All set to go

As usual the beginning of any project seems to drag on. While I and the students have been busy thinking about the project, planning and data collection and sandpit event, the bureaucratic formalities of hiring the students has taken its time. We are used to it by now and we have not wasted time.

 

Creating a digital presence

One of the very first things the students were keen on doing was to create a digital presence for the project. Besides the project blog, they felt that we needed to think of new ways to engage with the students. Lessons learnt last year told us that blogs are not the best way to engage and communicate with our undergraduate students. So they have created a twitter and an Instagram account. Both account will allow us to link to other accounts and disseminate our project more wildly. This is, to be honest, a touch scary but worthwhile.

Learning on the job

But there are other very  important reasons why it was the students who started and led on creating a digital presence. Just a few here:

• They will manage the accounts – Anthony will be responsible for the Twitter account and Neill for the Instagram account.
• They will learn about digital literacy as research assistants – By doing so they will need to learn and apply digital literacy skills.
• They will learn how to collaborate and work in a team – This will require them to develop further the communication and working attitude they started developing last year. In doing so, they will need to share with the other members of the team what they have learnt not only by running the accounts but also about how the accounts are used by the target audience and modify them if necessary.

Next steps

Now that we are formally a team, the next step is to start planning the first phase of the data collection. In this phase we want to get a general overview of what students and staff understand by digital literacy and whether they have received any training or support with developing their digital literacy. We are open to be surprised by the findings.