Digital Narratives Project Glog

Learning with Digital Narratives & Social Media Tools

Discussed Digital Narratives are the product of an action research that started at the beginning of the second semester of the academic year 2011-2012. The aim of the research was to create learning opportunities that effectively addresses some of today's educational trends, like:

• Equip today's students with skills required for the future job market
  Wagner (2010) suggested seven skills as required to survive in the future job market. He emphasizes the importance of discontinuing teaching practices that prepares students with skills for jobs that won't exist anymore upon their graduation. Discussed Digital Narratives Assignment, was an attempt to create learning opportunities that would make students acquire four out of the 7 skills that Wagner identified:
  1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
  2. Effective Oral and Written Communication
  3. Accessing and Analyzing Information
  4. Curiosity and Imagination
  
   
• Empower students to take ownership of their learning, through structured Independent Learning and peer tutoring 
  Mitra (2007) concluded from long years of research, that learning can become a self-organized process given the right pedagogical structure. He highlights the power of the group of learners in sharing knowledge is a self-organized manner. Discussed Digital Narratives Assignment, provided students with both opportunities: Independent Learning and Peer Tutoring in authentic learning environment.
  
   
• Encourage students to learn with, rather than from technology
  Jonassen, Howland, Marra, & Crismond (2008) argued that the lack of effective use of educational technology when merely utilized for the purpose of storing information for later retrieval. This makes technology no different from books and libraries. According to Jonassen et al., effectiveness in the use of educational technology is achieved when learners use it to create and construct knowledge. The process of developing objects with technology fosters deeper thinking and learning. Discussed Digital Narratives Assignment, demanded the construction of Digital Narrative for a real world business scenario, as a result of field investigation and information analysis.
  
   
• Increase students engagement by employing Social Media tools in the learning process 

In their book, "What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media", McLeod & Lehmann (2012) stated that:

"There is near-universal agreement that schools must find ways to transform older teaching practices in order to harness the tools that students have at their disposal today".

Discussed Digital Narratives Assignment, defined YouTube as a sharing platform for produced Digital Narratives, and YouTube comments as the media for the online discussion.

• Explore ways for the next ubiquitous technology to be used in the curriculum
  
  
  Robin & Pierson (n.d.) identified Digital Imaging as the next ubiquitous technology and stressed the need to innovate ways to use it in delivering curriculum. Robin et al. employed Digital storytelling model (Center of Digital Storytelling, 2004), to introduce a rich technology-integrated pedagogy for undergraduate teacher education students.
  
  
  Discussed Digital Narratives Assignment concept is inspired by the research findings of Jonassen et al. and Robin et al. as highlighted in the third educational trend above, Jonassen et al. emphasized the need to learn "with" rather than "from" technology. Robin et al., on the other hand, emphasized the effectiveness of using Digital Storytelling in the curriculum. Discussed Digital Narratives Assignment created a learning opportunity for students to:
  
  
  
  1. independently review literature and select a specific subject
  2. independently investigate a real world case study in the UAE business context
  3. creatively put their findings in a digital story
  4. publish their stories using Social Media tool
  5. utilize peer tutoring and online discussions to teach each other the details of their selected subject
  
   
• Transform teacher's role from instruction to mentoring and facilitating
  
  
  Many researchers have strongly recommended the need to redefine teachers' role, to take more of a facilitation and mentoring shape. ESTEVE (2000), described the expectations from teachers today, and facilitating group work came at the beginning of the list. Discussed Digital Narratives Assignment, contributed another practical model as to how this recommendation can be realized in classrooms. 

The Concept

To put the above educational trends in action, the Discussed Digital Narratives Assignment got introduced as part of the BMGN-N340 "Management Information Systems" course plan. The Assignment Outlines described the expected development of a real world case study, which describes the business case behind an Enterprise Application investment. The students were asked to put their findings in a creative Digital Narrative to be shared and discussed using Social Media tools.


Learning Objectives

Using Bloom's Taxonomy, the learning objectives of this MIS assignment can be defined as follows:

1. Evaluate how enterprise systems help businesses achieve operational excellence.
2. Describe how supply chain management systems coordinate planning, production, and logistics with suppliers.
3. Explain how customers' relationship management systems help firms achieve customer intimacy.
4. Identify the organizational challenges posed by enterprise applications.
5. Describe how enterprise applications provide platforms for new cross-functional services.
    

Pedagogy

The pedagogical approach of the assignment was fully learner-centered in nature. This is due to the employment of many active learning opportunities:

1. Starting from the Independent Learning approach to better understand the nature of the three categories of Enterprise Applications as described in Chapter 9 of the course textbook.
2. The full involvement of students in designing the research to understand the circumstances surrounded a real-world scenario of a real organization while investing in such system.
3. The development of Digital Narratives by the students to present their understanding and findings as a creative digital story.
4. The peer tutoring through sharing of the Digital Narratives using YouTube and asking students to view other teams products.
5. And finally, students discussed the shared Digital Narratives in a semi-controlled online discussion, following the rules outlined in the "Discussion" component of this Marking Scheme.

HCT Graduate Outcomes

The developed pedagogical approach of the Discussed Digital Narratives Assignment, meets the HCT graduate outcomes, except for Mathematical literacy (GO8):

1. Communication and information literacy (GO1)
2. Critical and creative thinking (GO2)
3. Global awareness and citizenship (GO3)
4. Technological literacy (GO4)
5. Self-management and independent learning (GO5)
6. Teamwork and leadership (GO6)
7. Vocational competencies (GO7)

Sharability, Replication and Sustainability

The outcomes of this experience were constantly published using the teacher's blog baraayousuf.blogspot.com with colleagues across the system. In addition, Google Hangout video conferencing service got also utilized to digitally meet keen colleagues and answer their questions. The feedback received was very positive, and it is expected to see some of the participants trying the assignment in their own courses.

The influence of using Digital Narratives as part of the Higher Colleges of Technology business programs on improving students' readiness for the 21st century job market; is the topic of an empirical research project that the teacher is planning. The success of conducting this research would help in understanding the effectiveness of the method in the HCT context, and as a result produce a sustainable model.


REFERENCES

Center of Digital Storytelling, C. D. S. (2004). Seven elements for digital storytelling. Retrieved February 2012, from Http://www.storycenter.org/memvoice/pages/tutorial_1.html

ESTEVE, J. M. (2000). The Transformation of the Teachers' Role at the End of the Twentieth Century. Educational Review, 52(2). Retrieved from http://oppimateriaalit.jamk.fi/edusociety/files/2010/06/Thetransformationofteachersroleartikkeli.pdf

Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R. M., & Crismond, D. (2008). Excerpt from Meaningful Learning With Technology. Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall (pp. 5-10). Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall. Retrieved from http://www.education.com/reference/article/how-does-technology-facilitate-learning/?page=3

McLeod, S., & Lehmann, C. (2012). What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media. John Wiley and Sons.

Mitra, S. (2007). Hole in the wall. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html

Robin, B. R., & Pierson, M. E. (n.d.). A Multilevel Approach to Using Digital Storytelling in the Classroom Design of an IT Graduate Course in Digital Photography An Emerging Focus on Digital Storytelling. Technology.

Wagner, T. (Harvard E. S. (2010). The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need--and What We Can Do About It (First Trad.). Basic Books.

Digital Narratives Samples

The YouTube Discussed Digital Narratives are configured as “Listed”. This means that the viewer needs to have a direct link to be able to access the any Digital Narrative.

During the Assignment, all students had flexible access to the class YouTube channel, which is dmcMISclass, to facilitate the videos uploads and the following discussion using YouTube comments. The password to the channel got changed upon reaching the Assignment deadline.

Discussed Digital Narratives links:

Parzel: http://youtu.be/Z07bZEfYLcM

Barclays Bank: http://youtu.be/0sy2quQjo8Q

DP World: http://youtu.be/U3bsjVFeNdk

DUCAB: http://youtu.be/WH9PTIzTTZk

Union Co-op: http://youtu.be/LzXsgAI2E2I

Dubai Customs & NCI: http://youtu.be/N5ZobqWybB0

Dnata: http://youtu.be/e1T_puFFZFI

Carrefour: http://youtu.be/DXjWuBKcv-0

Digital Age Skills and Collaboration Challenges

Reflecting on BMGN-N340 teaching and learning strategies while examining Marquise's (2012) list unleashed various ways by which the course succeeded in supporting the suggested skills. In addition to traditional textbook and lecture style, the course incorporated various delivery and participatory strategies, like: online class discussions, online individual journals, real-world case studies, supporting YouTube videos, Twitter links to important resources … etc. The described approach is found fully aligned with Marquise's suggested strategy to instill the "passion for digital" in the students' hearts.

The real-world problem-based assignment and project contributed to implementing Marquise's suggested strategy in developing the students Analytical and critical thinking and application skills. As described in previous posts, the Digital Narratives assignment made the students learn part of the course learning outcomes independently, select the type of application they want to further investigate through real-world deployment story in UAE market, and finally develop it as a case study in an original digital narrative.

The course also created opportunities to practice and further develop their communication skills with YouTube discussion of published narratives as well as the traditional written and verbal skills through the course final consultancy project. Moreover, the course also support students understanding of the big picture of the ubiquity of information and its relevance to the course learning outcomes, which emphasized the richness of the information age and the requirement to utilize various methods to source the required details. The course's final project, which was industry based, further developed the students solution-oriented approach to real-world problems through developing a consultancy report to propose a solution to the analyzed problem.

Finally, the role that I, the teacher, played in the Digital Narratives assignment was more of a mentor and facilitator. The fact that many students were not comfortable with to start with, however, it somehow contributed to the readiness of the lucky ones among them to deal with many similar professional relationships in the teams they'll join at the workplace.

 

BMGN-N340 MIS course's final project was designed to give students another opportunity to further develop their collaboration skills. As a group, the students had to investigate a real-world problem(s) that one of the UAE organizations is facing with an Information System. The students were asked to select number of Business Processes that matches the number of individuals in the team, so each member is in charge of analyzing and designing one part of the system, while collaborating with the rest of the team to make sure his piece eventually fall into the right place to complete the team project. It was quite interesting to hear from one of the students experienced this project stating as I was emphasizing the SafeAssign below 10% matching policy: "miss, in this project there is no way to get even 1% matching".

Anderson (2007) blog post and TurnitIn (2011) whitepaper discussion of plagiarism reminded me of this student's comment on his experience with BMGN-N340 final project and made me reflect on the assessment design that made it so hard for students to plagiarize. The happy ending of my reflection exercises was the discovery of the fact that the project was designed in a way that didn't give the students any chance to include any work but their originally developed one. This is an ideal answer for the call of balancing collaborative learning while preventing plagiarism opportunities, which was mainly a consequence of the pure authentic learning nature of the task at hand.

Teaching for the Future

Learning as defined by Rodgers et.al. (2006) is "a life-long process of coping with change". I accept this definition as a fact and find it the ultimate objective that prescribed the kind of skills today's students need to get equipped with for future job market. Bie.org (2012) specifies those as: ICT literacy, critical thinking and problem solving, creative thinking, communication, collaboration, cross-cultural, leadership, social, self and task management, ethics civic responsibility and accountability skills. A thoughtful examination of the list can easily lead to concluding the necessity of such skills to remain agile while dealing with uncertainty caused by constant change.

In order to teach for the future, nothing would help as much as simulating scenarios in and/or outside today's classrooms that triggers the need to employ the above skills. Lombardi (2007) called this "Authentic Learning", which includes, but not limited to: project/task based learning, role-playing, simulations, and virtual communities of practice. Such learning to be effective, it needs to capitalize on best practices of teaching profession, while enhancing lessons pedagogies by mainly utilizing communication methods that appeals most to the students.

While facilitating the Digital Narratives assignment, I recall the level of resistance I had to deal with. The students, whom are supposed to be "Digital Natives" as per Marc Prensky's (2001) terms, were not excited about the requirement to learn new technologies (Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, and GarageBand). Moreover, they found the format of the assignment very new compaired to anything they've done before where they had to identify real-world scenario of Enterprise Application deployment and develop a case study around it. This Authentic Learning opportunity also required the students to develop a media to summarize the main outlines of their findings from the site visits and share it with their peers for formative evaluation and discussion.

This experience helped me in understanding Siemens (2006) rational for criticizing Prensky's conclusions about the new generation of learners. Although my students enjoyed the Digital Narrative assignments for its authenticity and relevance in developing many of the skills they'll need in their future jobs, they haven't demonstrated many of the attributes of digital natives, the way Prensky has described them, throughout the journey. They were worried and required a lot of support to get started with the assignment for its unique nature compared to their previous experiences. Moreover, they required workshops to learn the tools, which is not an expected requirement from Digital Natives. Such workshops wouldn't be required if the technology is one that students normally use in their daily communication.

A holistic view of the three articles lead me to conclude that in order to increase the effectiveness of teaching and learning, we need to create more and more authentic learning opportunities for our students, while using the communication technology models and tools they daily use in their own communications to further engage them in the learning dialogue. A clear distinction should be always in the teachers' minds among the communication technologies and simulations technologies employed to create those authentic learning experiences for the very big difference in the way students react to them. The former will make the student comfortable and bring them much closer to the teacher, the peers and the content. On the other hand, the latter can throw them totally outside their comfort zone, if not planned well!