When I started the Metaliteracy course 18 months ago, week 2 was originally about “creating and sharing a social identity” which included some revelations of what you find by googling yourself, thinking about what others might think of what they find without a larger context (i.e., if an employer was to search), etc. At times, it seemed more like a Grandmother telling you to watch what you post online. One of the resources walked you through the googling process and the “types” of things you might find. Since I share the same name as a US politician, almost all of Google is dominated by his links. If you add “Ottawa” to the search, then I come up with my Twitter feed listed first. It made me think about whether I should (for branding and transparency) more accurately label my website, but I don’t feel the need to shout it out. I like being PolyWogg, but I’m not hiding my name either. Other resources looked at whether anonymity would increase authenticity and reduce trolls, but I’m not convinced that it’s a magic bullet. It also had some resources about privacy. Those are completely missing from the course so far in the new incarnation. The assignment at the time was to do a biography based on your googled persona, reviewing a privacy policy of a social platform (I did Twitter) and considering the implications of a poverty project that shared rather stark photos of people in Troy New York which then went viral and for which the project received a lot of backlash (https://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Churchill-An-unflattering-portrait-of-poverty-in-5649292.php). This seems to be gone from the current version of the course.
The previous version of week 3 was about “Becoming A Digital Citizen: Understanding Intellectual Property” which seems pretty close to this week’s material in the new version of the course. Week 2 is entitled: Becoming a Metaliterate Digital Citizen.
For the original course, I was disappointed as I thought we would end up doing a deeper dive into the issues around academic publishing and journals, and instead, we were treated to a one-size-fits-all promotional video of how big academic journal publishers are pillaging the land of academic freedom. To be honest, I learned far more from Michael Geist’s posts about the CRTC hearings back in December 2018 on potential reforms to the Copyright Act to address university usage of academic materials, and even more from the recent judicial decision in Canada. The current proposals before the White House to temporarily change academic licensing to be more “open” received a lot of backlash from academic publishers who pay authors nothing, pay reviewers nothing, and charge huge fees to schools to access the online magazines.
My real complaint at the time, however, was that most of the materials lacked any nuance between the concept of “free” vs. “open”. It just assumed “open” was better (free access, free mobility) and that “free” was the wrong term (confusing free movement with free cost). I don’t like the term because creators decide on licenses, but “open” is recipient-centric, not creator-centric. The materials also touted the idea of the 5Rs of openness (the ability to retain, reuse, revise, remix or redistribute) but they are far more complicated than as presented. I did like the focus on Creative Commons Licenses, at the time.
With the new format for the course, I found the CCL stuff a bit lighter than I was expecting.
Ethical Use of Information
Originally, the course had a “week 4” focus on the Ethical Use of Information which it is now bundled into this week. My favourite part was a great series of videos called “Everything is a Remix”. It shows, in a multitude of examples, how ideas and even content are remixed and re-used, built upon, edited, etc., all as part of new creations. And for me, it leads to a kind of intellectual conundrum. If, in many spheres of life like science, the goal is to build off of the efforts of others and to advance learning, how do you do that while respecting the intellectual rights of others in an ethical way? As I said, the remix videos are great, and worth watching even if you aren’t taking the course. The remastered version is below:
Funny, back when I did the first part of the original course, I thought licensing, remixing and ethics should be all part of the same week (as they are now). Yet now that I have done it, I feel they both get a bit too short treatment. The new assignment is to muse about the ethical use of information, which was easy for me, as it frequently comes up in forums dealing with astrophotography and the appropriate use of any images that are posted.
I finished taking my first MOOC on Understanding Video Games (#50by50 #32 – Complete a MOOC – Understanding Video Games) and next on my list was one related to Metaliteracy – Empowering Yourself in a Connected World. The description was pretty good, talking about being a bit more reflective about our online work, and it was offered through Coursera. The downside to that is that I’m really only interested in “passive learning”, watching the videos, etc., not actively engaging online with fellow students. That might seem like a cop-out of sorts, but I like the idea of a curated course that pulls together interesting material in a professional manner. It would be nice to be able to afford all The Great Courses library and work my way through those, and I have managed to snag a photography course through them (still in progress) plus two new astronomy titles (they were having a sale!).
But, as I said, the Metaliteracy course looked interesting as a stepping stone, just as the video game was…I used the video game MOOC to get my feet wet in the world of gamification, and despite the fact that I time-shifted it over the course of a couple of years, I got a lot out of it and gained a foundation to understand gamification in a very different way than if I’d just started with gamification. For online engagement, I wanted to step back a bit and look at the online world through a more objective lens. The Metaliteracy course might do that, although I hate the term literacy being used that way. The course is offered as a collaboration between SUNY Empire State College and the SUNY University of Albany.
Enrolling in the Course
When I wrote this post the first time, it was December 2018, just over 18 months ago (it is now May 2020). I had enrolled in the course, and there were 10 weeks or so of classes. I did the first 5 weeks of classes, but I struggled to find enough other students to provide peer-reviews of my assignments. I found the material interesting, but it was a challenge to keep it “going”. I would stall, the other students would stall, I’d reset dates, it would languish. I didn’t get very far.
Fast-forward to 2020 and I wanted to reboot my interest. Except the course has radically changed from 10 weeks with lots of topics to only 4 weeks! Some of which it thinks I’ve already done (because it was part of the other course). It looks to me like they have removed a lot of the assignments and peer review interactions.
Introduction
From 2018: The original Introduction for Week 1 started off bad for me…the hosts/leaders are a librarian and a vice-provost for academic programs. My fear is that often these types of approaches are about trying to do something “different” i.e. “we want to do a MOOC, what should it be about” as opposed to having a vision for a course and delivering it as a MOOC. Time will tell, right? And my initial reaction is part of the course itself — how I am evaluating the info without full context.
The course will involve this week’s intro, plus three sessions on digital citizenry (identity, IP, ethics), modes and formats of info sharing, creating info, participation in global community, curating and metacognitive awareness. And the end will focus on how students move on to being teachers. Okay, it’s got a decent structure.
One thing I liked in the intro was the idea of a metaliterate learner (meh) having different roles all woven together…communicator, translator, author, teacher, collaborator, producer, publisher, researcher, participant, etc. I would probably add curator in there too as a separate heading, but this week probably isn’t the week to quibble too much. As an active blogger, I experience all of those roles, so I’m curious to see where the course goes from here.
Originally, I thought I was going to hold myself to just the videos, having downloaded them so I could timeshift more easily when I didn’t have a live internet connection. Instead, I realized that the readings are still available to me as I did “enrol” in the course, and thus still “live”. I went in to check something, saw the readings, and have now gone through the readings for the first week. The excellent chart mentioned above was included (i.e., not just in the video), and more importantly, they have a great article about what metaliteracy is compared to digital literacy, etc. Here is an excerpt from their paper:
Several competing concepts of literacy have emerged including digital literacy, media literacy, visual literacy, and information technology fluency, but there is a need for a comprehensive framework based on essential information proficiencies and knowledge. New media literacy and transliteracy have also responded to the rapid and ongoing changes in technology. As part of a metaliteracy reframing, we argue that producing and sharing information are critical activities in participatory Web 2.0 environments. Information literacy is central to this redefinition because information takes many forms online and is produced and communicated through multiple modalities. Information literacy is more significant now than it ever was, but it must be connected to related literacy types that address ongoing shifts in technology.
(Source: Mackey, T.P. & Jacobson, T.E. (2011). Reframing information literacy as a metaliteracy. College and Research Libraries, 72 (1), 62-78. doi: 10.5860/crl-76r1))
Over the course of the article, they compare it to information literacy (too research-y), media literacy (too narrowly focused on media writ large, not the digital and technological world), digital literacy (a little bit too narrowly within digital environments), visual literacy (heavy focus on visual design), cyberliteracy (participatory aspects only), and information fluency (like info literacy, but with extra techno bent). Metaliteracy, the topic of the course, tries to bring the best of all the perspectives together…participatory, collaborative, critical, more than info as a commodity, beyond skills-based definitions, engagement with the technology, transliterate (“the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media”, Thomas et al cited in the paper), blurring of information / entertainment / economics, and incorporating IP and privacy issues. A rather daunting list.
And yet, having read it, I’m left with two large questions. First, while they talk about the practical issues around doing research in a webbed-world, and how to deal with defining your search environment — are Amazon reviews in-scope? Youtube videos? music lyrics? — I don’t see anything about the time factor inherent in all of it. The more you engage with an everchanging “techno” world as your environment, the more your research is defined by a smaller and smaller snapshot in time. The minute you blink and take your “readings” for your research, not only does that act influence the subject but also the next minute it is gone, changed again by the new info available on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Second, while they talk about the “framework” as being less about “skills” and more about cognitive frameworks, as soon as they apply it to the practical worlds, it quickly becomes very skills-focused, as all applications do. If so, is a “skills-reduced” framework the way to go?
I don’t know the answers, but I like the questions. Let’s call it a promising intro.
Reflecting on how we process information based on feelings and beliefs;
Questioning sources of information (formal and informal, validity, packaging/medium, )
Challenging assumptions, including our own
Contributing responsibly
For myself, I would say that I do a decent job (as most of us probably believe about ourselves) in questioning sources of information, particularly where it disagrees with my sense of probability. Where it confirms my expectations, I likely don’t challenge it much, but nuances are important to me, so I do sometimes question methodologies even when I agree with the conclusions.
I probably have not reflected as much on how my feelings influence my processing, mainly as I’m primarily an analytical introvert and thus more focused on the cognitive side of life. To the extent that I’ve thought about packaging, I would say for me it is more about how to communicate better (i.e. what are my options in blogging, for example, since I tend to rely heavily on words over graphics).
I do frequently adjust my contributions online to be more “responsible”. As a blogger, and a civil servant, I have a pretty fine line to walk in what I can do on certain subjects, but not so much from a “legal” standpoint as an ethical one. I owe a duty of loyalty to my employer and while I might disagree with certain policies, it’s not really my place to second-guess a political level policy choice unless it is whistle-blower territory.
For me, though, I think the biggest factor is reminding myself that I play those multiple roles (mentioned above) simultaneously when I’m online. Communicator, author, producer of content, participant, etc. And given my own predilections, I would say”curator” tops that list…A guide I wrote for a small audience proved helpful to others, and it has been downloaded from my website over 7000 times in two years despite the fact I have done no promotion whatsoever. People then email me follow-up questions looking for further advice from the expert, which I am decidedly not. I frequently have to add disclaimers about not being an expert…it’s what works for me, their mileage may vary.
Overall, I think most of us view internet content from the perspective of passive consumers, but for me, it is a far more “collaborative” experience with every click or post or share.
Week 5 of Coursera’s Metaliteracy course is entitled “Understanding How Information is Packaged and Shared”. I was initially skeptical of the week, as the format is rarely something I have thought much about outside of the mainstream. For example, a blog post vs. a news article, and the likely credibility of the two by default. Kind of like peer-reviewed vs. non-peer-reviewed articles. But as I worked through the readings, and the assignments, I actually found that I liked the content more than I expected.
For example, it talks about it from a creation standpoint. An academic wanting to advance learning in a specific area is likely to follow a traditional route and publish in a peer-reviewed journal using technical language appropriate to the field. By contrast, the same academic might want to make a presentation to students that would make the same information available but tied to more fundamental principles. And equally, the same academic might try to reach out through blogs or popular press articles with infographics to encapsulate similar information. But the same infographic wouldn’t work for the technical crowd. And while all that is obvious, another element hadn’t occurred to me.
That it’s the same process for me with my blog. I am not trying to be the academic talking to the peers, nor am I teaching students. My target for my HR guide and my blog, in general, is usually the Average Joe on the street. But I usually default to text. I rarely put much thought into infographics which are often a better vehicle for the Average Joe. While I consider many of the same elements, I rarely boil it down so starkly. In particular, one of the readings talked about various formats available for communicating:
A book A journal article written for scholars in the field A blog entry that is public A Facebook message for only one’s friends In-person communication A text message A chart with data An infographic A YouTube video montage An online timeline containing text, video, and photos
It has started me thinking about my HR Guide in book form and whether that was ever the best format. I’ll likely still do it, but I have my eye on some other formats for subsequent versions.
The first assignment for the week was a simple worksheet that asked you to pick a topic that you could explain to someone else, choose three different formats you could use from the above list to communicate information about it, and then give some strengths and weaknesses for the format, how much the format lends itself to collaboration / feedback / sharing, and whether the format is important to the content.
The second assignment was to reflect on your own role in critically examining online material (I chose the example of my frequently seeing so-called factual memes or infographics that seem one-sided or misleading and having to dig deeper to get to the truth), what triggers me (i.e. the one-sidedness that seems off), and if it affects you in your own role as producer of information.
And finally, the third assignment was to expand on the producer role and how I as a producer use various formats, how I started, whether I considered those other factors, etc.
