Dr Jane Secker – @jsecker
Andra Fry and Sarah Ney
London School of Economics and Political Science

The Student Ambassadors for Digital Literacy (SADL) programme has run for three years, aiming to develop and enhance students’ information and digital skills, encouraging peer-to-peer support and fostering student-staff partnerships. This year we had a cohort of over forty undergraduate students from across the disciplines. Nine students who finished SADL in previous years became Senior Ambassadors, employed to support the team in running workshops and coordinating student led group projects. Last year’s evaluation revealed that more effective support can be offered through student-staff partnerships (Lau, Secker & Bell, 2015). This year we have used the Residents and Visitors framework (White and Le Cornu, 2011) to inform our evaluation and to examine how students’ use institutional tools and social media.

The programme includes four workshops which introduce students to a range of technologies, social media and apps that help them to find, manage and share information for their personal and professional lives. The programme aims to encourage a critical use of technology and provide students with lifelong learning skills. It focuses on a range of social media tools students can use to share and manage information. Students are also encouraged to blog about their experiences. The workshops are student-focused and discursive to encourage reflection and sharing of experiences by staff students and Senior Ambassadors.

This workshop provides an opportunity to reflect on themes related to building and sustaining successful student-staff partnerships and to come up with practical ideas and tips on how to achieve this using social media tools. The themes are drawn from Jisc’s viewpoint cards (Jisc, 2015a) from their student-staff partnerships guide (Jisc, 2015b). Most of the session will take the format of a “learning café” where participants will form groups and spend 10 minutes at each of the four tables. Each table will represent a theme. Each group will have a “roadmap” (digital or physical) on which they will add the ideas and tips for encouraging students’ critical use of social media. One participant will be in charge of completing the roadmap for the group. Presenters will act as facilitators, moving around tables to provide help, ask questions, and familiarise themselves with the main outcomes of the discussions.

We conclude by reflecting on the value of White and Le Cornu (2011) residents and visitors framework. We consider whether this is a useful lens for evaluating students’ digital literacies and use of social media. We will present an analysis of our student behaviour according to this framework. Participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences and discuss how this framework might be a useful tool for evaluating social media teaching programmes.

References:

Jisc (2015a) Developing successful student-staff partnerships. Available at: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/developing-successful-student-staff-partnerships (Accessed: 21 March 2016).

Jisc (2015b) Viewpoint cards. Available at: http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/6142/1/VIEWPOINT_CARDS_ALL.pdf (Accessed: 21 march 2016).

Lau, Doriane, Secker, Jane and Bell, Maria (2015) Student ambassadors for digital literacy (SADL): evaluation & impact report. Learning Technology and Innovation (LTI), London, UK. Available online at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/63357/ [accessed 5 March 2016]

White, D. and Le Cornu, A. (2011) Visitors and residents: a new typology for online engagement. First Monday. 16 (9). http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3171/3049 [accessed 5 March 2016]