Presentation with Cristina Costa to Enhancement and Innovation in Higher Education Conference, Glasgow, June 2013

1. Curriculum Innovation:
Living and Working on the Web
Lisa Harris
University of Southampton
L.J.Harris@soton.ac.uk | @lisaharris
Cristina Costa
University of Strathclyde
cristina.costa@strath.ac.uk | @cristinacost

2. Reflecting the needs of a society in change

3. Lifewide Learning

4. The web as a space of participation

5. Learning in Context

6. https://sites.google.com/site/dlframewor
k/the5resourcesframework
Juliet Hinrichsen
&
Antony Coombs
University of Greenwich

7. What do we mean by Digital Literacy?
• Collecting, managing and evaluating online
information
• Building an online brand for personal or career
development
• Creating and curating content in written, audio
and visual media
• Communicating effectively online for networking
and collaboration purposes
• Managing digital identity/ies with due awareness
of privacy and security issues

8. Digital Literacies Project Objectives
• Raise awareness across the University
• Benchmark University Digital Literacies activities
• Link Education and Research communities
• Run series of practical workshops
• Digital Literacies Conference 2012 and 1013
• Student Digital Literacies Champions
• Develop DL Special Interest group – diverse
membership across all faculties and including
Careers, Student Services, Library
• Curriculum Innovation

9. Rationale
“Traditionally academics view the world through the
eyepiece of a single discipline. But the real world is not
like that, it is by its very nature interdisciplinary and can
only be deeply understood when viewed from multiple
perspectives. ”
Mark Cranshaw, Understanding Modern China
University policy is now directing us towards
multidisciplinary research that:
1) feeds directly into teaching and
2) encourages student participation at all levels

10. Digital Champions
Sam Su
Oliver Bills
Marina Sakipi
Panos Grimanellis
George
Georgiev
Hamed Ayhan
Hamed
Ayhan
Farnoosh Berahman
Manish Pathak
Ivan Melendez
Ahmed
Abulaila
Lucy Braiden
Alessia
Fiochi

11. New CIP Modules:
linking research and teaching

13. Living and Working on the Web
This module focuses on the development of online identities and networks to
enhance employability in the digital age.
Specifically, it investigates how the digital world is influencing how we:
• collect, manage and evaluate online information – ideal preparation for
dissertations
• build an effective online identity for personal or career development
• create and curate content via blogging and video production
• interact with others for networking, team-building and project management
purposes
• deal with online privacy, safety and security issues
• participate remotely in live events
Working in small groups, students engage in real time with a ‘real’ and
‘virtual’ audience at the University Digital Literacies Conference in May 2013.
For more information check out the module webpage and video and the
students’ feedback video

14. Module features
• Blended learning approach
– Introductory lecture (F2F)
– fortnightly webinars
– Week by week peer/tutor interactions via BB discussion board
– Practical F2F supporting lab sessions
• Assessed by
– portfolio/group presentation to live conference (50%)
– On BB discussion forum (5 sessions in total, ie 5 x 800 words)
• post their answer to a set question (300 words)
• comment on the answers provided by their peers (2 short posts,
total 200 words)
• write a reflective summary of their learning progress (300 words)
• Tutor feedback on progress is provided throughout the module
• Module will be core to BSc Web Science and BSc Marketing (Singapore)

15. The reflective summary allows you to think about where you’ve
come from and where you are now and how useful it might be for
you in the future - this is something you don’t get on other modules
My opinions have often been changed by what other people
have put forward on the discussion board
One of the big benefits of studying online is the flexibility to
fit my academic life around my professional life which has
been really useful
No idea is lost - we can continue to share information and
ideas online beyond the duration of a specific seminar

16. Successes
• Employability advantages
• Raised awareness of digital literacy and
blended learning across University
• Digitally proficient students mentored their
less confident colleagues
• Active rather than passive learning is enforced
• Flexibility of timing/location of learning for
students and tutors

17. Challenges
• Students with poor time management skills
struggled
• Some found it intimidating to share their work
or review that of others
• Impossible to hide at the back of the room…!
• CI modules may not fit ‘standard’
administrative processes
• How to best embed successes back into
mainstream courses

18. Where next?
• Lessons of learning in online communities to be
extended to MOOCs
• Streamlining the assessment to retain interaction
and improve efficiency
• How to address the differing expectations of
students who have been socialised in very
different ways of learning
• Addressing inequality of skills/attitudes by
introducing the themes of the module at the start
of their degrees to provide more continuity

19. Changing the learning landscape
• Mobile:
• lectures and slides
• annotations (video, text, image, like,
tag, map)
• posts and comments
• shares e.g. twitter
• curation e.g. Storify, Scoop.it,
3wdoc.com, soometa
• Tests
• Offline e.g. kindle (BookPress)
• collaboration
Learner generated content

20. Useful Links
• Curriculum Innovation website
• Centre for Innovation and Technologies in
Education (CITE)
• Student Digital Champions
• Digital Economy USRG
• Digital Literacies Conference summary and
video