Vision of the Future, LIBE 477: Increasing Engagement with Digital Learning Tools
I work in a school district that has provided access to over 60 different digital learning tools for our staff and students to use as learning and instructional materials. Access to these resources is provided through each school’s library learning commons. There is a shared username and password that is distributed at the beginning of each year to each student and staff member. However, student and staff usage of these resources at my school remains low in comparison to other schools (according to our district’s library administrator during a recent pro-d workshop. Precise numbers were not provided).
How can we encourage students and staff to make these digital learning tools (DLT) their first stop when they are looking for learning information/materials?
To know how to encourage greater engagement and usage, we must first understand why this is important.
Digital learning is essential to our students’ futures. Digital information technology and tools are omnipresent in our society, and students must be digitally literate for their future. The Toronto District School Board noted in their standards for Information and Communication Technologies that Blooms Taxonomy was updated in 2008 to include higher order thinking skills that are developed digital resources and learning. Students will need to be proficient in these skills (apply, analyze, evaluate, create) to be employable and to participate in our increasingly digital world.
Digital learning empowers our students. The use of DLTs sharpens students critical thinking skills. The open-ended questions that students can explore with DLTs teaches decision making and self-directed learning skills that are more permanent and independent than the temporary memorization of textbooks. Students learn how to identify what information they need to learn, find and use appropriate resources, apply information to the question, and evaluate feedback. (Panworld, 2017)
Digital learning increases student engagement. DLTs use engaging methods such as gamification, peer education, teamwork, storytelling, and problem solving to share information and pique deeper curiosity within students’ minds. By using these methods, DLTs help students see the question and information in greater context than traditional resources because students are participating in memorable and interactive learning activities. (Panworld, 2017)
What are the barriers to student and staff usage of Digital Learning Tools?
Cost. A 2020 study (Tosh, Doan, Woo, Henry), found that two thirds of teachers report expense-related barriers to using digital materials- mostly the cost of enough electronic devices for wide-spread school use, the cost of the DLT itself, and/or the expense of students’ home access. However, this study was focused surveyed teachers in the United States of America. In the situation of my school, the DLTs are paid for by the school district, not the teachers themselves. Additionally, my school has 3 iPad carts of 28 iPads for student learning as well as 1 laptop cart of 30 MacBooks which are shared between 18 divisions. Access to these carts is shared among a pod of teachers, which allows for easy scheduling. On top of the school-based carts, teachers are also able to borrow sets of 7 iPads from the district’s technology department for the entirety of the school year. Cost and device access is not a probable barrier for my school.
Memory. When I surveyed my colleagues at our recent staff meeting, 13 of our 20 classroom teachers said that they forget about the DLTs as the year progresses. Our teacher-librarian showcases and demonstrates how access the different resources through the library learning commons at the beginning of the year, but I believe that many teachers forget simply due to their high workloads every September. Since the teachers forget about the DLTs, they are unable to encourage their students to make use of them too.
To mitigate this, I propose that during the regularly scheduled ‘Library’ portion of each staff meeting, the teacher-librarian takes a few minutes to highlight a particular DLT available to staff. Our staff is also quite competitive, so the teacher-librarians can increase engagement by creating a short activity or issuing a challenge to the staff to get the teachers using the resource.
How to. Another barrier that came to light during our recent staff meeting is the actual method of using the DLT. Teachers already find themselves to be short on time and figuring out how to use the different resources takes up additional time.
To that end, I have started to create a series of instructional videos about each DLT. Some videos will focus on the staff-specific tools and others will focus on the student tools. Each video will be uploaded to the ‘Library Learning Commons’ tab of our communication platform (currently Microsoft Teams) to allow for easy access at any time during the school year and for discussion or questions about using the resources. These videos can also be shown during the staff meetings when the teacher-librarian highlights a DLT.
The student-focused videos can be shown during a class's learning times with the teacher-librarians. The introductory video can also be shown during the class's library orientation at the beginning of the year, and a challenge activity, such as a scavenger hunt, would accompany the viewing of the video. If the teacher-librarians wish, they can even create stations with a challenge for each resource that students complete during the orientation.
(Normally these videos would not be posted to YouTube, but for the purposes of this sharing this vision project, the first three videos of this series have been temporarily uploaded there).
The above video is to show both teachers and students how to access the digital learning tools.
The above video is intended to show students how to access World Book.
Benefits of Digital Learning Over Traditional Education Methods. Panworld. (2017, April 26). Retrieved June 16, 2022, from http://www.panworldeducation.com/2017/03/23/benefits-of-digital-learning-over-traditional-education-methods/
TDSB ICT standards - Toronto District School Board. (n.d.). Retrieved June 16, 2022, from https://schoolweb.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/elearning/docs/ICT%20Standards.pdf
Tosh, K., Doan, S., Woo, A., & Henry, D. (2020, April 16). What Digital Materials do teachers use? RAND Corporation. Retrieved June 16, 2022, from https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2575z17.html
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