The role of educator's digital fluency in harnessing the potential of online and technology enhanced learning

1. Aligning Professional Identity
with Institutional Culture
The Role of Educators’ Digital Fluency in Harnessing the Potential of
Online and Technology Enhanced Learning
Dr Niall Watts & Dr Conor Galvin
UCD IT Services & UCD School of Education

2. Higher Education
Global Challenges
• Massification
• Lifelong Learning
• ICTs
• Digital competence/ fluency
Glocal Solutions (Ireland)
• National Strategy for Higher
Education to 2030
• National Forum for the Enhancement
of Teaching & Learning
• Digital Roadmap
• Principles and First Insights from the
Sectoral Consultation on Building
Digital Capacity in Irish Higher
Education (Digital Roadmap – Phase 1).
GunnMap [CC BY-SA 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0)]

3. Spectrum of Fluency
• No digital divide
• More than literacy
• Knowing when & why
• Higher Order Thinking & Deep Learning
• Vital concept for exploring TEL
Image Author Clker-Free-Vector-Images (pixabay.com)

4. Defining Digital Fluency
The ability to reformulate knowledge and produce information to express
oneself creatively and appropriately in a digital environment.
Q. E. Wang, Myers, and Sundaram (2013)
“
Expertise that a learner gains or demonstrates by using digital tools to
gather, design, evaluate, critique, synthesise, and develop digital media
artefacts, communication messages, or other electronic expressions.
Hsi (2007)

5. Landscapes of Practice
• Many Communities of Practice
• Disciplinary, Research…
• Varying knowledgeability
• Boundaries
• Conflict and Misunderstanding
• Collaboration and Innovation
• Engagement and Reflection

6. Research Methods
• Explanatory Case Study
• Eight digitally fluent faculty
• Intensity Sampling
• Semi- Structured interviews
• Elite insider
• Critical Friend
• Thematic Analysis – interviews & Roadmap
• Coding & categorising
Screenshot from Nvivo https://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo/home with author’s data

7. Findings – Key Themes
Professional Identity
Embody attitudes, beliefs and
standards
• Disciplinary, teaching…
• Institutional identity
Institutional Culture
“Rules, tools, division of labour”
Digital Fluency Development & Engagement with TEL

8. Findings – Consistent
Professional Identity
• Developing their Expertise
• Formally & informally
• Time commitment
• TEL in teaching practice
• Enabling for Fluency
Institutional Culture
• Development
• Higher Degrees
• Workload
• Part-timers
• TEL Support
• Guiding in Systems
• Rewards & Awards

9. Findings - Variable
Professional Identity
• Knowledgeability
• Educational Technology CoP
• Sharing Experience
• Showcase vs Personal
• Policy Engagement
• Institutional & National
• Policy & Identity
• Attitudes to Awards
Landscapes of Practice

10. Professional Identities & Knowledgeability
TEL Career
• Innovators
• “Blended Professionals”
• Researchers in TEL
• Early Career Transformation
• Policy engagement
TEL Practitioner
• Early Adopters
• “Researchers who teach”
• Own discipline
• Late Career Transformation
• Students
• Sharing with colleagues

11. Conclusion
Institutions
• Time for Experimentation
• Support higher level
qualifications
• Guide AND enable digital
fluency
Policy
• Engage Stakeholders
• Roadmap to Atlas
• Sustainable & Transforming
• Horizon and UNESCO

12. Challenges
• Review with Participants
• Widen research
• Grounded Theory?
Over to you…
Authors own photo – Approach to Moldoveanu