Tag Archives: Digital Dexterity

Day 5 of Championing the Digital Dexterity Framework Virtual Festival – Gaming together to digitally connect

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By Sarah Howard, Associate Director, Library, Queensland University of Technology, Kat Cain, Manager Digital Literacy Programs, Deakin University Library and Nica Tsakmakis, Senior Librarian, Library Academic and Research Services, Australian Catholic University

Friday often brings with it work fatigue and dimming of enthusiasm. We have been staring at our computer screens for countless hours all week. Sure we need to, but we also have to balance that with digital wellbeing. Luckily the final day of the CAUL Digital Dexterity virtual festival landed and boy did it revive us! 

via GIPHY

What’s more – it clearly responded to the Digital Identity and Wellness area within our CAUL Digital Dexterity Framework.  

The session kickstarted with a fun presentation by Deakin Library’s Jane Miller. Jane shared real practice examples of games or other activities that have facilitated Library team building and group development. Fantastically, Jane’s tips and tricks had broad applicability despite the diversity of participant contexts. It’s amazing how a children’s game when used with adults builds negotiation, cooperation, imagination and having fun.

The opportunity to explore together online games Deakin Library has used was invaluable. These included Mentimeter, online jigsaw puzzles, and 9truths. Jane even demonstrated how to host a trivia game without the use of a program. At the end of the session participants shared their own favourite games through mentimeter poll. The collated list of games will be published soon, but it was clear that board game arena was a favourite.

Throughout the day we discovered so many benefits of workplace gaming. What stood out was the growing need for virtual socialising in our post-Covid work world. Games and activities help strengthen all types of teams, including the high performing teams who have those online awkward silences.

If you missed the session watch the recording below. Do take some time out of your day and take a peek at what was shared. You won’t regret it!

DigiDex – Championing the CAUL Digital Dexterity Framework – Day 5, Friday 12 February 2021

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Day 4 of Championing the Digital Dexterity Framework Virtual Festival – Using collaboration to understand engagement with OERs

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by Susan Vickery, Associate University Librarian, Macquarie University

Day 4 of the CAUL Digital Dexterity Virtual Festival explored the concept of Open Education Resources in Higher Education with Sarah Lambert sharing some of the findings from the research related to Australia Open textbooks as Social Justice, a study funded by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE).

Whilst the affordability benefits and accessibility options are easily identified as incentives for the use of Open Education Resources, Sarah’s presentation explored the opportunity of OER practice to incorporate diverse perspectives and collaboratively create/curate more inclusive range of learning resources. Sarah also reported that the research identified that some Australian academics may be more ready than we realise with frustration over dated content and limited access conditions associated with commercially produced texts. OER offers a solution to deliver current content that can easily be updated to grow with the knowledge of that field.

So how do we translate that understanding back to our own institutions where some of us may already be worried about the feasibility of convincing our administration that whilst using OER makes perfect sense, are they equally supportive of our academics also “giving it away” for free?

The second part of the Day 4 Digital Dexterity program gave us the opportunity to workshop this together. In teams we explored what we could do in reality to help bring our teaching and learning partners along in the understanding of the wider benefits of collaborating in the practice of Open Education. Led enthusiastically by Kristy Newton (Digital Literacies Coordinator, University of Wollongong) the groups employed a design thinking methodology (on speed) to step through the first few phases: Empathise – Define – Ideate – Prototype – Test.  

persona: Melanie Chang (Undergraduate Student) ● Summary of Studies: Melanie worked really hard during her VCE to get a high ATAR in order to study dentistry. Melanie has a family history in dentistry, her father and uncle are both practicing dentists. Before the COVID-19 lockdown, Melanie was only able to buy a couple of her textbooks (in print), as the cost of her textbooks range from $200-$500. During the lockdown Melanie returned home to Melbourne, this meant her study relied on her teachers making sure all necessary resources were available online. Chapters from textbooks were uploaded to the LMS by teachers for students to access. Certain textbooks were not able to be provided online as this breached copyright, this led to students sharing PDF copies of chapters through email. All the PDF scans were in black and white, which made it difficult for students to identify symptoms relating to gum disease, infected teeth, etc. Melanie raised this issue with her teacher and the PDFs were uploaded again in colour, this resulted in a delay in vital information required for Melanie's studies. Melanie’s demanding course schedule means she has no spare time for causal work, thus her parents are supporting her financially. Melanie finds it difficult to ask her parents to buy textbooks on top of paying her rent. Melanie feels it is especially hard to justify the purchase of textbooks that are only going to be used for one semester and as the curriculum is changing next year, there is no option to sell the textbooks to next year’s dentistry students. ● Icon Info: ○ Lives in Bendigo on campus in a single room with shared amenities with 11 other students ○ Basic Digital Skills, can navigate social media really well and use basic Microsoft software. ○ Collaborative Learner – Able and willing to try new things with friends. ○ Spends most of their time studying ○ Likes catching up with friends outside of class, running, yoga, reading books on her Kindle. ● Key Factors(Quotes): ○ “I missed the initial library sessions about how to search to find materials, but have picked up some skills using the pre-recorded content and additional resources added to the help guides. It took me awhile to get the basics and I am sure I am still missing heaps of online resources, but you don’t know what you are missing out on I suppose”. ○ “It is really hard not having all your resources in folders waiting for you to use like we did in high school, it is so time consuming searching through databases and library search for good quality items we can use.”

With the help of personas, each team collaborated to brainstorm and identify the needs of academic and students and then define how OERs might meet those needs. At the end of the two hour session we had collectively developed a range of practical ideas and strategies including potential assessment tasks that facilitated students to co-create lists of OERs to complement assigned readings.  

The beauty of this exercise was a enthusiastic high-energy demonstration that through collaboration – surely one of the lynch pins of Open Education – the groups were able to collectively understand and unpack the pain points and related clients’ needs, and creatively identify possible solutions that might influence engagement and uptake of OERs.    

DigiDex – Championing the CAUL Digital Dexterity Framework – Day 4, Thursday 11 February 2021

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Welcome!

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Welcome, everyone, to the new Digital Dexterity blog! 

This is actually only my second-ever time writing for a blog, so please bear with me.  Part of Digital Dexterity is trying new things – maybe only one new thing.  But you’ll find that the more things you try (see our forthcoming ’23 Things’ post), the more confident you will be! 

What’s Digital Dexterity? 

In February 2019, the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) launched their Digital Dexterity framework.  The framework consists of six elements  

  • digital identity and wellbeing 
  • information, media and data literacies 
  • collaboration, communication and participation 
  • digital creation, problem solving and innovation 
  • Information Communications Technology (ICT) proficiency and productivity 
  • digital learning and development 

More than just Digital Literacy, Digital Dexterity is about developing the skills that are necessary to thrive at all levels in our increasingly digital world. 

Graphic of the Digital Dexterity Framework, including all six elements Description automatically generated

Who are we? 

Sponsored by CAUL and supported by the team at CAVAL, the Digital Dexterity Community of Practice (DigiDex CoP) are a group of enthusiastic, multi-disciplined library professionals from across the tertiary sector with a mission – to build our own capabilities around Digital Dexterity and to share our knowledge with our fellow library professionals and our user communities. 

Why a blog? 

We take a hands-on ‘learning by doing’ approach to Digital Dexterity. Tech is changing all the time, and being able to respond dextrously and leverage all the tools available to us requires us to have a growth mindset, to be adaptable and work collaboratively across our professional communities.   

We want the blog to be like a digital version of the Digital Dexterity Community of Practice, where we can share our ideas, experiences and expertise.  It’s about reflecting the wide variety of activities and knowledge that library professionals demonstrate on a daily basis, and sharing new skills and tools in a practical way so we (and our users!) can benefit.  And, like all our initiatives, it’s about giving members of the Community of Practice the opportunity to work collaboratively, form new professional connections and learn new skills.  

Over the next year we will be posting approximately every month.  Upcoming posts include Open Education Resources (OER) from RMIT Library, Curtin University Library’s ’23 Things’ campaign, a series of Libguide how-tos, and ‘What the heck? Wednesday’ where we explore the weird and wonderful world of digital library tools.  Look out for guest posts from the GLAM sector and other areas of the industry too. 

Want to get involved?  

Great! We come from CAUL and the Council of New Zealand University Librarians (CONZUL) member libraries across New Zealand and Australia. Champions are currently nominated by their organisation and usually receive a time allowance for our obligations to the Community of Practice. 

If you’re interested in becoming a member of the Community of Practice, get in touch with your local Champion to discuss, or if you’re not sure who they are, drop us a line at DigitalDexterity@caval.edu.au to learn more. 

What’s next? 

Watch out for our upcoming ALIA satellite events on February 1, 2, 3, 11 and 12 2021, and keep reading! 

Authors: Ruth Cameron, University of Newcastle, and Emily Pyers, Federation University