John S. O'Connor
Dean, New Century College
George Mason University

Jeremy J. Shapiro
Senior Consultant, Academic Information Projects
The Fielding Institute

James B. Young
Librarian & Director of TAC Project, New Century College,
George Mason University

ABSTRACT: The informatization of higher education and the development of on-line learning communities have created new literacy needs: for information literacy per se and for the cognitive and social skills that enable learners not only to function effectively in technology-rich environments but to become effective members of technologically based communities. Representatives from the Fielding Institute and George Mason University discuss IT competency in general education as well as the last and hardest information literacy skill-community literacy.

Session Title: IT Literacy for General Education and On-line Community

Shelley K. Hughes
Director, On-Line Academic Environment

Jeremy J. Shapiro
Senior Consultant, Academic Information Projects

The Fielding Institute
2112 Santa Barbara Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93105-3538

Summary Title: On-Line Community Literacy: the last and hardest information literacy skill

While virtual, on-line, academic community has its pluses, especially in overcoming geographical distance and creating new, exciting forms of interaction and learning, it has been accumulating both its detractors and its social and psychological problems, from sexual harassment through "flame wars" to simple time-wasting and information overload. The problems often have to do with behavior in shared spaces. Although occasionally this may consist of outrageously deviant behavior, the more general issue is not knowing how to participate constructively in on-line community. What good is information literacy if it is disconnected from perhaps the only kind of literacy that ultimately counts: knowing how to be responsible member of a community?

The concept of literacy usually takes the individual as a frame of reference: an individual possessing or needing to acquire a set of cognitive skills. But community requires a set of social skills through which the individual is socialized to take a larger-than-individual perspective toward her/himself; and literacy for on-line community requires this perspective to be translated into its IT analogues. For example, an individual may be information-technology literate, in the solitary sense, by virtue of being able to create a document with a word-processing program; but if she does not know how to export it in a file format that can be easily read by others, she is not IT-literate in a community sense. A faculty member may know how to upload a message to an on-line discussion with students she has never met. But if she does not know how to frame that message in a way that takes account of different students' on-line contexts and make them feel that their virtual presence is acknowledged, she is not community/IT-literate.

Community is about sharing -- of assumptions, of context, of culture, of skills, and of knowledge -- about being to perceive oneself and one's own behavior from the perspective of individual others and of the group as a whole, and about being aware of one's impact on others and modifying one's actions in accordance with both anticipated and real impact. In on-line environments, all of these dimensions of community take on unique forms: how one shares, how one knows whether one shares, how one's actions impact on others, how one is perceived by others all have distinctive features in cyberspace as they are mediated by information technologies.

Our experience with the Fielding Institute's on-line academic environment has led us to pay special attention to mental models built into groupware systems and their assumptions about culture and community; corresponding criteria for evaluating software systems that take account of those models and assumptions; developing a complementary relationship between computer-mediated and face-to-face interaction in the same institution; infrastuctural and strategic-planning issues that affect the quality of community but are invisible to the user; the explicit development of community norms and cultural values in the on-line environment; technical skills that facilitate community building; and the role of explicit "on-line culture and community.

Jim Young
Librarian and Director of Technology Across the Curriculum Project
New Century College
George Mason University
MSN 1A6
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444

Summary Title: Information Technology Literacy: Instruction, Assessment, and General Education at New Century College

New Century College (NCC), a competency-based, integrative program at George Mason, is addressing IT literacy from an integrated approach. Information Technology is one of the college’s nine competency areas that students are required to master. As part of NCC, students experience "team-teaching, collaborative projects, emphasis on writing and critical thinking, opportunity for independent study, and experiential learning integrated with the community are all important parts of learning communities" . Students learn a progression of technology skills throughout the first year program and continue their learning in technology-intensive upper level courses. In NCC, students are introduced to the application and use of information technology through a combination of learning modules, hands-on computer laboratories, in or out-of-class assignments and self selected learning opportunities. Learning focuses on the fundamentals of IT and applying IT concepts in integrated assignments and projects. This IT curriculum focuses less on the "nuts and bolts" of specific computer applications and more on ways to apply information technology to assignments or projects.

In reality, most universities are not organized like New Century College. Many universities are still organized around the "technology requirement" where students are required to take a particular technology course. If the university is going to play a strong role in preparing student’s for IT literacy they will need to be a move toward the offering of programs where learning and assessment become more central and student contact with IT is meaningful, sustained and interwoven throughout a student’s chosen program of study.

Becoming information technology literate encompasses making connections, relating concepts from one situation to another, the ability to apply knowledge and appreciate change. The most effective way to evaluate a student’s knowledge – the complex set of skills encompassed in IT literacy – is to offer a battery of closely integrated options where students will be required to demonstrate and articulate their understanding. Assessment should not be limited to classroom assessment techniques or large-scale programmatic assessment. Students should also have wide access to "self-selected" options to assess and certify their knowledge and skills. Moreover, the "assessor" does not always need to be the classroom instructor. Unlike "clean and convenient" multiple choice, machine graded exams, a more holistic approach to assessment will take more time and resources. Assessment should not be limited to a reliance on "numbers". In the end, integrated and multidimensional assessment options should become as pervasive and transparent as information technology itself.

Session Title: IT Literacy for General Education and Online Community

John O’Connor
Dean
New Century College
George Mason University
MSN 5D3
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444

Summary Title: Information Technology Literacy, Faculty Development, and Learning Communities

Defining and assessing Information Technology Literacy has been an important process for faculty development. It has encouraged faculty to face distinctions of skills, competencies and knowledge. It has confronted them to think with their own learning processes as they have learned information technology themselves. It has fostered new ways of creating community that bridges faculty, staff and students.

Originally, Information Technology (IT) was not a required competency in the Integrative Studies degree in New Century College. The thinking was that IT would be so pervasive in teaching, learning, and administration within the college that a formal requirement was unnecessary and that position was a statement of NCC ideals and commitments: you don't have to require something that is assumed. We were naive. Faculty and student experience, aptitude, and interest in IT varied so significantly, we were not able to assume a pervasive use of the tools and knowledge base. There was also external pressure for the degree to recognize explicitly IT as a competency, and have the degree as certification of it.

The resulting faculty and curriculum development projects meant that we had to be clearer about what we meant by Information Technology competency. Jim Young's work and leadership over the past few years has enriched the issues of definition and assessment. It has been one more factor in faculty collaboration and in community-building among professional staff, students, and faculty. Because the subject is still new, challenging, and changing, it creates an atmosphere of "we are in this together"-from wrestling with definitions, requirements, and assessment to actually learning our way in the this new subject. Just as we develop student teams where the grade is dependent on how much the least knowledgeable student in the group learns, so have faculty recognized that they can't opt out if the are part of an instructional team. Of course, that creates tension; it also creates community. It also creates opportunities for librarians and learning technology staff to become more equal partners in the academic enterprise. Within NCC, there is not the hierarchy of roles and distinctions of class that can permeate the academy. There are multiple reasons for this integration, but the centrality of IT-and our attempts to create complex definitions and assessment --is one of the more important reasons. In addition, because of the range of ability and interest in students, they too become partners. This term, we have students offering supplemental workshops in web authoring. The students offering the workshops want their peers to be able to do more than we are teaching. This creates new opportunities and possibilities for collaboration that profoundly enhance our goals for learning communities that extend beyond class walls and times.