Mid-South Instructional Technology Conference
Teaching, Learning, & Technology
The Connected Classroom
April 7-9, 2002
Collaborating Online to Teach Information and Multimedia Literacy
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By: Lori Buchanan, Ted Jones, DeAnne Luck |
Abstract
A graduate communications course in multimedia literacy uses a completely online environment to assemble faculty and curriculum resources normally unavailable in traditional classrooms. Guided by a teacher/coordinator, a librarian teaches information literacy by examining internet copyright and fair use issues, ethics, and the evaluation of free- and fee-based materials. A webmaster teaches website design principles and management for group projects, and an author from another state beta-tests a new web portfolio text with class members.
Description
A graduate communications course in multimedia literacy uses a completely online environment to assemble faculty and curriculum resources normally untapped in traditional classrooms.
Guided by a teacher/coordinator, a librarian teaches information literacy by examining internet copyright, fair use issues, ethics, and the evaluation of free- versus fee-based materials. Course content consists of readings provided via the WWW. Students discuss the information and issues presented in the readings by means of threaded discussion questions. Throughout the course, points are assigned for each question answered. Feedback to student responses is posted weekly by the instructor. A final information literacy assignment, an annotated bibliography of three sources related to the students' development of their individual web portfolios, ties the information literacy content and evaluation criteria directly to student research.
As the learning of HTML and multimedia creation tools is not an objective of this course, a webmaster teaches multimedia literacy by having students study website design and management guidelines then work in groups to create websites. Students are taught usability principles and each group applies them by creating a graphical blueprint for a website of their choosing. Blueprints include a mission statement, a target audience, a description of the website content, an organizational strategy, and a navigational scheme. Groups must create content unique to the web by studying writing style and hypermedia links and producing 15-20 pages for their websites. Threaded discussion questions via the web and instructor feedback to each group provide guidance in the development and revision of each of the above steps.
A final project for each student is the creation of an individual web portfolio of work for this class and other artifacts appropriate for inclusion in such a portfolio. The text for writing the web portfolio is by an author from another state who will use threaded discussion questions to guide student work. The web portfolio provides a capstone project for the information and multimedia principles learned and demonstrated in the class.
Proceeding