Digital literacy in my work

As we prepare students for future jobs,  improving their digital literacy skills should be a major area of focus for us. By embedding these skills in the curriculum or in our teaching practices we can ensure that students gain confidence in not only using these skills for their learning but also at their workplace.

I always try to latest technology tools in education not just for teaching purposes but also for communication with students.  For example using a screen annotator to highlight things on the screen, using a color picker tool to pick colors for a website, using googledocs to share notes with students etc. I also try to establish a communication channel with my students through Facebook and whatsapp to share new ideas, cool short cuts, cool iphone apps, videos, links etc with them. I encourage them to use new technologies while highlighting what problems it would solve. For example students downloaded and used notepad++ for writing their html and CSS code.  I think that by exposing students to various technologies and by sharing tips for being efficient online- like using translator apps etc. encourages a passion for digital.

Analytical thinking  is also a very important skill since there is an overload of information available to students.  Unfortunately, it is also a skill that many of our students are lacking.  Often I give tips to my students on keywords they can use for their search and show them how to use and change keywords based on search results.  I always try to incorporate class activities and/or assignments that require students to research and find answers. Research based assignments allow students to research and and analyze information, make sense of things and differentiate between what is relevant and what is not. Team based activities/projects which allow students to creatively and collaboratively solve problems and share results with their classmates reinforce critical thinking skills.

I try to develop their communication skills by using more than one mode of communication, presentation of work - oral communication, written communication- developing website content, online communication- tag and share online resources with team mates. 

Understanding the "bigger picture" was also a very important skill I focused on in the web technologies course. While it was important for students to learn the technologies for developing a website , I wanted to ensure that they understood the importance of websites for business, reasons for choosing various technologies, and not just focus on design.  Students were asked to explain and justify everything on the website with regards to the business.  So it was not just about creating a fancy site with little or no usability!

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is an issue that seems to be getting worse worldwide (The cheating epidemic at Britain's universities)

 I believe that students don't join college with a mind set that they will just copy and paste all their work! Many times students are overwhelmed with so many assignments that are due at around the same time that they take shortcuts. Also several times they find the assignments very complicated, don't know where to start or how to start, have never worked in teams etc. This is especially true for year 1 students.  These factors compel students to copy and paste from online sources to complete their work on time. As educators we have tools such as turnitin and safe assign to detect plagiarism, but what  is more alarming these days is students resorting to other sources to complete their work for a fee. These don't show up on safe assign but as a teacher you always know when a submitted work is not a students original work.

To ensure students do their own work I first of all make sure that they are given enough time to complete their assignments. I write the assignment in a very clear and structured way and get another faculty to moderate the assignment whenever possible. In the assignment handout I further clarify requirements by providing examples where necessary and dividing submission in phases along with draft submission dates. I also go over the assignment in class explaining each and every step. I believe that if the students feel comfortable with the assignment they feel less threatened and therefore are less inclined to copy.

 I make sure drafts are compulsory and so that they don't delay getting started with the assignment. Also to check for complete understanding of the work they have submitted I make sure that another form of assessment is also included with the submitted work such as a presentation, interview, discussion etc.

Furthermore, I keep reenforcing to students about plagiarism and referencing and what it means and how they should  check their work through safe assign.