This document discusses innovating curriculum through social media and technology. It notes that knowledge becomes outdated faster, there is more knowledge than can fit in a curriculum, and core skills are changing. This clashes with academia's traditional model of one-to-many broadcasting of finalized knowledge by authoritative teachers. However, social media allows for user-generated content, small-scale sharing, open works in progress, and networking. The document suggests ways to use social media like wikis, blogs and Twitter to develop curriculum collaboratively, crowdsource lecture questions, and make assignments social processes with student-created content and peer feedback. Issues like ethics, digital skills, and access are also noted.

1. LAIBS Learning and Teaching
Conference
Innovating our curriculum through
social media and technology
Dr Helen Webster,
Anglia Learning and Teaching
Dr Debbie Holley,
Dept of Education

2. Why do we need to innovate the
curriculum?
• Knowledge gets out of date faster and faster – it
has a shorter half-life
• Knowledge is growing exponentially and there is
more knowledge than can ever be contained in the
curriculum
• The knowledge is out there on the Internet anyway
• Core skills are changing or becoming redundant
• Students are not learning in the way we expect,
sometimes circumventing or undermining processes
All of this has something to do with digital
technology

3. A Clash of Two Cultures
Question:
What annoys/
irritates/frustrates you most
about your students’ use of
Digital Technology in their
Learning?

4. Clash of Two Cultures
Academia Digital, Social Media
• Teacher-created, student
consumed
• Large scale broadcast
• Authority, one-to-many
• Final, authoritative version
• Closed, determined
• Individual lone scholar
• Plagiarism, possession of ideas
• Academic Text (some images)
• User-created and consumed
‘produser’
• Small scale narrowcast
• Peer, many-to-many
• Early release, perpetual beta
• Open, emergent
• Networked, collaborative
• Frictionless creation and
sharing
• Multi-media, multi genre

7. URL available on request as it contains a rude word!

8. Synergy of Two Cultures
Digital Social Media Education
• User-created and consumed
‘produser’
• Small scale narrowcast
• Peer, many-to-many
• Early release, perpetual beta
• Open, emergent
• Networked, collaborative
• Frictionless creation and
sharing
• Multimedia
• Student as active partner in
learning
• Tailored, personalised learning
• Collaborative, constructivist
• Assess process, not product
• Dynamic, creative curriculum
• Peer learning
• Capturing and sharing
learning
• Multimodal learning

9. Digital Openness
Think creatively…
Affordances and technological determinism
Vs Emergent, creative use in tune with digital culture
and good pedagogy

10. Digital Technology
Are we talking about…
• Using technology to enhance
how we teach, learn and
assess? (do things differently)
• Reviewing how and what we
teach, how and what students
learn, in a world which is
altered by technology? (do
different things, flip the
classroom!)

11. Definitions: Social Media
• Web 2.0
• User generated content*
• Networked and shared, many to many
• *Content:
▫ Multimedia (including text)
▫ Metadata and curation
▫ Edits, additions and comments

12. What do you create as teacher?
Assessment
design
Curriculum
Presentation
materials
(Annotated)
Reading
lists
Guides and
Handbooks
Handouts
Assessment
criteria and
feedback
What students
create:
• Notes from
teaching and
reading
• Anything they
need to process
learning (more
notes)
• Assignments

13. Some ideas….
Bibliograwiki
• Discussion forum/Twitter suggest search
terms, likely formats and databases,
crowdsource suggestions
• Mendeley/Delicious Collate and curate a
reading list, tag with metadata
• Wiki Summarise and annotate reading list
• Blog Critique articles/books
• Wiki Synthesise debates and trends

14. Some ideas…
Hack the Lecture
• Wiki develop the curriculum and keep it updating
throughout
• Twitter/Discussion Forum Crowdsource questions and
topics to cover in module/lecture
• Powerpoint/Dropbox students research and create a
slide each
• (Lecture, using student-created slides) Looking things
up on mobile devices
• Blog/Twitter/mindmap software Liveblog or livetweet
the lecture
• Wiki/Storify lecture notes into a collaborative version
• Youtube/lecturecapture/Audacity Student-edited clips
of the main points of the lecture (audio/video)

15. Some ideas…
The social assignment
• Wiki/discussion forum Students suggest and
discuss assignments, materials and assessment
criteria
• Blog: Students select assignment, and blog weekly
progress:
▫ Question analysis
▫ Essay plan
▫ Search strategies and reading notes
▫ Rough draft
▫ Revised draft
▫ Anticipated feedback
▫ Response to feedback
• Students share exemplars and annotate

16. Issues:
Ethics and legality
Digital natives or digital divide?
Opportunity to develop Digital Literacy