Knowledge utilization and technology transfer theory sparks an interest I’ve had since my time in UNT’s College of Information Master of Information Science degree while I was learning to become a librarian. From the beginning this program and after 10 years of librarianship, I have targeted digital literacy as my research topic which pivots on strong technology transfer skills. My research and general areas of curiosity are centered around how we navigate diverse learning systems to create knowledge and how to measure the success of translating learning schemas across diverse learning environments. I am looking at Digital Literacy as the focus of my research and how to improve student success in Higher Education. College readiness measures that only include basic literacies such as math, reading, and writing. Student success in the twenty-first century requires mastery of critical digital literacies. Colleges readiness measures for student success need to measure information seeking, synthesis, and creation across networks of technologies.
Both knowledge management and digital literacy are complex models and ideas, and I want to understand how each model works specifically for the field of education so we can teach learners how to seek connections among ideas, synthesize previous knowledge, active their learning to create new knowledge, and active their learning to create new knowledge and navigate information systems to share back to communities of practice.
My learning philosophy is that learning influences human behavior and therefore what it means to be human by requiring first that basic needs are secured, then that the humans have past experiences that provide perspective of failure, and finally that they have acknowledgement of self. Learning comes through curiosity, reflection, and trials of knowledge application as a means to strive for security about our knowledge, relationships, connections, and place in the world. Therefore the three theoretical pillars of my research are constructivism, experiential learning, and radical behaviorism. Knowledge utilization and technology transfer theory compliments these foundational learning theories as well as Sweller’s cognitive load theory that I have researched and incorporated into my instructional design, technology applications, and future research.
One implementation project that I designed involved engineering a digital technology tool selection web application designed to assist K-16 educators in mapping learning outcomes along the spectrum of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy stages by developing an interactive guide for discovering, categorizing, and classifying different types of educational technology. This application enables educators to develop digital literacy skills by selecting the appropriate digital technology for the learning outcome and the learner. Along with three other researchers, we created an aggregate decision point that funnels from customized constraints into Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy, and beyond to the deliverable, which focuses on the affordances of the tools and their potential alignment to the levels. The problem this tool addresses is that students are accustomed and comfortable engaging diverse digital tools for socializing, playing, shopping but there is a gap and even resistance to using digital tools to discover, design, or create in an online digital learning (ODL) environment.
Another implementation project that I designed involved designing, building, and employing an interdisciplinary Canvas teaching module for academic integrity and remediation focusing on plagiarism as an accidental act. This module uses integrated Prezis and instructional design to teach ethos, citation styles, and information literacy and appropriate technology solutions to the most common forms of plagiarism. The main goal of this module is to create a proactive learning opportunity about plagiarism, academic ethics, and intellectual property rights. The major outcome of the matrix is improved student learning, success, and retention in the university.
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