Papers by Jenny S Wakefield
The Teaching Sustainability Mini-Pilot: a Faculty Learning Community Building Curriculum for Students’ Sustainability Thinking
Innovations in higher education teaching and learning, May 27, 2020
Humans have immense impact on our environment and open and ongoing conversations are needed to ge... more Humans have immense impact on our environment and open and ongoing conversations are needed to generate informed actions toward sustainability. A sustainable future must grow from a changed mindset, one of critical thinking, problem-solving, and continuous learning and active practice. In higher education we are uniquely placed to share with students a sustainability-infused curriculum toward such a changed mindset. At Brookhaven College faculty self-selected to participate in a Teaching Sustainability Mini-Pilot during Fall semester 2018. The innovation was initiated to encourage students to become mindful of sustainability, inspired to get involved in sustainability efforts, and to become immersed in satisfactory real-world learning.
Proceedings of the 2012 iConference, Feb 7, 2012
The iCAMP (Information: Curate, Archive, Manage, and Preserve) project is developing a curriculum... more The iCAMP (Information: Curate, Archive, Manage, and Preserve) project is developing a curriculum in digital curation and data management. The project will design and implement four courses using a competency-based curriculum approach. It also integrates principles of sound pedagogy, instructional design, and a learning environment that emphasizes practical training. This paper summarizes the goals and guiding principles behind the curriculum development and instructional design framework.
The Teaching Sustainability Mini-Pilot: a Faculty Learning Community Building Curriculum for Students’ Sustainability Thinking
Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, 2020
Humans have immense impact on our environment and open and ongoing conversations are needed to ge... more Humans have immense impact on our environment and open and ongoing conversations are needed to generate informed actions toward sustainability. A sustainable future must grow from a changed mindset, one of critical thinking, problem-solving, and continuous learning and active practice. In higher education we are uniquely placed to share with students a sustainability-infused curriculum toward such a changed mindset. At Brookhaven College faculty self-selected to participate in a Teaching Sustainability Mini-Pilot during Fall semester 2018. The innovation was initiated to encourage students to become mindful of sustainability, inspired to get involved in sustainability efforts, and to become immersed in satisfactory real-world learning.
We examined a higher education history course where virtual role play was implemented as an assig... more We examined a higher education history course where virtual role play was implemented as an assignment. The course was designed to help students gain an overall understanding of the causes, trajectory, and aftermath of the Cuban Revolution. Assignments included readings and discussions of historical essays and primary sources that were intended to prompt students to think critically about political, cultural, and scholarly debates surrounding the
Routledge eBooks, Feb 17, 2015
We examined a higher education history course where virtual role play was implemented as an assig... more We examined a higher education history course where virtual role play was implemented as an assignment. The course was designed to help students gain an overall understanding of the causes, trajectory, and aftermath of the Cuban Revolution. Assignments included readings and discussions of historical essays and primary sources that were intended to prompt students to think critically about political, cultural, and scholarly debates surrounding the
The purpose of this study was to examine learning preference-the match between learners and learn... more The purpose of this study was to examine learning preference-the match between learners and learning methods-and students' information behaviour in technology-rich information environments. The major question asked was: How will high school students' information behaviour differ by gender and academic interests? A total of 88 students (37 girls, 51 boys) from a predominantly African American high school district in the south of the United States participated in the study. The Integrated Communications Technology Learning (ICTL) survey was used to examine differences in high school students' learning preference for information seeking, information sharing and classroom learning. High school girls and students with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) interest were found to be significantly more positive toward learning in the traditional classroom.
Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, Oct 1, 2013
This research reports findings from a study on information behavior to indicate educationally rel... more This research reports findings from a study on information behavior to indicate educationally relevant activity, such as information seeking and sharing, in technology pervasive information environments of the 21st century. Adult learners who are social media users (n = 147) completed an online learning preference survey battery that included the Social Media Learning scale, the Technology Affinity Survey, the Computer Attitude Questionnaire, and the Information and Communications Technology Learning survey. Findings revealed that 23% of the variance in information seeking behavior for this sample was explained by a multiple linear regression model, based on reported perceptions of creative tendencies, attitude towards school, learning with social media, and degree of daily technology use/immersion. Participants with higher preference for information seeking were found to have more positive attitudes toward school, a stronger sense of having creative tendencies, and a higher preference for learning with social media while they also had a lower preferences for continuous immersion in digital communications. Implications of these findings and future research directions are discussed.
This research reports findings from a study on information behavior for technology pervasive info... more This research reports findings from a study on information behavior for technology pervasive information environments in the 21st century. Social media users (n=147) completed an online Learning Preference survey battery that included the Social Media Learning (SML) scale, the Technology Affinity Survey (TAS), the Computer Attitude Questionnaire (CAQ), and the Information and Communications Technology Learning (ICTL) survey. Findings revealed that 23% of the variance in information seeking behavior, as measured by the Information and Communications Technology Learning survey, can be explained by a linear regression model including the SML scale, creativity and school attitude scales (CAQ), and TAS. Participants with higher ICTL scores for Information Seeking had greater preference for learning with social media, more positive attitudes toward school, higher self-reported creative tendencies, and lower preferences for immersive/always-on attachments to, or affinity for, modern information and communication technologies. Implications of these findings and future research directions are discussed.
Learning and Teaching as Communicative Actions: Transmedia Storytelling
Cutting-edge technologies in higher education, 2013
ABSTRACT This proposal falls under the category Other. As mobile devices are increasingly employe... more ABSTRACT This proposal falls under the category Other. As mobile devices are increasingly employed to support formal and informal learning, theories used to support their use come from traditional sources: information processing, social and radical constructivism, and behaviorist traditions. However, what differentiates these mobile tools from past technologies used for learning is that the primary purpose of the devices and is human communication. This communication can come from text messaging, video learning modules (i.e. Learnist), and many other applications. It is important to employ a theory of learning that recognizes the communication affordances of today’s tools and their ability to support learning discourses by situating learners in meaningful, real world contexts. Further, such a theory should value such discourse as a means to support students as they argue towards shared, intersubjective understandings about the topic at hand. The question then is what theory can be used to support the communication that mobile devices allow as a means of fostering learning. To that end, learning and teaching as communicative actions theory (LTCA) offers one possible avenue (Wakefield, Warren, Alsobrook, 2011). Education is not only a behavioral, cognitive, or social process exclusively; instead, it is all of these at once, expressed as goals we have for student learning. In order to address the fragmenting of worldviews into objectivist, subjectivist, and relativist positions (Bernstein, 1983). The theory of learning and teaching as communicative actions, proposed by Warren and Wakefield (2012), contextualized teaching and learning as activities that have inherent claims to truth requiring critique to generate knowledge that is intersubjectively agreed upon by all participants. Such acts come from the instructional activities and the social discourse that accompanies them. Communicative goals from the teacher generally include providing structural content information and then draw out student responses to confirm understanding. In other goals, the instructor seeks to negotiate or enforce normative rules within the class. Background In establishing LTCA theory, Wakefield, Warren, Rankin et al (2012) claimed that current learning theory frameworks from radical behaviorism to social constructivism in education artificially splinter the holistic experiences of teaching and learning. Further, they note that such differentiations that have driven learning theory to date create false, unproductive distinctions. For example, learning goals can come from state curriculum that has been established through political discourse; instead, they may come from personal goals established for individual students in response to diagnostic testing or evaluation. However, each comes either directly through such actions as writing them down and sharing them, or through the implicit, tacit goals of the specific activities and linkages to assessment. Four particular types of communicative actions are described by the authors: normative, strategic, constative, and dramaturgical. Normative communicative actions most often frame how participants are to take part in learning activities; that is to say, they are acts intended to guide behaviors. With mobile technologies, these are often rules for appropriate use given by instructor. These generally have to do with what students are allowed to use the communication affordances for as a learning tool. For example, with learning activities that require the use of a mobile global positioning system, the instructor would tell students they should turn the device to airplane mode so that the device cannot be used for phone calls or texting with friends during instruction. In today’s schools, strategic communicative actions commonly follow the establishment of these norms. These speech acts are commonly expressed as imperatives, e.g. that learners complete a particular assignments, use particular applications, or engage in particular discourses (Warren & Stein, 2008; Warren, 2011). These acts are the most commonly used learning actions in today’s educational settings and provide only dualistic options. These are a.) accept or b.) reject the presented direction. For example, an instructor may mandate that learners use the Twitter micro-blogging tool with multiple mobile support applications. Constative communicative actions are those in which a participant makes a claim to truth. In this context, learning results from disagreements or truth claims shared between speaker and hearers about what is true or valid knowledge. As consensus about truth emerges through this discourse that students share using, for instance, mobile blog apps or Twitter messages, additional communication is fostered and new arguments expected to yield learning are supported and intersubjective agreement transpires. In dramaturgical communicative actions, learners adopt two worldviews. The first is subjective and we…
Gender Differences and Middle School Students’ Views of Smartphone and Social Media for Learning, Social Connection, and Entertainment
EdMedia: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology, Jun 23, 2014
ABSTRACT Both educators and researchers have lately shown increasing interest in use of mobile de... more ABSTRACT Both educators and researchers have lately shown increasing interest in use of mobile devices and social media for learning. Researchers seek to discover how these technology tools are best used, mostly used, and how they contribute to social presence through collaboration when used in both formal and informal learning environments. Up-to-date, research has, however, focused on university students and their habits. How smartphones and social media are used by the younger generation of current Middle School students in formal and informal settings has not been studied in detail. With this in mind, this survey research looked at Middle School students and their use of these tools for learning, social connection, and entertainment. We share that girls already in their young teens are highly attached to their smartphones, have higher perceptions of social media’s benefits for learning, and also enjoy using social media significantly more than boys.
Digital Scholarship and Impact Factors: Methods and Tools to Connect Your Research
E-Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education, Oct 27, 2014
We examined a higher education history course where virtual role play was implemented as an assig... more We examined a higher education history course where virtual role play was implemented as an assignment. The course was designed to help students gain an overall understanding of the causes, trajectory, and aftermath of the Cuban Revolution. Assignments included readings and discussions of historical essays and primary sources that were intended to prompt students to think critically about political, cultural, and scholarly debates surrounding the
Affect in Online Discourse
Instructors at a southwestern U.S. university sought to foster critical student discourses in sec... more Instructors at a southwestern U.S. university sought to foster critical student discourses in sections of a hybrid/online course. Narrative-seeking activities challenged students to crisscross various online platforms in transmedia navigation—a form of seeking and sharing information and media over multiple platforms. One assignment asked learners to explore global problems related to the United Nations Millennial Development goals of HIV/AIDS and environmental sustainability. Students sought solutions to these multifaceted problems through peer discourse tied to current real-world events as shared through posted relevant news articles. Initially, students expressed only surface-level reflections with little emotional ties to the content; however, throughout the semester, deeper thinking and affective connections became evident, along with a nascent, liberating critique and understanding of the systems responsible for the ill-structured problems to which they were exposed.
Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal, Dec 15, 2011
Our paper examines the design of a course that utilized the real-time information network Twitter... more Our paper examines the design of a course that utilized the real-time information network Twitter to spark reflective thinking and communication based on classroom topics. A major goal was to increase discourse amongst students and enhance learning through encouraging student time on task. The innovation followed guidelines set forth in the Learning and Teaching as Communicative Actions theory to augment student learning experience via more active communication and increased content sharing among students, towards a goal of building a social learning community. In this mixed methods study, we found diverse student perceptions of the use of Twitter; both very positive views of the tool as a means of supporting discourse and those views of the tool having little benefit to student"s own learning. The female students in this study, perceived the tool to significantly more support the social learning community in the interactive environment than did male students.
Designing a Blended Academic Transition Seminar for First-Year University Students
International journal on e-learning, 2016
SM Transmedia for 21st Century Teaching and Learning: Thinking and Communication in a World of Information
RT09 - Measuring Student Attitudes to Learning with Social Media: Validation of the Social Media Learning Scale
Learning and Teaching as Communicative Actions: Applications of the Theory to Mobile Learning
ABSTRACT Transmedia offers a new way of learning: through story shared and distributed over vario... more ABSTRACT Transmedia offers a new way of learning: through story shared and distributed over various media. This paper shares a background to transmedia storytelling and alternate reality games, further proposes a means by which we may create engaging learning and bring thinking skills such as metacognitive reflection into the higher education classroom through communicative actions, immersive transmedia, and games. These new media-based approaches may improve self-regulated learning skills, group and individual problem solving, and the social construction of knowledge. Included is a design example, which educators may revise and transform to use within their own subject. The theory of learning and teaching as communicative actions supports the design.
DDL-R05 IT Forum: Social Exchange, Communication, and Learning over a Listserv in the Age of Globalization
Springer eBooks, 2015
This research paper explores middle school student attitudes towards learning with technology and... more This research paper explores middle school student attitudes towards learning with technology and proposes a design-based approach to formulating instruction that includes innovative classroom technology use with computers and communications technologies placed in the hands of students. The intent of this research is to advance practice and theory on student-centered use of information and communications technology (ICT), going beyond the implementation of school technologies for delivery of lessons and data processing. The focus of the recommended design-based approach is teaching and learning that provides opportunities for student-driven ICT use in the classroom, including transmedia navigation for classroom activities that encourage students to think, interact with instructional content, and engage in transformative communications.
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Papers by Jenny S Wakefield