Nov 01 | Week 8
The article ‘DIY Media Creation’ by Fields et al (2014), tells us that Young adults are motivated in school settings when they feel in charge of their learning, able to set their own goals, demonstrate an interest in course content and feel intrinsically motivated. However, a traditional school environment for some may be challenging to promote this self-driven motivation, rather, the authors argue that evidence exists of higher student motivation when they begin to engage with digital literacies. Students outside of school are constantly involved in online spaces that allow them to network around projects that they enjoy. These DIY projects can involve drawing, programming and writing. Students are able to collaborate together on these spaces and provide each other with constructive back and forth feedback. They also have the ability to like and share across different social media tools which provides them greater satisfaction. The article provides examples of these DIY communities (Figment and Scratch) where participants share their writing or programming codes and connect with others for a common goal. After reading these articles, I decided to experiment a bit in my own classroom. In my business Leadership course we were discussing various challenges that exists in the workplace. We watched Office Space together and we started an online forum where students would write down the various workplace challenges they saw in the movie. Once everyone had written down the challenges, they also needed to select 3 people to further the conversation and provide feedback on what their peers have written. I noticed that the engagement was much higher than the traditional approach of asking students to comment during a traditional lesson. I saw students asking each other questions on the forum, sharing their personal work stories and providing other Youtube links of similar instances. I noticed that suddenly an online community was created by the students, where I as the teacher did not have to fully direct. They were very satisfied with receiving their peer’s feedback and further continuing on the discussions. References: Fields, D. A., Magnifico, A. M., Lammers, J. C., & Curwood, J. S. (2014, September). DIY Media Creation. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(1), 19-24. doi:10.1002/jaal.331 |
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