Documentation:Graduate Certificate Program/Technology Session/Activity/Networked Digital Practices in the Disciplines

This page will display the aggregate of your collective work in responding to these questions. Future cohorts may wish to build on these questions or comment on the discussion page.

Why have networks/digital practices become embedded in your discipline - what's the goal/hope/driver? If you don't think they have, why not?

• Initial thoughts
  • Gio: Facilitate learning
  • Sneha: Encourage participation in large classrooms.
  • Tae Y. & Deborah: In research, to enable global collaboration
  • Laura: MLA? Citation organisms that force particular ways of being; distance between practitioners is a major impetus. Digital just allows us to expand that network.
• Technology in research
  • Manipulating/storing/etc. large datasets
  • Building on other people's knowledge & data.
  • AI assistance means less time in trial-and-error in experiments
  • Easier to keep your own data organized and less likely to lose information
• General
  • Much faster to communicate (vs. letters), more robust to timezones.
  • Easier to keep students' work and communication compiled in an online system.
  • Much easier for students if they don't have to go somewhere
  • Easier to give feedback (and edit feedback)
  • Privatize information
  • Easier to locate plaigarism
  • Mechanism for people to do outreach or share information (ex. upload a video) with less investment of energy/energy/money
• They have because the University may want that information privatized and unavailable to the public. They have not because some disciplines are well-established and not willing to change things because it has worked for them so far.

How do digital practices influence disciplinary practice?

Digital practices allow for more interdisciplinary connections.

- brings experts closer to novices (video interviews, skype lectures)

- It can give a false sense of community or engagement (ex. instructors will do a clicker question activity and feel as though they have successfully created an interactive experience)

- render 3D models, aritifical intelligence used to contribute to experiment predictions

Thoughts from third group:

• Limitations of digital access can also limit disciplines.
• Can help engagement, but hinder deep engagement. (We really agree with the comment about false sense of community)
• No tone in text/reception can be difficult in digital environment.
• Troubleshooting (Stack Exchange for example) can be streamlined, and experts can be more accessible (bi-directionally!)
• Access to more "voices" both literal and virtual
• (Sometimes) improved accessibility, especially in that we can have increased work from home

Why should emerging digital practices change how we teach in the discipline?

- the world that we live in contains these technologies and it's important for both students and instructors to communicate and practice in the current reality, not in a past version

- younger generations (current students) are very fluent in technology and respond to teaching delivered in that medium

- younger generations are less aware of the pitfalls inherent in any technology and instructors can provide a guidance and a safe place to practice those skills

- with the technology, the speed of consequences of actions matches the speed of communication

Thoughts on the previous group's thoughts:

• We (Laura and Deborah) disagree that students are more fluent in technology...mobile technology yes, but more robust computing no.

Second group thoughts:

• Decreased need to memorize facts due to increased technology
• Can enable blended & customized learning (e.g. giving students more or less difficult problems based on previous work)
• Instant feedback - students answer a question & know right away if it's right or wrong
• Can enable a reversal of the classroom, where you do the readings & work at home and come to the classroom to do more in-depth, discussion or problem-solving based activities.
  • Provides feedback to the instructor as well - instructor knows what students are and aren't getting before class starts so that the students get what they need and not what they don't.
• Can use more sophisticated stats on assignments to see how the group is doing things
• Can be more personalized or more accessible (invisibly individualized) - can be used to increase student privacy.

Third group thoughts:

• Very discipline dependent - don't agree that digital practices should change how we teach
• In some aspects digital practices can make things easier, but is not necessarily needed