As part of SUNY’s Communities of Practice Fall Convening at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, Trudi Jacobson and Tom Mackey were invited to discuss the Innovative Instruction Technology Grants (IITGs) that funded several metaliteracy projects. This year’s event explored New Models for Enrollment, Retention & Completion (ERC) and emphasized cross-institutional collaborations. Tom and Trudi presented a poster about their work with the Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative and discussed their experience with the SUNY IITG program.

Christine Paige, Kelsey O’Brien, Alena Roddick and Tom Mackey

Metaliteracy was featured as part of two different panel presentations at this year’s Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Accelerate Conference in Orlando Florida. Kelsey O’Brien, Christine Paige, Alena Roddick and Tom Mackey conducted an interactive panel presentation Accelerating Metaliterate Learning with a Global MOOC and Digital Badging System. The presenters explored the SUNY-wide Innovative Instruction Technology Grant (IITG) to develop an Open EdX MOOC Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World, an initiative developed with Co-Principal Investigator Trudi Jacobson. A second panel presentation at the conference entitled Digital Ethics in a Post-Truth Society led by Nicola Marae Allain, included contributions from Enrico Bocciolesi, Diane Gal, and Tom Mackey who discussed metaliteracy in a post-truth world.The slide deck for the panel presentation about the Open EdX project is available via this blog post and Slideshare.net.

In a program sponsored by the Albany Public Library, metaliteracy was discussed in a panel about Fake News and Real Teens: Problems and Possibility on Sunday, November 4. The event celebrated the start of Media Literacy Week and featured panelists Tom Mackey, Professor of Arts and Media, SUNY Empire State College, Amanda Fries, Times Union reporter, and Heather Kovar, CBS News anchor and reporter. This conversation among journalists, educators, and members of the local community explored how to deal with and arrive at solutions for false and misleading information online. Students from Youth FX, an Albany-based media arts program that empowers young people to produce digital films and media arts, also participated in the discussion and provided excellent insights throughout the event. Metaliteracy was examined as one of the ways to address the challenges of the post-truth world, a theme consistent with the forthcoming book by Mackey & Jacobson for ALA Publishing entitled Metaliterate Learning for the Post Truth World.

The Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative has been awarded a top tier $60,000 Innovative Instruction Technology Grant (IITG) to develop a new metaliteracy MOOC, Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World. This new Open EdX MOOC builds on the themes examined in the forthcoming book edited by Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson for ALA Publishing entitled Metaliterate Learning for the Post Truth World. This freely available learning environment will provide instructional resources for global educators and learners to explore the complex set of issues related to the post-truth world, including confirmation bias, false and misleading information in textual and visual forms, the changing understanding of expertise, as well as concerns about privacy, security, and safety in online environments. The Open EdX MOOC will be developed from a metaliteracy perspective to advance strategies for success that ultimately empower metaliterate learners to apply metacognitive reflection, promote collaboration, support active participation, and build communities of trust.

As part of this Open EdX MOOC SUNY Empire State College will offer a for-credit version of Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World that incorporates the Open EdX MOOC into the learning experience. Tom Mackey’s DIGA-3996-01 Special Topics: Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World is a 4-credit fully online course that will also be available as a face-to-face seminar-style group study at the Empire State College location at 21 British American Boulevard in Latham, New York. This special topics course will be offered in January 2019 at SUNY Empire State College and will prepare learners to successfully complete the Open EdX MOOC, which launches in March 2019.

Principal Investigators for this IITG project are Tom Mackey, Professor of Arts and Media at SUNY Empire State College and Trudi Jacobson, Distinguished Librarian and The University at Albany. Co-Principal Investigators include Kelsey O’Brien, information literacy librarian at UAlbany, Christine Paige, director of instructional design at SUNY Empire. The team also includes content developers Nicola Allain, Lisa Stephens, Thomas Palmer, Christine Fena, and Allison Hosier, as well as Videographer David Dickinson, and Instructional Designer Alena Rodick.

The new Open EdX MOOC builds on the three previous metaliteracy MOOCs developed by the Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative, and examined in the Open Praxis essay Metaliteracy as Pedagogical Framework for Learner-Centered Design in Three MOOC Platforms: Connectivist, Coursera and Canvas. Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World will feature videos, multimedia, and interactive learning activities that support reflection, collaboration, and participation while applying the metaliteracy learning characteristics and advancing the metaliteracy learner roles to address the challenges of the post-truth society. This project will also expand the metaliteracy digital badging system to apply similar themes.