Metaliteracy Examined in HigherEdJobs Leadership Publication

Posted on November 13, 2018 by metaliteracy1

Trudi Jacobson and Tom Mackey co-authored a feature article entitled Why You Should Fight for Metaliteracy on Your Campus for the HigherEdJobs leadership newsletter. This publication is sent to approximately 40,000 subscribers at the executive level, including presidents, provosts, and deans. The article was written to support all educators interested in applying metaliteracy in a wide range of disciplines and institutional contexts to advance metaliterate learning. As Jacobson and Mackey (2018) argue in this new essay:

Metaliteracy provides a model for thinking and knowing in a social media age that is fraught with misleading and downright false information from a wide range of questionable sources. Metaliterate learners are developed across many academic disciplines through teaching and learning situations that promote self-direction, collaboration, participation, and metacognitive thinking. This approach requires us to work together and innovate, applying the metaliteracy goals and learning objectives, and supporting institutional partnerships among key stakeholders such as faculty, librarians, and instructional designers.

As noted in this essay, collaborative conversations among key stakeholders at the campus level are ideal to advance metaliteracy initiatives. If you have questions about how to get these conversations started or to share innovative programs already in place, feel free to reach out directly to Trudi Jacobson at tjacobson@albany.edu or Tom Mackey at Tom.Mackey@esc.edu.

On-Demand Version of Coursera Metaliteracy MOOC Launches in December 2016!

Posted on November 27, 2016 by metaliteracy1

We are set to launch an on-demand version of our Cousera Metaliteracy MOOC entitled Metaliteracy: Empowering Yourself in a Connected World in December 2016! If you missed this MOOC the first time around or would like to discover this course for your own learning or as a resource for instruction, register now for this on-demand version taught by Tom Mackey, Trudi Jacobson, Kelsey O’Brien, Michele Forte, and Allyson Kaczmarek. This course will provide a dynamic exploration of metaliteracy through videos, animations, interviews, readings, and digital images, all developed by members of the metaliteracy learning collaborative from two schools within the State University of New York (SUNY), The University at Albany and Empire State College. Learners will participate in peer assessments and contribute to online discussions related to such topics as the metaliteracy model, creating and sharing information, understanding intellectual property and the ethical use of information, understanding how information is packaged and shared, participating as a global contributor, creating and curating information, and developing metacognitive reflection. While this course is focused primarily on metaliteracy, learners and teachers should also explore this MOOC as a way to support information literacy and related literacies such as digital literacy and media literacy. Register now for our December launch. Special thanks to Kelsey O’Brien for working closely with Coursera and our UAlbany/ESC team to transition the first version of this course into the on-demand format!

NMC (New Media Consortium) Horizon Report 2014 for Higher Education and Metaliteracy

Posted on February 9, 2014 by metaliteracy1

The NMC Horizon Report 2014 Higher Education Edition has been released, focusing on higher education technology adoption. In this document, they identify

Key trends accelerating higher education technology adoption
Significant challenges impeding higher education technology adoption
Important developments in educational technology for higher education

Each category includes 6 items, divided into short-, mid-, and longer term time frames. As an example, the key trends that they identify in accelerating higher education technology adoption are:

One to two years

the growing ubiquity of social media

integration of online, hybrid, and collaborative learning

Three to five years

rise of data driven learning and assessment

shift from students as consumers to students as creators

Five or more years

agile approaches to change

evolution of online learning

There are striking connections in this list to metaliteracy. Metaliterate learners will be prepared for, and able to succeed in, situations that develop as a part of these trends.

The section on important developments in educational technology also includes issues that relate very strikingly to the metaliteracy badging system that is under development, including the flipped classroom (I’ve been using a number of the quests and challenges as outside work for my courses, and this strategy has radically changed both student reception and understanding of the material, and my ability to teach beyond basic concepts) and games and gamification.