  For this purpose in my project I use different case questions at the end of the lectures which requires students to do analytical and critical thinking.

Communication skill is an important skill. In my project students are required to join discussion boards after lectures and share their ideas and comments on other ideas as well. This task provides them opportunity to share their ideas in words and improve their communication skills.

Understanding the "bigger picture" is the ultimate goal of the course. Students should be able to use this knowledge not only in class or in a particular course but they should apply this knowledge at their work as much as possible. For this reason student are engaged in real life case studies which obviously cover the solution orientation as well.

It is our job to provide awareness to students what they are accountable for. As in many cases students don’t realize that they will be held responsible for the actions they perform online. For this reason I provide Do and Don’t list to students when they are communicating with each other on discussion boards.

I try my best to mentor my students but always promote them to become mentee of other teachers and their elders as well. As it will broaden their thinking and vision.

As mentioned in the second articles we as educators should focus on teaching students how to get authentic information and how they should use this information in their projects or assignments. Once students have clear guidelines they will follow them and produce projects which will reflect their own work. For example in my Leadership course students are require to write a project report of 1000 words. Before starting the task I provide them following guidelines.

• They can search online and download material from anywhere for information purpose. (Use Internet or Library )

• They have to make sure information provided is correct.  (Verify the information)
• How to reference any material  (Proper References )
• Use only the ideas not copy the sentences (Write in your own words)

Once they finish their work they have to upload it on Safe assign. This software will evaluate their work against Internet and other students work and show them the percentage of plagiarism in their work. It will also highlight the areas which have been copied in their project. Students will instantly know their mistakes and they will do the assignment properly and resubmit it before deadline.

Gamification: Using Game Mechanics to Enhance eLearning

As mentioned in the article it is very important to occupy the attention of the student or in short get them engage when using e-learning. We need to develop their wants and liking for successful e-learning and this can be done only by rewarding learners.

I have used some of the ideas in my eLearning project for occupying student’s attention that are presented in the article. It is very important to have clear goals and objective and to have rewards that are associated with these goals. If objectives are clear to students from the beginning then it is easy to grab their attention. For this purpose I always explain in advance what are the objectives, outcome and rewards associated with the particular task to students.

In my project before using the eLearning material I gave students an online pre-test which highlight current knowledge of the students. There are some (reward) marks associated for attempting this test, which encourage all students to attempt this pre- test. After doing the test want will develop among the students to learn the words and definitions that they were not able to understand during the test.  They are then provided with eLearning material which helps them to learn things which were unclear to them earlier. Students have already idea about the types of questions from the pre-test which help them to focus on the material. Once they finish the material all students have to do a post-test. This posttest shows their improvement and learning from the eLearning material. Students can see a big difference between the pre-test and posttest marks. The posttest (reward) marks are recorded in the overall grades. This technique used in my project is similar to the “Linear flow of Goal” model mentioned in the article.

With help of posttest and pretest it becomes easier to measure the progress of students and helps in providing them feedback that how they can further improve. In some cases students feedback also help to improve or simplify the e-learning material. Using e-learning and rewarding motivate students to get involved in the task as they can see their peers are learning knowledge while getting rewarded.