Browsing by Subject "Digital literacy"

Now showing 1 - 12 of 12

A longitudinal, cross-sectional case study of students’ digital literacy learning and development at the middle school using a blended, technology-rich, project-based learning approach
(2019-05-10) Hsu, Hsiao-Ping; Hughes, Joan E.; Resta, Paul E.; Schallert, Diane L.; Petrosino, Anthony J.
This study examined changes to middle school students’ digital literacy after engagement in a learning environment based on a blended, technology-rich, project-based instructional innovation (BTPII). Guided by the social constructivist epistemology and the European Union’s DigComp 2.0 framework, this study attempted to understand how students’ digital literacy changes and final performance in a BTPII learning environment differed, with respect to participants’ multiple engagement, levels of daily Internet access time, and daily Internet usage purposes. Thus, this study applied a cross-sectional, mixed method case study approach to middle-school participants of the BTPII-based after-school program, across the spring and fall semesters of 2017 and 2018. Eighty middle school students completed the whole program and provided valid survey responses. Participants of program iterations in the spring and fall 2017 semesters presented a significant development in digital literacy. However, students enrolled in the spring and fall 2018 semesters exhibited non-significant changes in digital literacy. The results of this study further include the following findings: (a) relationships between the BTPII learning activities and digital literacy changes differed by semester, (b) impacts of students’ multiple engagements on the difference in digital literacy changes and final performance varied by semester, and (c) students’ daily Internet access time and Internet usage purposes did not significantly impact DL changes and final performance.
Children brokers 2.0 : a case study on the role of digital literacies in language brokering transactions among three Latino children and their mothers
(2016-05) Rubio, Cynthia Nallely; Rodriguez, Néstor; López, Belem G.; Palmer, Deborah
The term language broker commonly refers to children who translate and interpret the host country’s language and culture for their immigrant families, a common occurrence in Latino households. Research on this topic has helped scholars understand the nature of these transactions, but there is no research that directly connects language brokering to children’s knowledge of how to use digital devices—also known as digital literacy. We are living in a time where many have access to an endless amount of information at our fingertips, and answers can be found only a click away. Why, then, are recent languages brokering case studies failing to acknowledge the importance of children’s digital literacies in relation to their roles as translators and interpreters for their immigrant families? This paper, guided by the questions listed below, not only aims to transition the field of language brokering into the digital era, but it also aims to confront the bureaucratization of institutional settings and petition accountability for their lack of professional interpreters.1. How do children’s digital literacies affect the ways in which they translate and interpret for their parents? 2. How are parents’ own digital literacies impacted by language brokering? This case study focuses on the development of digital literacies through transactions of language brokering of three Latina single mothers and their sons. Through interviews and participant observation, findings showed that digital literacies directly influence the ways in which they broker for their mothers, and as a result, the mothers gain agency through the development of their own digital literacies. With a focus on foreign-born Latino children, this study reveals an updated and innovative approach to language brokering research.
Digital literacy and academic success in online education for underprivileged communities : the prep@net case
(2013-05) Lopez Islas, Jose Rafael; Strover, Sharon
This study investigated the relationship between digital literacy and academic performance in the context of an online learning high school program aimed at students from underprivileged groups. The study proposed that digital literacy should be understood as a construct of several variables that create a progression from basic--though indispensable--physical conditions of access to technology, to complex skills and attitudes that permit a student to succeed in an online learning situation. Using path analysis as a methodological tool, the study tested a three-stage model that measured the chain of effects of the variables that integrate the digital literacy construct both among them, and on academic performance as the overall dependent variable of the study. The model organized the variables in three stages: conditions of access to technology; general digital skills (that included motivation, knowledge and skills to use digital technology, as well as frequency and diversity of usage practices of technology); and context-specific skills required to successfully use technology in a particular domain (in this particular case, online distance learning). The study found that in the particular online learning context of this investigation, better conditions of access to technology had a mediated and strong positive effect on academic performance by increasing the use of Internet for social and entertainment purposes, which in turn led to a higher use of the learning platform software and to better digital and academic skills. These skills had a positive effect on academic performance through independent learning as a mediating variable. A second finding--that runs in part in an opposite direction--was that better conditions of access increased the use of social networks, which had both a positive effect on independent learning in terms of increasing familiarity with the Internet and computer resources, and a negative effect, perhaps simply because the time one spends with social media may diminish the time one has available for learning.
A digital truce line between South and North Korea? : an analysis of North Koreans' digital access, media use, and adaptation
(2015-08) Min, Bumgi; Strover, Sharon; Straubhaar, Joseph
The number of North Korean refugees moving to South Korea as exiles has gradually increased over the past few decades. Therefore, North Korean refugees' adaptation to South Korean society is perceived as one of the most significant issues in South Korea. Instead of using face-to-face communication, North Korean refugees tend to use diverse media channels such as newspapers, television, and Internet to learn about South Korea's value system, social norms, and even how to form relationships. In other words, media has played a crucial role in North Korean refugees' adaptation. Based on this social phenomenon, this paper provides not only the current status of digital access and literacy among North Korean refugees but also the relationship between North Korean refugees' media use and their adaptation by using social trust, social capital, and political participation. This paper takes a quantitative approach as well as a qualitative approach. For a quantitative approach, this study employs a survey of 43 North Korean refugees. Qualitatively, this study conducted in-depth interviews with a total of 12 North Korean refugees. In terms of digital access, both statistical results and interview findings demonstrate that North Korean refugees' digital access is high. However, the refugees' digital literacy and media use are divided according to their occupation and age. Not only do the statistical results but also the interview findings show that digital media plays a significant role in North Korean refugees' social trust and social networking. However, the quantitative findings as well as the qualitative findings do not explain the relationship between digital media and political participation. The results of this research will have significant implications on current telecommunication policies for narrowing the digital divide between South Korean and North Korean refugees.
Envisioning a sociocultural digital reading curriculum : exploring teachers' collaborative professional learning online
(2022-02-25) Nash, Brady Lee; Skerrett, Allison; Kim, Grace MyHyun; Mosley Wetzel, Melissa; Schallert, Diane L; Coiro, Julie
This dissertation study examines the experiences of five middle school English language arts teachers as they engaged in inquiry-based, online professional learning (PL) over the course of one semester. Their purpose in this PL was to develop understandings of online reading and to create curricular materials about online reading for their middle school English language arts classes. The participants came to this project with experience teaching English and literacy from a sociocultural, workshop-based tradition, and the expectation at the outset of the PL was that teachers would draw both from their own pedagogical knowledge as well as from new knowledge gained during the PL as they designed curriculum. The PL was collaboratively designed by the researcher and the team’s instructional coach; within the original design, participants were afforded a great deal of flexibility in determining the direction of their learning within the parameters of the shared topic and goals, and opportunities to facilitate PL activities themselves. Findings focus on (a) how participants learned during the semester, (b) the ideas about online reading they developed, and (c) the curricular approach and materials they constructed.
Fanfiction as playable media
(2015-07-29) Hawkins, Tekla Ann; Roberts-Miller, Patricia, 1959-; Hodgson, Justin; Lesser, Wayne; Henkel, Jacqueline; Ridolfo, Jim; Boyle, Casey
This dissertation offers one way to reconcile what can sometimes seem like an increasingly wide division between text-based and more consciously multimodal composition practices in digital environments. Drawing on Lev Manovich’s theory of digital production, I demonstrate that fanfiction replicates the material structures that produce it: the internet. In this model, a fandom’s canon knowledge is a database, and fanfiction is the interface through which we approach the canon. I continue by examining the virtual linking mechanisms that ground fanfiction reading and writing practices. While the hyperlinked structure of internet environments is frequently considered destabilizing, I argue the conceptual hyperlinks that ground fanfiction are navigational structures that allow for and require significantly different literacy practices than reading and creating traditional literary works such as novels. Instead, these works operate more like aural and visual compositions. Fanfiction is grounded in invention, memory, and arrangement, viewing all texts not as content to be absorbed, but as material that can be connected to other ideas and transformed into something else. These texts emerge from ongoing conversations, relying on extant context from both creator and audience while simultaneously adding new layers of context and conversation. Finally, I position fanfiction as a useful part of new media rhetoric and composition pedagogical practices. In looking at fanfiction as an inherently rhetorical genre, my dissertation differs from existing conversations on fandom and new media writing, which often center on fanfiction as a form of feminist rebellion, and digital writing as either remix writing or decentered and destabilized texts. Countering the common assumption that fanfiction is derivative or childish, my dissertation proves it creates readers and writers who can easily shift perspectives, think carefully about their audience, and critically analyze social narratives. Although fanfiction draws upon long traditions of storytelling, its persistent concern with its own medium separates it from other genres. Fanfiction is a kind of storytelling that is always pointing to something outside of itself, to its source texts and its own materiality. In this way, it creates, in textual form, a dynamic representation of process-based understanding and composition.
Learning to write in (networked) public: children and the delivery of writing online
(2014-12) Roach, Audra Katherine; Bomer, Randy; Hoffman, Jim; Maloch, Beth; Schallert, Diane; Hodgson, Justin
This investigation explored how three children (together with parents) developed networked publics that were diverse, well-connected, and powerful in the world. It was framed in response to calls in the field to better understand the new literacies young writers develop online and outside of school, and to increase literacy educators’ attention to the role of public audiences in writing and how writing is circulated. Performative case study methodology, ethnographic methods, and digital methods were employed to track and describe the online networks of three children (ages 11-13). These focal children were actively involved with their parents in social media, and had developed widespread networks with shared interests in children’s books and book reviews (Case 1), baseball (Case 2), and helping the homeless (Case 3). The children’s online networks were conceptualized as networked publics, drawing on Warner’s (2002) notion of publics as ongoing discursive relations among strangers, and on Actor-Network Theory’s notion of networks as assemblages of diverse interests that mobilize toward a common goal (Callon, 1986) and that develop stability in relation to ongoing circulations of texts (Latour, 1986; Spinuzzi, 2008). Research questions were framed broadly around the rhetorical canon of delivery [now digital delivery (Porter, 2009)], and were concerned with how writers distributed texts online, how those texts circulated, how the networked publics become more stable and powerful, and what instabilities children and parents had to negotiate in order to accomplish all of this. Data sources included interviews with 15 children and 28 adults, and fieldnotes observations of approximately 1,700 screen-captured webpages and other online artifacts. Findings showed that the young writers and their parents initiated and sustained networked publics through distribution practices that were oriented toward building trust; their texts displayed: interest, appreciation, reliability, service, credibility, and responsiveness. Both grassroots and commercial entities circulated texts in these networks, as they were sources of the ongoing renewal these different groups all needed in order to thrive. Sources of instability included conflicts over standards of writing quality, matters of profit, and the constancy of the demand to generate new interest and writing online. Children and their parents responded to these instabilities by welcoming and negotiating heterogeneous perspectives and partnerships. Implications of the study call for further research and teaching about the art of networked public discourse and digital delivery.
Machina ex deos. Successes and challenges of implementing mobile computing technologies for development. The experience of nine Indian village health projects using a project-issued mobile application
(2016-05) Schwartz, Ariel, Ph. D.; Weaver, Catherine, 1971-; Densmore, Melissa; Heinrich, Carolyn; Lentz, Erin; Ward, Peter
As mobile computing technologies become increasingly functional and affordable, global donor and local development organizations find ways to justify and fund their use in grassroots development work. This dissertation asks two questions: (1) In resource-constrained social sector settings, what project features govern and structure use of work-issued mobile devices? And: (2) How do decision-makers adjust to maximize the benefit of newly-introduced devices while minimizing new burdens to the project and project staff? More simply, what variables under social sector projects’ control might promote successful use of information and communication technologies in development (ICTD) projects? This research represents systematic, qualitative comparison of nine extended deployments of a popular mobile health application, CommCare. Each studied project deployed devices loaded with CommCare to health workers in India as a supportive job aid and/or a data collection tool to help monitor beneficiary populations’ health status and frontline workers’ work. This dissertation examines the conditions under which these health workers were able and willing to use CommCare devices in their jobs, and whether and how they deviated from the use of those devices prescribed by their supervisors. Primary data for this study come from 62 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, extensive review of project documents, and personal observations from field study in India over six months in 2013. Employing a sociotechnical lens and a principal agent model, my data support expectations that use of CommCare devices would help align community health workers’ behavior with their supervisors’ organization and mission-related priorities. Use of the devices improved health workers’ professional competence and improved communications, data quality, and data access. These improvements facilitated project supervisors’ monitoring of health workers and beneficiaries, and funders’ monitoring of projects. Contradicting expectations, use of CommCare devices also weakened organizational oversight and control through new data challenges and increased health worker autonomy in their personal and professional lives. These dual benefits and challenges ultimately served the overall projects’ missions.
Preservice teachers’ digital literacy in educator preparation programs : a literature review
(2023-08) Lim, Mihyun; Hughes, Joan E.
As technology’s potential to transform teaching and learning became clear, shared standards and expectations emerged for teachers to integrate in K-12 classrooms. However, despite the massive influx of classroom technology, there were few noticeable changes to the pedagogical development or curricular sequences. The purpose of this report is to provide a review of literature that explores how preservice teachers learn to conceptualize their own digital literacy during their teacher preparation. More specifically, this review investigates preservice teachers’ learning about digital literacy conceptions in relation to how their learning experiences are embedded in and situated as part of learning activities and teaching practices with technology in teacher education coursework. The results of the literature review provide insight as to what learning opportunities teacher educators can provide when preservice teachers need to be prepared to understand and practice with technology for specific purposes and contexts in classrooms.
Technology-infused science education curriculum for parents to teach kindergarten children
(2019-05-08) Ma, Ying, M.A.; Hughes, Joan E.
As technology advances and becomes an integral part of our life, concerns arise because of the inequity technology has unintendedly created especially reflected in the form of usage gap between different groups of learners and families. Parents who have young children and less knowledge of digital literacy and skills are suffering more from anxieties about children’s screen time and technology use at home. In terms of content area learning, there is a severe lack of quality science education resources for young children and that hinders children’s early exposure to science literacy. In this report, I reviewed research-based evidence for the need to develop technology-infused science education resources for parents of young children and then created a series of 10 lesson plans to help parents gain insights about technology integration for science learning at home for young kids and increase their confidence about the value of technology when used in content-rich ways
The Art and Media Communications course : a case study of one teacher’s perspective
(2018-05-03) Williams, Carrie Lee; Adejumo, Christopher O., 1959-
This study investigates the teaching experience of one Texas high school visual art teacher as she integrates the Arts and Media Communication course into her curriculum for the first time. Through an open-ended interview and class observation, this case study inquires how the teacher teaches the lessons and curriculum. This study examines literature on learning theories, digital and media literacy and technology in the secondary art classroom. The explanations of the results highlight the efficacy of the course and how the students responded to the projects. The findings of this study suggest that technology is an effective tool for the Art and Media Communications class and a student-centered instructional approach works well for this course. Therefore, it is proposed that teachers, principals, school districts and other community organizations may find that art and technology curricula are valuable, assessable, and supported.
Worth the risk : the role of regulations and norms in shaping teens’ digital media practices
(2012-08) Vickery, Jacqueline Ryan; Watkins, S. Craig (Samuel Craig); Kearney, Mary C.; Straubhaar, Joseph; Stein, Laura; Thiel-Stern, Shayla
This dissertation analyzes how discourses of risk shape teens’ digital media practices. The purpose is to understand the relationship between discourses of risk, policy regulations, informal learning, and teens’ everyday experiences. This research serves to combat discourses that construct technology as a threat and youth as ‘at-risk’ in two ways. One, it demonstrates the agentive ways teens manage risks and two, it provides empirical evidence of the ways technologies and literacies function as risk reduction strategies. From a Foucauldian perspective of governmentality, this study considers risk to be an always already historically, socially, and politically constructed phenomenon; as such, policies serve as risk intervention strategies. The first part of this dissertation traces how risk discourses are mobilized through moral panics and federal policies regulating young people’s use of the internet. Despite research to the contrary, policies reify anxieties associated with the threat of pornography and predators. As such, policies rely on constructions of young people as passive victims and technologies as risks; such regulations unintentionally limit learning opportunities. The second part analyzes how schools regulate subjects of risk and digital media, as well as how teens themselves manage risks. Ethnographic research was conducted in a large, ethnically diverse, low-income high school in Texas. As part of a team, the researcher spent eight months observing two after-school digital media clubs. The ethnography also consisted of 18 case studies with diverse high school students. Researchers conducted individual, semi-structured, qualitative interviews with the students on a regular basis for an entire academic school year. Findings suggest discourses of risk were mobilized through school district policies which regulated teens’ use of digital media. Specifically, regulations limited students’ opportunities to develop a) social, b) network, and c) critical digital media literacies. However, students generated agentive ways to resist regulations in order to maintain robust peer and learning ecologies. The clubs constructed technologies as interventions for ‘at-risk’ youth. Within informal learning spaces teens a) developed skills, b) acquired social capital, and c) negotiated empowered identities. Lastly, the study considers how teens acknowledged and negotiated risks associated with privacy. Teens demonstrated three strategies for managing consumer and social privacy: a) informational, b) audience management, and c) spatial strategies.