06. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures
Paper
Exploring the Key Concept of Technologies in Media Literacy Education
Amanda Levido
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Presenting Author: Levido, Amanda
In Australia, the key concepts of media literacy education are the subject specific organising framework of the Media Arts strand of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts. Media Arts is considered part of the The Arts, alongside Dance, Drama, Music and Visual Arts. Students from the first year of school up to Year 10 (approximately 5-16 years) should have access to Media Arts, although how this occurs varies greatly between schools. The curriculum documents offer a flexible way to teach Media Arts. Although there are achievement standards that indicate what students should be able to do at each year level band, teachers are able to select the types of media to study based on their students interests and access to technologies. The Media Arts curriculum is underpinned by the key concepts of media education. In Australia, these are technologies, representations, institutions, audiences, languages and the recent addition of relationships.
Key concepts
The key conceptual approach has a history in Australia that aligns with media literacy education in the UK and Canada (Buckingham, 2003; Jolls, Walkosz, & Morgenthaler, 2013). Instead of a set of processes, skills or competencies for students to achieve, the key concepts offer a lens through which forms of media past, present, and emerging media can be studied. Exploration of the media through the key concepts can occur through both media production and analysis (Partington & Buckingham, 2011). The concepts are non-hierarchical and although it can be helpful to understand them discreetly, the concepts often intertwine and overlap.
Technologies as a concept
Although the key concepts are connected, it can be useful to understand each one and examine how it is applied in situations where media literacy education is occurring. This research explicitly examines the concept of technologies. Technologies can be understood in multiple ways. We can consider how to use technologies, digital and non-digital, for media production. We might examine the types of technologies that are used in media production and learn how to use specific equipment and software. This is an important aspect of the concept of technologies. However, if this is the only aspect of technologies students explore, they miss out on developing nuanced understandings of how technology shapes, and is shaped by, our everyday social lives.
Through the concepts of technologies we can critically examine how technologies shape production practices through the social, political, economic and cultural contexts in which media productions are produced (Buckingham, 2019). The technologies used for media productions are not neutral and have biases (Stoddard, 2014), affordances and constraints built into them that shape users behaviours (Lüders, 2008; Williamson, 2017), whether these are purposeful or incidental.
This research aims to explore the research question ‘How is the Media Education key concept of ‘technologies’ enacted in classroom practice?’ I seek to discern how primary school teachers understand the concept of technologies and the kinds of learning experiences students undertake that advance their understanding of the concept. While this research occurred in the Australian context, the importance of the concept of technologies is relevant for media literacy educators internationally. This research offers insights into how to consider this concept in a deep and nuanced way.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe aim of this research was to investigate how the media literacy key concept of technologies was used by classroom teachers with different kinds of experiences in Media Arts education. A case study methodology was employed (Merriam, 2009; Stake, 1995) to allow the range of data collected at each site and to be examined individually and collectively. Three case study sites were purposefully selected (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). Each site consisted of a primary school teacher and their class of students. At the commencement of the study, all classes were about to undertake some form of Media Arts work, whether this was explicitly recognised or not. Case study 1 consisted of Dave, a specialist Digital Media Arts teacher and two classes of Year 5 and 6 students. Case study 2 featured Josh, a generalist primary school teacher with a strong interest in design, and approximately 50 Year 6 students. The final site, case study 3, consisted of Angela, a generalist primary school teacher and her class of Year 1 students.
Data were collected over a unit of work from each case study site. This ranged from five to ten weeks depending on the unit teachers were implementing. Before any observations occurred, I conducted semi-structured interviews with each teacher to gain insight into the experiences of the teacher and their students. Additional semi-structured interviews occurred after most observation sessions and at the completion of the unit of work. Observations occurred four times at each site over the unit of work. Detailed field notes were taken. During this time, semi-structured interviews took place with some students in the class about the work they were doing.
I undertook a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2013, 2021) of the data. Each case was coded separately in the first instance to search for codes that related to the key concept of media literacy education. After a review of these individual codes, I determined a top-level theme called An uneven implementation of the key concepts, which included the concept of technologies through two sub-themes: Technologies as a tool rather than a key concept and Non-digital tools. I acknowledge that as a researcher my existing understanding of the field played a role in the importance I placed on the determined themes and that other researchers would have generated different themes from the data.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsTwo sub-themes were determined to help explore how the concept of technologies was enacted in classrooms undertaking Media Arts teaching and learning. The first sub-theme was Technologies as a tool rather than a key concept. The teachers in case studies 1 and 2 focused on how to use digital technologies to create media productions. The students receive different levels of instruction to help them with their production work. In case study 1, Dave expected the students to explore the technology largely on their own or with their peers. At times, this impacted on the productions of those students who were not as familiar with Scratch, the program they were using for their production. The students of case study 2 had more familiarity with the technology they were using, and their teacher provided scaffolding to help them explore new technologies such as drawing apps on their devices. Similar to case study 1 however, the focus remained on producing a production through technologies. This is one aspect of the concept of technologies, but the limited focus on the digital tools means students are not provided with opportunities to explore other aspects of the concept.
The second sub-theme was Non-digital tools. The students of case study 3 were required to create a soundscape using materials around them. This soundscape represented a drawn landscape image. Students used materials such as pens, water bottles, leaves and their bodies to create foley sounds that were recorded by the teacher. The students did not have the opportunity to use the digital technology, but were still able to learn about the concept of technologies through their use of non-digital technologies. However, similarly to cases 1 and 2, the emphasis was still on the use of technology for media production, not critical notions of the concept of technologies.
ReferencesBraun, V., & Clarke, V. (2013). Successful qualitative research: A practical guide for beginners. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2021). Thematic analysis: A practical guide to understanding and doing. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Buckingham, D. (2003). Media education: Literacy, learning and contemporary culture. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Buckingham, D. (2019). The media education manifesto. Cambridge, UK ; Polity Press.
Jolls, T., Walkosz, B. J., & Morgenthaler, D. (2013). Voices of media literacy. In Media Literacy Education in Action: Theoretical and Pedagogical Perspectives (pp. 11–19). doi:10.4324/9780203076125
Lüders, M. (2008). Conceptualizing personal media. New Media & Society, 10(5), 683–702. doi:10.1177/1461444808094352
Merriam, S. B. (2009). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. San Fancisco: Jossey-Boss.
Merriam, S. B., & Tisdell, E. J. (2015). Designing your study and selecting a sample. In Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation (pp. 73–104). John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/qut/detail.action?docID=2089475.
Partington, A., & Buckingham, D. (2011). Challenging theories: Conceptual learning in the Media Studies classroom. International Journal of Learning and Media, 3(4), 7–22. doi:10.1162/ijlm_a_00079
Stake, R. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Stoddard, J. (2014). The Need for Media Education in Democratic Education. Democracy & Education, 22(1), 1–9.
Williamson, B. (2017). Learning in the ‘platform society’: Disassembling an educational data assemblage. Research in Education, 98(1), 59–82. doi:10.1177/0034523717723389
06. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures
Paper
In the Web – All for Free? - Digital Education Workshops in the Field of Data Protection, Algorithms and Online Advertising
Katrin Wilde, Stefan Iske, Verena Kittelmann
Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Germany
Presenting Author: Wilde, Katrin;
Iske, Stefan
It is currently becoming clear that the social meta-process of digitization transforms the areas of culture and especially of education. For many young people, digitization, and algorithms represent an abstract and non-transparent black box whose properties as well as their personal and individual consequences can hardly be estimated (DIVSI 2014 & 2018). At the same time, their everyday life is strongly influenced by digitization and algorithms. Young people use the Internet and smartphones mainly in commercial online environments whose business models are based on online advertising, data collection, and data sale. The EU General Data Protection Regulation creates a legal framework for children and young people that can only partially enable a protected online space of use for young users (Livingstone 2107). In addition to large platform companies that are behind the most popular services for young people (which store, process, and evaluate data in non-EU countries), one of the major challenges is the high social relevance of these services and a general ambivalence of knowledge and action of young people.
From an educational perspective, there are high demands on the skills of young people in dealing with online advertising, personalization, and data protection (Livingstone & Helsper 2006); on the other hand, the current competencies of young people in this area have so far been marked by inequality (Hargittai 2010, Zillien 2006, Livingstone et al. 2017). Research shows that in the frist place one of the major challenges from a media education perspective is to make transparent that young users are affected by this structures. And to make this problematizable to enable a reflective discussion (Schulze 2013, Dreyer et al. 2014, Iske & Wilde 2017).
The current project „Im Netz – Alles umsonst?“ (In the Web – All for Free?) aims to work and reflect on the abstract and non-transparent black box of digitization and algorithmization with young people (13-17 years) in an action-oriented and lifeworld way. Furthermore, it promotes the target groups digital skills and online advertising skills.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedUsing the example of online advertising, and especially the personalization of advertising and web offers, the challenges and potential of digitization and algorithmization are discussed in relation to everyday life with young people against the background of data protection: Online services and everyday online phenomena such as YouTube, Google, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, Twitch, Snapchat and gaming apps form the starting point for this discussion.
For this purpose, workshops are developed within the project in different formats, which in particular rely on innovative interactive materials. As part of the project, these workshop formats will be tested and evaluated in schools and extracurricular youth leisure facilities.
The parallel implementation of a web-based working environment should also enable comparative and networked working methods that go beyond individualized use. This is particularly necessary for the theming of personalized content and forms of advertising. It makes it possible, for example, to recognize that advertising spaces on websites are filled with different and often personalized/individualized advertising content. Based on this comparison it becomes clear how the personalized content differs from one another.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsOnce the project is finished all materials should be available as Open Educational Ressources. On the one hand for interested workshop leaders and teachers, but also independent work for young people on the platform.
First results of these workshops, the corresponding materials, and the evaluation as well as first implementations of the platform will be presented and discussed. Among other things, the question of how the content could be further developed and also be made internationally accessible will be discussed.
ReferencesDIVSI (2014): DIVSI U25-Studie: Kinder, Jugendliche und junge Erwachsene in der digitalen Welt. Hamburg: Deutsches Institut für Vertrauen und Sicherheit im Internet. Online unter: https://www.divsi.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/DIVSI-U25-Studie.pdf
DIVSI (2018): DIVSI U25-Studie Euphorie war gestern. Die „Generation Internet“ zwischen Glück und Abhängigkeit. Hamburg: Deutsches Institut für Vertrauen und Sicherheit im Internet. Online unter: https://www.divsi.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/DIVSI-U25-Studie-euphorie.pdf
Dreyer, S., Lampert, C. & Schulze, A. (2014). Kinder und Onlinewerbung. Erscheinungsformen von Werbung im Internet, ihre Wahrnehmung durch Kinder und ihr regulatorischer Kontext. Leipzig: Vistas
Hargittai, Eszter (2010) Digital Na(t)Ives? Variation in Internet Skills and Uses among Members of the “Net Generation”*“. Sociological Inquiry 80(1): 92–113
Iske, Stefan, Wilde, Katrin (2018): Online-Werbung aus der Perspektive Jugendlicher. Subjektive Relevanzen, Bewertungen und Überzeugungen, https://doi.org/10.24352/UB.OVGU-2018-668
Linvingstone, S. & Helsper, E. (2006). Does advertising literacy mediate the effects of advertising on children? A critical examination of two linked research literatures in relation to obesity and food choice. In: Journal of Communication, 56 (3), S. 560-584
Livingstone, Sonia (2017) What does the European General Data Protection Regulation mean for children in the UK?: Report on an LSE Media Policy Project roundtable. . London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
Livingstone, Sonia , Ólafsson, Kjartan and Maier, George (2017) A complex web of factors influence children's commercial media literacy. LSE Business Review (22 Jul 2017). Website
Schulze, A. (2013). Internetwerbung und Kinder. Eine Rezeptionsanalyse. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften
Zillien, Nicole: Digitale Ungleichheit. Neue Technologien und alte Un-gleichheiten in der Informations- und Wissensgesellschaft. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2006
06. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures
Paper
Learning to Swim in the Digital Ocean - Individualized Design of Basic Education Courses Integrating Digital Media
Sandra Langer
University of Education Weingarten, Germany
Presenting Author: Langer, Sandra
Doctor's appointments, hairdresser appointments, ticket purchases and banking transactions are increasingly being shifted to online platforms. Information concerning the children's school or even the workplace is announced by e-mail or on the corresponding homepage. The basic ability to use digital media is just as much a prerequisite as their permanent expansion.
There are 6.2 million people living in Germany who are classified as low-literate (Buddeberg & Grotlüschen, 2020). These people are at risk of being excluded from society because they do not have sufficient digital skills (Buddeberg & Grotlüschen 2020; Koppel & Langer, 2020).
A recent study on literacy in Germany highlights that low literacy skills predominantly affect the use of work-related technologies. Individuals with low literacy exhibit a lower frequency of computer usage and email composition in comparison to the general population. On the other hand, insignificant differences are observed in the utilization of smartphones, tablets, and short message sending. These individuals, however, demonstrate a higher frequency of voice message sending, video calling, and social network usage compared to the general population (Grotlüschen et al., 2019, p. 31).
Some of these low-literate people attend basic education courses in which they acquire digital skills in addition to reading and writing. In this way, course instructors in basic education courses support participants on the path to digital inclusion, helping them to learn to swim in the digital ocean. For this to succeed, course instructors should take the learners' individual preconditions into account. The limited digital equipment of the participants (Buddeberg & Grotlüschen, 2020; Boeren et al. 2020; Evers, 2020), as well as their heterogeneous learning abilities and limited digital skills (Koppel & Langer, 2020; Evers, 2020), should be taken into account when designing courses. If these individual prerequisites are taken into account, digital course content that is suitable for learners and can be mastered can be offered and supplemented by appropriate support measures. The teachers' own digital skills should also be taken into account (Rohs, Schmidt-Hertha, Rott & Bolten, 2019). Last but not least, the framework provided by the educational institution should also be taken into account in the teaching concept. Thus, teachers play a key role, as they are responsible for the conception and design of lessons (Strauch & Radtke, 2010).
The question for the presentation is:
How can successful instructional designs in basic education courses with the inclusion of digital media be developed by course instructors?
In order to answer this question, the presentation will first provide theoretical perspectives, including the aforementioned prerequisites on the part of the learners, the course instructors themselves, and the educational institutions. These will be combined with the research results from the GediG project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and will converge in a model of "Swimming in the Digital Ocean". The symbol of the ocean is transferred out of the European Reference Framework for Digital Competences DigComp2.1, in which learning to swim in the digital ocean is used as a metaphor (Carretero, Vuorikari & Punie, 2017, p 14-15). Finally, recommendations for action are compiled for the design of individualized course concepts for basic education integrating digital media.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe aim of the presentation is to show how course instructors in basic education courses can profitably incorporate digital media into the course design by taking into account individual prerequisites on the part of the participants, the framework set by the educational institution, but also their own individual competencies.
Within the scope of the "GediG" project, data was collected using a mixed-method approach. The qualitative as well as quantitative surveys, which were carried out all over Germany, focused on participants, instructors, conceptual workers and managers of educational institutions in the field of basic education.
The complexity of the phenomena to be investigated was to be taken into account via the chosen approaches and it was to be made possible to analyze the different perspectives more comprehensively in order to elaborate multi-perspective results (Johnson & Christensen, 2019). For the consideration of the three actors (course participants, course instructors, and educational institutions), the presentation refers to quantitative data collection using an online questionnaire on experiences, attitudes, and frameworks regarding the use of digital media. The online questionnaires for course instructors (N=49), conceptually active staff and managers (for the perspective of the educational institutions) (N=58) were closely coordinated in terms of content, but they differed in the type of perspective on the phenomena studied. Since leaders of educational institutions and conceptually active staff for the focused survey areas partly hold cross-role functions, they were combined into one group of people. The latent constructs contained in the questionnaires were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis (Brandt, 2020) and a confirmatory factor analysis (Gäde, Schermelleh-Engel & Brandt, 2020). For quality assurance, the questionnaires were tested for reliability and validity (Moosbrugger & Kelava 2020). Quantitative data on participants in basic education courses were collected via a questionnaire (N=74), which was designed specifically for this target group via the use of easier-to-understand language, a font suitable for the target group, supplementary video material for better comprehensibility of data collection and privacy, as well as icons and voice output.
The data basis for the analysis of the quality criteria resulted from pretests with students of the Weingarten University of Education; the questionnaire for participants was also subjected to communicative feedback.
The data obtained from the online questionnaire survey were analyzed descriptively and inferentially with SPSS and AMOS, correspondingly. Data collection took place in 2021 and 2022.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFrom the empirical data collected in the GediG project, conclusions could be drawn for the first time as to which factors are essential in the design of courses in order to do the target group of low-literacy learners justice. The focus was on the successful use of digital media in basic education. From the empirical references to individual components from the theory, an overview model was derived, which shows what course instructors must consider in order to design an appropriate course. In combination with the empirical data, conclusions for the practice of basic education were derived. The "Swimming in the Digital Ocean" model embeds what course instructors should consider when designing courses individually with the use of digital media. In particular, these are:
Prerequisites of the stakeholders:
- General institutional framework
- Access requirements of course participants to digital devices
- Individual prerequisites on the part of the participants with regard to digital
competencies
- own media pedagogical competences
Preparation of the digital (supported) learning environment:
- Integration of a rich offer of digital media into the lessons
- Learner-friendly and manageable tasks
- Supporting course participants
Preparing for the leap into the digital ocean and learning to swim in it is the task of the course instructors, who should support the course participants under the above-mentioned conditions.
An individual approach to designing courses turns out to be beneficial in this regard, and good-practice examples will be shown in the presentation.
ReferencesBoeren, E., Roumell, E. A., & Roessger, K. M. (2020). COVID-19 and the Future of Adult Education: An Editorial. Adult Education Quarterly, 70(3), 201–204.
Brandt, H. (2020). Exploratorische Faktorenanalyse (EFA). In H. Moosbrugger & A. Kelava (Eds.). Testtheorie und Fragebogenkonstruktion. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. 575-614.
Buddeberg, K. & Grotlüschen, A. (2020). Literalität, digitale Praktiken und Grundkompetenzen. In A. Grotlüschen & K. Buddeberg (Eds.). LEO 2018. Leben mit geringer Literalität (S. 197-226). Bielefeld: wbv Media.
Carretero, S., Vuorikari, R., & Punie, Y. (2017). DigComp 2.1: The digital competence framework for citizens with eight proficiency levels and examples of use. European Commission, Joint Research Centre: Publications Office.
Evers, J. (2020). Wenn die vhs als Lernraum ganz besonders fehlt…Basisbildungskurse und Pflichtschulabschlusslehrgänge in Zeiten der Krise. Ein Erfahrungsbericht. In Die Österreichische Volkshochschule. Magazin für Erwachsenenbildung. Sommer 2020, Heft 270/71. Jg. Wien: Verband Österreichischer Volkshochschulen.
Gäde, J. C., Schermelleh-Engel, K. & Brandt, H. (2020). Konfirmatorische Faktorenanalyse (CFA). In H. Moosbrugger & A. Kelava (Eds.). Testtheorie und Fragebogenkonstruktion, S. 615-660. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
Grotlüschen, A., Buddeberg, K., Dutz, G., Heilmann, L., & Stammer, C. (2019). LEO 2018 - Leben mit geringer Literalität. Universität Hamburg.
Johnson, R. B. & Christensen, L. (2019). Educational research: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches. Sage publications.
Koppel, I. & Langer, S. (2020). Herausforderungen und Reaktionen in Zeiten des Social Distancing. Ein Blick in die Alphabetisierung und Grundbildung. weiter.bilden, 27 (4), 32-35.
Moosbrugger, H. & Kelava, A. (2020). Qualitätsanforderungen an Tests und Fragebogen („Gütekriterien“). In H. Moosbrugger & A. Kelava (Eds.). Testtheorie und Fragebogenkonstruktion. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
Rohs, M., Schmidt-Hertha, B., Rott, K. J. & Bolten, R. (2019). Measurement of media pedagogical competences of adult educators. European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults, 10 (3), 307-324.
Strauch, A. & Radtke, M. (2010). Adult Education and Professionalisation – Why Flexi-Path? In A. Strauch, M. Radtke & R. Lupou (Eds.). Flexible Pathways Towards Professionalisation. Senior Adult Educators in Europe, S. 11-19. Bielefeld: W. Bertelsmann.
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