scholarly journals Supporting eLearners by increasing Digital Literacy Skills in Healthcare Educators

Author(s):  
Rebecca Sherwood

This paper presents a case study detailing the author’s involvement in a teacher training module designed to improve healthcare educators’ scope for delivering e-learning elements within their curricula. The best method for enhancing teacher understanding of how students experience learning in the online environment is by first allowing teachers to experience the process themselves from a student perspective. It is proposed that such exposure will allow teachers to gain greater insight into the potential benefits and pitfalls of online delivery and apply the knowledge gained to their own practice. Teachers from a wide range of healthcare specialities engaged in discussion forums and gained practice in new and varied methods of e-learning, discovering how they could be blended with traditional classroom based delivery to achieve a diverse range of learning outcomes. It was found that the inter-disciplinary representation on the module created a potent mix of experience and viewpoints that greatly contributed to the overall learning environment. The cohort of 12 included adult and children branch nursing (hospital and community based), midwifery, allied health, and a member of the e-learning support team.

Author(s):  
Samual Amponsah ◽  
Micheal M. van Wyk ◽  
Michael Kojo Kolugu

This phenomenological exploratory multiple-case study design was conducted at an open distance e-learning university and a traditional contact residential university and it was found that the participants viewed video conferencing under the COVID-19 lockdown period as an exhausting experience. A second major finding revealed that the participants were empowered with digital literacy skills to use video conferencing effectively. The current findings add to a growing body of literature on video conferencing with a focus on Zoom fatigue. Further research might explore the lived zoom experiences of administrators, students and a larger group of faculties over a longer period. The study findings must be considered when planning and implementing video conferencing for academics and students in open distance e-learning contexts. This study showed that video conferencing is one tool in the emergence of a digital zoom revolution that has radically changed the workspace. The evidence from this study suggests that zoom fatigue is a reality check for work-related health management.


Author(s):  
So Yoon Kim ◽  
Shannon Crowley ◽  
Youngsun Lee

This scoping review synthesized existing literature to address what is known about technology-based employment interventions for autistic individuals and how these interventions were conducted. A systematic multi-database search yielded 48 studies (362 participants; mean age = 20.5 years; 85.3% male) that met the inclusion criteria. Phones/tablets were used most frequently; 33 studies used technological devices for video modeling and/or prompting independently or alongside cueing or feedback. Most interventions were effective in improving job-specific, transferable, and interview skills of autistic individuals. Future studies are needed to examine whether these interventions lead to generalized outcomes and employment opportunities. We also offer recommendations for practice focused on teaching transition-aged students digital literacy skills and transferable skills for a wide range of job options.


Communication ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Troy Hicks ◽  
Katherine Baleja ◽  
Mingyuan Zhang

For centuries, both the technologies of literacy—from cuneiform tablets to the printing press to, most recently, the smartphone—as well as the practices of reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, and visually representing have evolved. In the late 1990s, with the emergence of the hyperlinked and increasingly visual form of the Internet known as the World Wide Web, researchers, journalists, and educators began to use the term “digital literacy” to describe and differentiate emerging practices that were considered new, or at least different, from linear, text-centric literacy practices. To be digitally literate, competent learners would need to perform equally as well in face-to-face and print communication, as well as with emerging online tools such as discussions boards, instant messaging, and email. Along with the introduction of the term “digital literacy,” a number of related—and often considered synonymous—terms have emerged from various perspectives including “computer literacy,” “information communication technologies (ICT) literacy,” “information literacy,” “media literacy,” “new literacy(ies),” and “multiliteracies.” In an effort to clarify definitions and to distinguish between other entries in the Oxford Bibliographies, “digital literacy” is defined here as the complementary and interwoven skills, both technical and social, that people must employ when using Internet-based communication—including hypertext, images, audio, and video—to consume and create messages across a variety of academic, civic, and cultural contexts. Digital literacy, then, has particular significance within the realm of education. Often positioned as a set of skills and dispositions on par with—or in some cases, even more important than—traditional literacy skills of reading and writing, digital literacy has taken a prominent role in academic conversations from early childhood education through adolescent and young adult learning. Additionally, references to digital literacy are now common in conversations outside of school as well. This bibliography focuses attention on digital literacy in K-12 contexts, with reference to out-of-school and global contexts, drawing attention to the wide range of educational scholarship that embraces the study of digital literacy including research in linguistics and sociology as well as education.


Author(s):  
Jonathon Adams

Digital, web-based texts as a resource for the classroom present new ways of making meaning as learners draw on a wide range of communicative resources such as gaze and gesture to access and read them. This study employed a multimodal interaction analysis framework to examine an English language class of Japanese university students explaining online video stories face-to-face in a university in Japan. The findings identified a gap in the digital literacy skills the teacher assumed the learners possessed and the actual digital literacy skills required for successful completion of the classroom activity. The findings challenge the assumption that young learners are ‘digital natives', being capable of using technology for the specific purposes required in the class task. Implications for the planning and implementation of digital media for talk in language classroom tasks are discussed.


Author(s):  
Khalid Al Seghayer

This study was designed to investigate the adequacy of EFL learners' abilities in three major dimensions of digital literacy skills and whether self-assessments of competence were consistent with their actual performance. It also identified factors that affected learners' use of the selected digital literacy skills. To this end, 60 Saudi EFL learners (41 male and 19 female) responded to a five-part, cross-sectional questionnaire of 36 items categorized according to the three dimensions of digital literacy skills. They also engaged in 11 predetermined real-time Internet search tasks. The participants' on-screen online search activities were recorded and subjected to a search log analysis. Short, semi-structured post-search interviews were conducted to capture the participants' reflections on the search process. The data was analyzed with descriptive statistics and paired t-tests. The participants' success in searches was measured by the total number of tasks completed accurately. The results indicated that the participants were ill-equipped to efficiently handle the three key L2 digital literacy skills. Participants' low self-perceived ability to use them adequately was consistent with their actual poor online search performance. Further, the participants scored low in search accuracy, with the exception of search results interpretation skills and, to some extent, skills to evaluate a website's usefulness, and exhibited a wide range of areas for improvement and challenges in Web information search. The implications of the study and potential areas of future research are discussed.


2019 ◽  
pp. 93-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazire Burçin Hamutoğlu ◽  
Merve Savaşçı ◽  
Gözde Sezen-Gültekin

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Sundeep Dhillon ◽  
Neil Murray

The near universal use of electronic learning (e-learning) in higher education (HE) today requires that students and teachers are equipped with the requisite digital literacy skills. The small-scale pilot study we report on here explored the views and experiences of EAP (English for Academic Purposes) teachers regarding their development of digital literacy skills, their application of e-learning technology in their teaching, and their perceptions of its value as a learning tool—areas on which there has been little research to date. A convergent parallel mixed methods approach was adopted, in which a survey was administered to the research participants and a follow-up focus group conducted. The data were analysed, with findings revealing that the EAP practitioners surveyed utilised a range of online tools such as video, plagiarism software and corpus linguistics tools. A number of benefits and limitations associated with e-learning were cited by participants, including increased student engagement and motivation, the development of learner autonomy, and the cultural capital it represented in respect of students’ future careers. Meanwhile, the limitations identified included a lack of time for teachers to develop digital literacy and insufficient pre- and in-service training opportunities focused on the effective use of digital technologies and managing technical issues. We conclude with a series of recommendations to facilitate EAP teachers’ development and use of e-learning in their practice.


What did it mean to be a man in Scotland over the past nine centuries? Scotland, with its stereotypes of the kilted warrior and the industrial ‘hard man’, has long been characterised in masculine terms, but there has been little historical exploration of masculinity in a wider context. This interdisciplinary collection examines a diverse range of the multiple and changing forms of masculinities from the late eleventh to the late twentieth century, exploring the ways in which Scottish society through the ages defined expectations for men and their behaviour. How men reacted to those expectations is examined through sources such as documentary materials, medieval seals, romances, poetry, begging letters, police reports and court records, charity records, oral histories and personal correspondence. Focusing upon the wide range of activities and roles undertaken by men – work, fatherhood and play, violence and war, sex and commerce – the book also illustrates the range of masculinities that affected or were internalised by men. Together, the chapters illustrate some of the ways Scotland’s gender expectations have changed over the centuries and how, more generally, masculinities have informed the path of Scottish history


This book opens a cross-regional dialogue and shifts the Eurocentric discussion on diversity and integration to a more inclusive engagement with South America in private international law issues. It promotes a contemporary vision of private international law as a discipline enabling legal interconnectivity, with the potential to transcend its disciplinary boundaries to further promote the reality of cross-border integration, with its focus on the ever-increasing cross-border mobility of individuals. Private international law embraces legal diversity and pluralism. Different legal traditions continue to meet, interact and integrate in different forms, at the national, regional and international levels. Different systems of substantive law couple with divergent systems of private international law (designed to accommodate the former in cross-border situations). This complex legal landscape impacts individuals and families in cross-border scenarios, and international commerce broadly conceived. Private international law methodologies and techniques offer means for the coordination of this constellation of legal orders and value systems in cross-border situations. Bringing together world-renowned academics and experienced private international lawyers from a wide range of jurisdictions in Europe and South America, this edited collection focuses on the connective capabilities of private international law in bridging and balancing legal diversity as a corollary for the development of integration. The book provides in-depth analysis of the role of private international law in dealing with legal diversity across a diverse range of topics and jurisdictions.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document