Understanding Online Learners' Media Literacy for Effective Training of Online Instructors

Introduction

With the introduction of online courses to education, it was imagined that this form of education would be a means of providing access to education to everyone (Khan, 2012). This was especially thought to be true with the introduction of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which are online courses that are free and available to everyone. In addition to making education accessible to everyone, online courses were thought to provide an opportunity for autonomous learning. For example, this was the idea behind the free online public schools for K12 students in Pennsylvania (see http://www.pacyber.org/). The flexibility of the online course schedule for the students allows them to be able to participate in other activities while taking classes. Moreover, learning in an online context allows learners a safe space for learning. For example, English as Second Language (ESL) students in face-to-face university classes may feel uncomfortable taking part in class discussions because of their oral proficiency skills. Threaded discussions in an online course allow these learners more time to process the content and respond to the content that better reflects their understanding of the material. So, accessibility, flexibility, and comfort are three of the many benefits of online education.

However, in addition to the benefits of online education, there are many challenges. For example, because of the increase in online courses being offered in academic contexts, the reliance on highly developed academic literacy skills to learn course content, the complex nature of multiple literacies, the negotiation of multiple technologies and the corresponding media literacy can be quite challenging for online learners (Leu, Everett-Cacopardo, Zawilinski, McVerry, O’Byrne, 2012; Wolfe, 2000). Moreover, as online instructors, we may think our online learners are more digitally literate than they are because they are millennials or generation Z and learned with technology from a very young age (Prensky, 2001; Scott, 2016). While our online learners may have a certain level of technological savvy that surpasses our own, they may not possess the media literacy skills needed to be successful in online courses. This is exemplified to some degree from examining the data collected from what happens in an Internet minute (Desjardins, 2017). From this analysis, one can see the variety of technology that is used for non-academic purposes, such as e-commerce, email, and social media. A further examination of media literacy in an academic context leads us to consider the work of Nicholas Carr (2008; 2010; 2017). He has argued that reading online decreases our ability to read carefully and with discernment, the kind of critical reading required when reading academically. Consequently, it is necessary to shed light on how our online learners develop these media literacy practices in our online courses. This will increase our understanding as online instructors of the academic socialization experiences they go through in the online learning community which, more and more, is part of the students’ educational experiences. Additionally, the media literacy expectations in our courses are important considerations when effectively designing and delivering them.