Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Blended learning isn’t new to higher education, but the coronavirus pandemic has fueled a rapid expansion as colleges combine the flexibility of online instruction with the benefits of face-to-face interaction.

Increased reliance on blended learning highlights the need to optimize a delivery mode that’s unfamiliar to many instructors. 

The University of Central Florida, an early adopter of online education, was quick to recognize the benefits of a blended approach, says Kelvin Thompson, executive director of UCF’s Center for Distributed Learning. At UCF, hybrid courses consistently yield better outcomes than purely face-to-face or online courses, he says, including higher grades, fewer withdrawals and greater student satisfaction.

In this series we explore Powerful Learning, a set of principles to guide educators designing learning experiences that engage the hearts and minds of learners and incorporate technology in ways that contribute to closing the Digital Learning Gap. In this second post, we explore how Powerful Learning is authentic and challenging, share research that grounds these two principles, and provide resources to support your own learning and teaching practices.

The university has developing digital capabilities as one of its core goals for the next five years. For instance, it has student digital champions who help others to develop the digital capabilities they might be expected to use in their course, such as e-portfolios, or WordPress as a website-creation tool.

Meanwhile, Harlow College claims that it has improved retention and achievement rates for students by making good use of digital technologies. For staff, it offers five cross-college development days where they can learn new digital skills. And there are 15-minute drop-in sessions where they can learn about new apps and tools and explore how they can use them in teaching.

Want to know how to create meaningful and Engaging Learning Experiences? Check 6 ways to create meaningful and Engaging Learning Experiences.

As a Blended Librarian I pay attention to the experience that learners in my classroom are having. As they leave the room or reflect on the instruction I deliver I want them to feel as if they experienced a change in what they know and the way they think – and that it will have the affect of permanently changing their thinking or behavior.

Creating a successful learning experience is at the heart of instructional design and delivery. “In addition to academic instruction, one of a classroom’s teachers most important roles is to help students develop the critical thinking, collaboration, and self-reflection skills necessary to foster a better society” (Blacke, 2015, para. 1). Encouraging students to explore the topics of power and privilege resulting from social classifications and their impact on the thoughts and actions of themselves and others is an important step toward encouraging social justice. However, creating a classroom environment that facilitates and supports discussions about sensitive topics can be challenging.

LearningExperienceDesign.com describes Learning Experience Design (LX Design) as, “the process of creating learning experiences that enable the learner to achieve the desired learning outcome in a human centered and goal oriented way.”

This page from sixredmarbles.com takes a more utilitarian approach, explaining that LX Design is “a synthesis of instructional design, educational pedagogy, neuroscience, social sciences, design thinking, and UI/UX”.

With both government and students focusing on value for money and a quality student experience, it is essential that universities and colleges are directing their resources appropriately to deliver the best learning experiences to students.

Here is a blog post that shares major learning design practices for effective e-learning courses on tablets.

The nature of education and learning and development has changed dramatically since the introduction of digital technologies. The ability to access knowledge...