First reflection on the ONL course

The first topic in the course focused on online participation and digital literacies, and with this first post I will reflect on my own relationship with digital media and online engagement. 

Digital media relates to both my research and my teaching. In research, I am interested in how digital media is used for various purposes - how it can help achieve goals that are beneficial for individuals and societies, and how digital media can also be used to create confusion and disunity. Digital media offers a lot, but humans give it meaning, in the way they use digital media tools and the goals they achieve with them. 

In teaching, I also find it important to talk about the opportunities digital media provides for various actors for various reasons. I often feel behind in terms of the various platforms that emerge all the time and the opportunities they provide. To keep up with the platforms and their uses requires time and mental energy, so this is something to consider (and perhaps, a reason, why people are slow to engage with technology). I reflect on the Diffusion of Innovation theory that explains how people engage with new "things" and how societies adopt new practices. The theory outlines five groups: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and late adopters, and I reflect on where I fit. I do believe that innovators and early adopters are those that invest time into learning new technology and implementing it in ways that has not been implemented before. 

It is common, with so much emphasis on research in universities, that adopting new technology in teaching is not necessarily a priority and thus the time to be spent learning those technology is simply not worth it for researchers. As a consequence, university educators often end ups as "late majority" or even "late adopters" with students far ahead with using digital media. In my experience, when I use digital media in teaching, I get close to the students, as I learn to speak their language, learn about their digital habits, and help make the bridge to other uses of technology. 

In taking this ONL course I look to learn more on digital participation, how to effectively use time in learning new technology, in helping to bridge the gap between students and lecturers. 

Comments

  1. Lars HarryssonApril 12, 2022 at 1:19 AM

    It is interesting to consider for whom we do research if not for sharing it with our students. Testing our hypotheses in dialogue and involving them in the front line of research, thus illustrating how we add bits and pieces to a field, and how this helps us support the students in connecting their readings to a process of adding knowledge to their learning build. Using digital technologies to achieve this is just another tool I would say, when the focus is to allow the dialogue to take place and develop. /Lars

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    Replies
    1. LeysanMay 5, 2022 at 2:32 AM

      Well, we do research for knowledge creation, for the industry (strategic communication in my case), but of course it can be shared with students as well.

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  2. OsmanApril 17, 2022 at 7:15 PM

    Thank you for sharing. Indeed, we must always move with the times and be updated with new educational technologies to be on par with our students who are digital natives.

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