Facet 3.3: Criticality
Emirec: Emitter and Receptor
In reflecting on this facet, a bit of background from MDL research was necessary. The notion of individuals being consumers and producers of media, or a prosumer as Toffler suggested, involves a fluid application of communicative roles from economic and capitalistic perspectives (Aparici & Garcia-Martin, 2018). This is represented by the term emirec, whereby individuals are viewed as both emitter and receptor of media and communication productions (Aparici & García-Marín, 2018; Hoechsmann, 2019). For participants in this research, this meant making explicit, informed decisions within their knowledge networks and open educational spaces about where, when, how and with whom they wished to create, share, and communicate.When considering MDL in an OEPr experience, there was intentional decision-making by participants relating to open publication of scholarly works and interactions with students. These decisions included limiting submissions or providing reviewer support to open access journals (Lyra, Perseus), to share on specific social media platforms (Leonis, Vega), to engage with students in open discourse spaces e.g. Discord or Twitter rather than within a closed learning management system (Andromeda, Aquila, Orion), or strategically using a course hashtag to send out notices and communications (Andromeda, Izar, Orion). In Dorado’s digital artifact there was an explicit mention of the critical role of media literacy - “proficient users can become more critical and can become media makers. I think media literacies has to include action beyond consumption/viewing” which highlighted the shifting role from consumer to producer of digital productions. For Leonis there was awareness of “the skills, dispositions and practices, which enable you to critically read AND create multimodal digital texts". Aquila emphasized that MDL included
a huge information literacy fake news piece here because we have to decipher media, we have to make meaning from, you know, the media that we consume, but at the same time, we're not just consumers. We have to be able to critically consume and critically create new media (Aquila).
Identity
Digital identity was one of the elements of MDL that was mentioned by many of the participants. Their lived experiences included not only developing their own identities as teacher educators in open, web-based spaces, but the development of their students’ digital identities as new teaching professionals. This involved experience making proactive, explicit and intentional decisions about linguistic identity (Vega), sedimented identities (Leonis) and scholarly identity (Lyra, Perseus, Vega). Perseus was explicit when sharing identity in their media productions, specifically their curriculum vitae: “I actually have the little open access symbol on my CV, and I put it beside every single publication on my CV; any of them that are open access, I ensure that that symbol is there.”Identity work also meant finding your place within the faculty in which you work. For Perseus this meant “trying to offer something new, trying to kind of leverage my experiences in my networks to kind of build capacity”. For others, their lived experiences involved facing fears and accepting the risks of openly sharing professional identities, as exemplified in Andromeda's comment: “it's not just about I'm scared to share. It's I'm scared to share because of professional repercussions, which is very different.” This resonated in the experiences of participants with bilingual practices, and those working within Indigenous and international contexts. For Andromeda this included a process of reflective practice, looking back at iterations and variations in identity work, stating “it took me this whole reflective activity to remember where this all started, and how my identity formed, it was like I'd forgotten it, but it was there all along”.
Participants shared MDL related experiences with identity work when teaching their teacher candidates to reveal their professional identities in open web-based spaces. Consideration for “this practice of helping teachers to sort of grow into their digital public persona through, you know, open writing” was mentioned by Andromeda, Aquila, Orion, Perseus, Polaris, and Rigel. An understanding that digital identity is fluid and iterative was mentioned by Leonis: “they're like Cummins’ identity texts, except it is their digital identity texts - this is who I am, this is what I care about … but you can shift that, of course, into whatever space you want” (Cummins & Early, 2010). Identity work also involved conversations and negotiations with teacher candidates, as exemplified in Andromeda’s comment “many of my students are international, and they're really frightened of their identities and what they could say online. So, they share that back with me and we negotiate what things will look like”. Likewise, identity work with students involved explicit instruction, as indicated by Rigel who referenced the visitors/residents visualization mapping research by White and Cornu (2017):
These tensions and challenges were echoed in other participants’ experiences when working to develop teacher candidates’ digital identities as exemplified by Perseus' comment:I often do the visitors versus resident’s grid with my students, just so that they can acknowledge where all of their identities are making footprints and who owns that as a way of talking about the challenges of technology, which I think like that's this big elephant in the room that we don't often get to really talk about (Rigel).
For the participants in this study, digital identity was one of the critical components of MDL in their OEPr, as they circulated and distributed media and messages within their open, web-based communication ecosystems.there's a lot of emergence happening … with young adults growing into their professional identities. But there are, I think, really profound intersections that I think we've got a lot more to learn there, you know. We're asking for openness, but I think we also recognize that openness for this generation of young professionals comes with some baggage.
Circulation
When circulating and distributing openly shared materials, participants critically considered both visibility and sustainability. This was applied to their own materials and identities, but also the circulation of student work-product from course content and assignments. Circulating materials that were identifiable and attached to professional identity involved risk and vulnerabilities, as well as benefits. For Merak, the risks were evident in their lived experience: “I've never been too nervous to share a polished piece. But our teaching resources in real time are not always that polished. And so, it was grappling with, you know, as I say, how to do so openly”.Sustainability of circulation within web publications was a concern from Polaris' lived experiences with an ongoing media and digital project: “I'm hopeful that the project will live beyond me, and that maybe that's part of the open practices thing is ushering others into practices so that they can be sustainable and enduring, too”. Sustainability issues emerged from Perseus’ experiences, but this led to a rethink and recalibration of digital networks and collaborations since it was:
For circulation of student coursework, Leonis identified one challenge since “a lot of my students are very hesitant to share openly, even within our, the classroom space, their assignments, their productions. It makes them feel vulnerable”. Lyra’s experiences, as echoed in those of Andromeda, Crarina, and Polaris, mentioned encouraging students to publicly sharing their work:really sort of in those conversations grounded, situated, you know, like bricolage if you will, that we start to kind of uncover the nuances of the questions that come up in our practice, and then when we're with others, we can get through. So, I continue to believe in that model. … I started to develop networks with people who are working in digital literacies across Canada, finding different solutions (Perseus).
Leonis asked students to “critically review global education programs and share their reviews online as digital flyers, for an audience of educators … Students share with classmates and are also encouraged to share on social media”. When circulating student work to wider audiences, one challenge was the sustainability of this practice, as Leonis indicated:either through mechanisms I provide in the course, or mechanisms I teach students about and encourage them to use. You know, so for example, if we're playing around with Scratch, and you know, the purpose is to give student teachers firsthand experiences with programming that they can then take into their practice. I encourage them to grab examples of existing code, published their codes, compare codes, share codes, you know, share their work at different kinds of events (Lyra).
Aquila provided one suggestion for involving students in making critical decisions about circulating their media productions online:I would say that most of their things could be found, but they're not in public spaces. But it is something to think about, I think whether they should be more visible. It's always hard to organize those things, you know, to think about what is the best way, and where to put it? Where should it live?
In summary, the generated themes from the focus on facets of MDL in the lived experiences of the participants resulted in a closer reflection on communication, creativity, and criticality. Communication included an exploration of audience, ethical practice, and data management with a focus on safety, security, privacy and permissions. Creativity was evident in experiences with multimodal media productions and performances as a teacher educator. Criticality was a factor in the emirec nature of media engagements, in identity work for themselves and their students, and in nuanced decisions when circulating media productions.I just share examples of what's happened to me, what’s happened to others. And you know, the reality of sharing online and some of the repercussions that can occur. And then from that point, they have informed enough consent, I think, to take this on, or not take it on, and most still do. But I think because they're already doing this elsewhere, as well. They like to hear the cautions, but at the same time, they're going to continue doing what they're doing (Aquila).