Digital Literacies in a Networked World EDUCATION 5388.001   SPRING 2024 Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania Wednesdays, 5-7 pm GSE Stiteler 251 Dr. Amy Stornaiuolo amystorn@upenn.edu   Office Hours: By appointment (Make appointments online at Calendly link on syllabus)  Emmy Talian taliane@upenn.edu

Course Description

This graduate seminar is designed to explore how literacy and learning are changing as people participate with digital technologies across intersecting local and global networks. We will collaboratively investigate how people’s digital literacies—their culturally and socially situated meaning making practices mediated by digital tools—emerge in relation to constantly shifting technologies of communication and are constructed, reconstructed, negotiated, and embodied in multiple semiotic systems across everyday contexts. This course highlights how digital literacies are situated, and how these socio-cultural understandings illuminate issues of power and privilege. 

The seminar is organized around the principles of participation and praxis in order to emphasize that our pedagogical uses of technology must be grounded both in everyday practices and analysis of current theories/research on digital literacies. Henry Jenkins and colleagues (2006) argue that participation is a property of culture as people take up active and collaborative roles in repurposing technologies for their own agentive ends. Paulo Freire (2003) defines praxis as “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (p. 51), a kind of informed action geared toward social justice. These two principles help to position us as active, collaborative, and reflective contributors to various communities, and to that end you will participate across a variety of professional networks as you engage with new tools and practices and reflect on that participation throughout the semester. This work is guided by the following questions:

• What can we know together?

Over the course of the semester, class members will engage, discuss, challenge, and construct theories and research about how meaning making happens in and around the contexts of digital media. We will investigate these questions collaboratively, bringing our varied experiences and life histories to bear in asking questions like: How are audiences and authorship shifting in light of newly mobile, global, participatory, distributed, and collaborative practices? How are social relationships, discourses, and identities constructed and performed in and through digital literacies? How is knowledge constructed by, for, and with young people in digital contexts and whose knowledge (and literacy practices) count? Who is able to participate in digital contexts and in what ways? 

• What can we learn together?

Students will attend carefully to how people participate in varied digital contexts, carrying out three projects that explore how people make meaning locally and globally in digital communities and the role of platforms in shaping teaching and learning. Throughout our joint investigations into digital practices, we will explore questions like: How are digital literacies practiced across spaces/places? What are people doing with digital media, for what purposes, and to what ends? How are issues of race, class, gender, and ability intertwined in our digital lives?

• What can we do together?

The seminar requires you to participate in a variety of digital contexts as we explore the pedagogical implications of digital media. Class members will create and maintain public professional identities and participate in online communities of practice. We will also try out a variety of digital tools as we think together about the new mindsets and practices entailed in integrating them into classrooms, asking questions like: How can our understandings of participation inform teaching and learning? How are schools incorporating digital literacies into institutional spaces? What role might we play in fostering and supporting critical participatory acts?

Course Resources

All of the resources for the class will be available on our course website, diglits.com, and we will communicate with one another via our course Padlet. Our class will be held in GSE’s makerspace, and it would be helpful for you to bring a device to take full advantage of all of the resources in the space.

Course Policies 

Attendance

If you need to miss a class session, please let us know in advance. Missing three sessions or more puts you at risk of not passing the course unless you have extenuating circumstances, so please make sure to be in good communication with us if you are having challenges. We ask that you stay home if you feel ill or test positive for COVID-19.

Late Policy

All assignments are due by the due date listed, but you may request a one-week extension at any time for the three projects (just inform us in advance of the deadline). If you are struggling to meet deadlines in the class, please come see Dr. Stornaiuolo to talk through options. Persistent late work (e.g., three or more homework assignments, more than one project extension) will result in a deduction in the final grade, unless an alternate plan has been arranged in advance.

Grading 

Successful completion of the course will be based on: 

• regular attendance and participation in class activities
• thoughtful and on-time weekly homework 
• holistic evaluation and grading of the three projects 

There will be a link to upload your projects. Each project will have a set of guidelines that will be used to guide the grading, and you will be expected to engage thoughtfully with the course concepts and readings in each. You will receive feedback electronically. If you would like to revise and resubmit a project based on the feedback, you should schedule a meeting with Dr. Stornaiuolo first.

All work should follow appropriate APA (7^th edition) guidelines, double-spaced, with 12-point font, and a separate reference page. Please name your files with your name and assignment name (e.g., Stornaiuolo_Project1).

Academic Integrity

The Graduate School of Education prohibits conduct that is contrary to accepted principles of academic honesty. It shall constitute a violation of the GSE Code of Student Academic Integrity for any student knowingly and purposefully to engage in any activity that has the effect or intention of interfering with the education, pursuit of knowledge, or fair evaluation of a student’s performance. Examples of such activities include but are not limited to plagiarism and the submission of the same work for multiple courses.  Violations of GSE Code of Student Academic Integrity can result in a lowered or failing grade, a report to the GSE Office of Academic and Student Affairs, and/or a referral to the University’s Office of Student Conduct.  

(http://www.upenn.edu/provost/PennBook/academic_integrity_code_of)

The university’s policy on plagiarism applies to any uncited or improperly cited use of work by other human beings, or submission of work by other human beings as your own. If you have any questions about properly citing sources, what constitutes plagiarism, or anything else related to GSE’s Code of Academic Integrity please do not hesitate to contact me. 

Do not record or distribute any digital recordings of the class or course materials.

AI policy

With the rise in availability of large language models (e.g., ChatGPT), often referred to as generative AI, there are uncertainties about how you may use these tools in your learning. In this course, we will experiment with and discuss them so that you are aware of some of the challenges, not least:

• Material generated by these tools is not original, derived from texts that models were trained on, without citation or clarity about the training models (e.g., whether texts were plagiarized).
• These tools have built-in biases that can reproduce and exacerbate harms and generate inaccurate, incomplete, problematic, and offensive material.
• They can be inaccurate and error-prone, often making up citations and facts.
• These are commercial enterprises, and it is not always clear how your texts or data will be used in the future. 

Given these concerns, if you choose to use these tools, you will be responsible for the appropriateness and accuracy of any content you submit. However, you may not submit any work generated by these tools as your own. You should cite it like any other reference material, including details on what program you used and what part of your contribution was generated by/with the tool.

Additional Supports

I understand that we all learn differently and want to support your learning in this class. If there are circumstances in this course that hinder you from learning or exclude you, please speak to me as soon as you can, and we will devise strategies that will enable you to meet the course requirements and support your learning. Please also see the following resources:

General support: Penn has established a general help line so that students can be directed to resources they need: 215-898-4357. You may also want to reach out to the office of the chaplain (215-898-8456), student health services (215-898-4357), or GSE’s Office of Student Support (gse-contactsa@gse.upenn.edu). If you experience any harassment, discrimination, or incident on campus, you are encouraged to report it to Penn authorities here: https://diversity.upenn.edu/diversity-at-penn/bias-motivated-incident-report 

Academic support. I encourage students to visit the Weingarten Learning Resource Center (http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/lrc/) for academic support and individualized writing coaching. Penn GSE also offers workshops and resources through the Writing Commons.

Accommodations. The university welcomes students with disabilities and is committed to providing the same opportunities to all students. Students requiring disability accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act should contact the Office of Disability Services (215-573-9235) for information and at the very beginning of the semester.  The Office of Disability Services will work directly with me regarding appropriate accommodations. Any information you provide me is private and confidential and will be treated as such. More information can be found here: https://www.vpul.upenn.edu/lrc/sds/ 

Counseling support. Penn offers counseling services via Counseling and Psychiatric Services (CAPS). You can call CAPS and talk to a clinician 24/7 through their hotline: 215-898-7021. You can also drop-in, schedule an appointment, or find out what services are available here: https://www.vpul.upenn.edu/caps/ 

LGBT Resource Center. There are numerous resources available at the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center on campus. If you need a space to talk about gender or sexual identities, want to be an informed ally, want to examine the resources available, or are looking for a supportive community, you can find the center at 3907 Spruce St or online here:  https://www.vpul.upenn.edu/lgbtc/ 

Food support. Any student who faces challenges securing their food or housing and believes this may affect their performance in the course is urged to contact the Dean of Students for support. Furthermore, please notify me if you are comfortable in doing so. This will enable me to provide any resources that I may possess.

Gender inclusive restrooms. There is at least one gender inclusive restroom on each floor of GSE. Please find a list of gender inclusive restrooms across campus here: (https://www.vpul.upenn.edu/lgbtc/files/Gender_Neutral_Restroom_List_-_8.28.18.pdf ) and a map here (https://www.facilities.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/pdfs/gnr_map_10.16.17.pdf).