This segment of the Institute will focus on strategies and approaches for integrating digital literacy into the curriculum. The majority of the time, however, will be dedicated to completing Challenge 2: Create an Activity or Assignment.
Agenda
- 3 Approaches to Digital Literacy Integration
- Examples & Possibilities
- Brainstorming & Ideation
- Challenge 2: Create an Activity or Assignment
- Introduction to Express webpage
- Additional Resources
Activities
In-class activities are designed learning experiences that get students involved with course content and/or critically/creatively engaged with key ideas and issues. These often work well when scaffolded as part of a larger assignment or activity (i.e., from Think-Pair-Make-Share to a Poster Challenge).
EXAMPLES
Social Media as Model
In addition to the recently completed Think-Pair-Make-Share activity, instructors might try using Social Media as a Model (creating memes, TikTok videos, etc.) to have students explore/convey a course-specific practice, concept, methodology, or the like.
(Projective) Identity + Firefly
In her Science in Early Education courses, Professor Terri Hebert (IU South Bend) has shifted from having students "draw a scientist" as ways of exploring identity, bias, and the like, to having them use Text to Image in Express (i.e., Firefly) for the activity.
What are some of activities you might have students create?
Assets
Instructional assets can be understood in two primary categories: instructional assets and professional assets. The former are things we use to help facilitate the learning experiences in our courses; the latter are things we use to enhance our own career. The former are often are primarily instructor-produced deliverables that help guide students through course content or practices, illuminate course ideas, or simply set-up (or extend) in-class engagements. The latter are for representing and communicating our work in different ways.
EXAMPLES
INSTRUCTOR ASSETS
"Afrofuturism: Introduction to Wikipedia Editing" is an instructional guide created by Dr. Gemmicka Piper, Humanities Librarian (IU Indianapolis).
"Creating Academic Videos and Podcasts" is an instructional guide created by Dr. Shauna Chung (NY City College of Technology) and Dr. Justin Hodgson (IU Bloomington) NY).
"Reflections on Fieldwork" is an assignment guide (for an Adobe Express webpage assignment) created by Dr. Gina Yoder (IU Indianapolis) for her Mathematical Methods course.
For a slightly more advanced step, see the Visual Syllabus for my Embodied Rhetorics course, which uses Adobe InDesign and visual design principles in building a course syllabus.
PROFESSIONAL ASSETS
These two elements were created by Dr. Miranda Rodak (IU Bloomington) as part of her materials for promotion from Clinical Assistant Professor to Clinical Associate Professor. The first is an Adobe Express overview of her ENG-L204 course; the latter is a video created in Adobe Express detailing the her integration of Digital Literacy into her Introduction to Fiction course.
Assessments
Assignments are opportunities for us to assess student learning and development with course content, practices, and approaches.
- This is the most common way faculty integrate digital literacy into work with students and typically starts by providing students a "digital option" in addition to the more traditional assignment.
Below are a few examples of student projects from reimagined assignments to include a digitally-inflected element. They are by no means comprehensive, but collectively start to gesture toward what digital literacy, digital creativity, and digital learning can look like in the classroom.
EXAMPLES
Moving from ESSAY to EXPRESS WEBPAGE (scrolling essay)
- Mental Health on College Campuses by Carolyn Ciolfi (IUB)
- The Crossroads of Indiana University by Ryan Canfield (IUB)
Moving from DISCUSSION BOARDS to INFO BROCHURE
From QUIZ to EXPLAINER VIDEO (using Animate from Audio in Express)
This assignment was created by Mary Bourke (IU Kokomo) for her Statistical Methods in Nursing course.
From ANALYSIS PROJECT to AWARENESS CAMPAIGN
Additional tips and strategies for Assignment Redesign can be found at the bottom of this webpage.
Taking the next step
We'll begin with a 5-7min ideation session
Step 1 (2-3min) - Take a few minutes to think about the kind of assignment or activity you want to create.
- If unsure, maybe think about some of the more unsuccessful in-class engagements or assignments you've had recently, and use this as an opportunity to try to improve there.
- If you are needing further inspiration, you might look at some of the additional guides, resources, examples below.
Step 2 (1min) - Identify the kind of format/output you might want students to try (webpage, video, poster, etc.) and at least 1 reason for why that format.
Step 3 (3min) - In groups of 3, share/discuss your ideas.
- In addition to an idea exchange, feel free to offer suggestions for other possibilities (both within and beyond just Adobe Express)
NOW ... we move to Challenge 2: Creating an Activity or Assignment (using Adobe Express).
OF NOTE: I've included several bonus content elements below, including a few strategies for Assignment Redesign and some prescriptive approaches (just to offer a starting place or two for those who need it)
ASSIGNMENT REDESIGN
When going through the process of turning a traditional assignment into a digital assignment, I tend to work on multiple levels, considering matters of materiality, access, assessment, and the like. As a general orientation, I usually begin with the following questions:
- Given the available media and technologies, what kinds of assignments and activities can students reasonably undertake/complete?
- Can those activities replace an existing assignment or will this call for an all new kind of engagement?
- In what ways will I need to change my expectations and assessment practices?
- Are there any useful assessment models out there that I might readily leverage? If not, what kinds of assessment will I employ?
- What is my assessment focus in this undertaking? Final product? Process? The learning involved?
While I use these questions to guide my more nuanced assignment engagements, three general approaches I use (increasing in complexity): Platform Swap, Open-Ended Assignments, and Collective Projects.
Platform Swap
The basic idea with the Platform Swap is to switch the medium or authoring platform of an existing assignment: e.g., take a traditional essay/paper on X and have the students create it as an Adobe Spark page or turn a reading response into video (vlog) via Adobe Rush.Once you have the swap in mind (traditional X for digital Y), you need to think about your approach:
- What are some low-stakes learning opportunities to ease students into the assignment and technology?
- How should I alter my expectations for the assignment?
Open-Ended Assignments
Open-Ended Assignments allow students to work within the course focus and assignment constraints to design their own projects and engagements. The basic idea is for instructors to provide an assignment framework (orientation and general guides for the engagement) and for students to identify their own exigencies for a project. Then, students create their projects in response to those exigencies, but do so within the guiding framework. The key is to require not only that the assignments be created for digital distribution (and/or feature a clear digital literacy element), but also that students complete some form of reflective component (design/project rationale, learning reflection, etc.).
Collective Project
The goal is to get the entire class (or large sections of class) to work on the same project, with each student and/or group creating multiple elements for this "epic" challenge (to borrow lingo from video games). The key is to invite students to select a project that intimately involves digital creativity or digital literacy practices and to work with them to complete those challenges: e.g., creating a class magazine (which requires InDesign and Photoshop) or building a set of artifacts for a singular event (e.g., campus-wide evacuation plan, which may require video, audio, and print media). The scale/focus can vary, but what matters is the collective effort from the students toward one final output (or portfolio of outputs) and the collaboration between the instructor and students to get there (instructor as guide/facilitator/project manager/collaborator).
Some Prescriptive Shifts
Essay to Scrolling Digital Essay (Express Webpage) or designed magazine creation (InDesign)
Essay/Research Project to Video (using Adobe Express Video, Rush, Premiere Pro as editor) -See Shauna Chung's easy-to-follow Video Essay assignment guide.
- Video as investigative lens (journalism type stories)
- Video as documentary (informative essay in video)
- Video as creative illustration (performative; story based)
- Essay/Research Project to Video (using Adobe Rush or Adobe Premiere Pro as editor)
Critical inquiry/issues investigations to Podcast (using Zoom + Adobe Rush, Audition, and coming soon Adobe Podcast)
- Talking Head variety (multiple voices engaging in a conversation on X)
- Interview with an expert
- Crafting an audio narrative (bringing together existing information and media with interview media to tell a story)
Idea/Principle explorations/demonstrations
- Automate a SlideDeck that uses Adobe Express Video to explain or demonstrate a key idea or course principle (record voice over)
- Create an animation (using Animate from Audio in Express) or video (e.g., Vlog) that explains course readings or explores a methodology or practice. (See Mary Bourke's students "Animate from Audio" above or Justin Hodgson's SSS Vlogs Assignment and the student example by Caulin McGraw).
Transforming critical engagement into a designed experiences
- (Static) Create an image-oriented navigable webtext (pairing Express + Firefly [or Photoshop], and a multi-tier web builder like wix.com) to bring together multiple media and interactivity to create different kinds of experiences. (See Tanya Patel example from Part 1)
- (Immersive) Create an Augmented Reality Project (using Adobe Aero) to add a digital complexity to an existing space or build an immersive / navigable experience (Minecraft EDU + Express webpage, image, video). (See Mia Freeman example from Part 1)
Additional Resources
Adobe Creative Cloud Across the Curriculum: A Guide for Students and Teachers by Todd Taylor
- This open access ebook serves as a handbook or guide for using Adobe Creative Cloud technologies for educational purposes. It begins not with specific tools, but rather a simple question, "What do you want to create today?" and it uses the idea of what you are trying to create as the basis of its pedagogy.
Digital Gardener | Guide to Making Assignments & Templated Guide
- Example Projects Using Guide - SSS Vlogs by Justin Hodgson
Digital Literacy, Digital Creativity, Digital Pedagogy by Justin Hodgson
- This Express Page is the overview text/content from a webinar on integrating digital literacy into the curriculum. It divides its focus into three parts: basic orientations for bringing technology into the classroom, pragmatic approaches for doing so, and gestures toward practices for creating a digital culture.
Additional Student Examples
The following examples are a selection of projects published at JUMP+, the Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (jumpplus.net).
Pseudo Documentary
- Lauren Becker – How To Feed a Sorority
- Sarah Gould – A Closer Look into Physical Disabilities
Webtexts
- Erin Kamp - Mediums Matter: Dance As An Artistic Medium
- Columbia College (CHI) Students - Maximum Waste: A Food Mockumentary
Remixes
- Andrew Williams - Picture Perfect (Video)
- David Bistline - Sweet Interruption (Audio)
Image-Based Projects
- Hannah Charlton - The Shadow of Turning (Comic)
- Hannah Moreno - Plastination Project (Infographic)
Music, Video, and Games
- Rick Kumar and Calvin Tiu - To a Rapper's Delight (album)
- Rachel Yoakum - Fear is Contagious: Is Aids? (video)
- Nikki Gordon - Open the Box (tap essay)