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Advancing Metaliteracy in a Post-Truth World through the Design of a Global MOOC

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Learning Spaces and Places
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
8:45 AM - 9:15 AM
HUM 1043

Speaker

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Dr. Thomas Mackey
Professor
School of Arts and Humanities

Advancing Metaliteracy in a Post-Truth World through the Design of a Global MOOC

8:45 AM - 9:15 AM

Full Abstract

As part of a top-tier SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant (IITG) awarded in 2018, colleagues at SUNY Empire State College and The University at Albany have designed a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) entitled Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World. This innovative Open EdX MOOC prepares students across SUNY, as well as lifelong learners globally, to be empowered and responsible participants in rapidly changing virtual environments mediated by social technologies. The MOOC addresses concerns that have become increasingly prominent in the post-truth era, including false and misleading information, online hoaxes, alternative facts, confirmation bias, tribalism (when groups identify so closely that they fail to consider other perspectives), online trolling (or being inflammatory online), and related challenges with personal privacy. Infused with the revised metaliteracy goals and learning objectives that support the critical evaluation and creative production of information through metacognitive reflection, the Post-Truth MOOC provides a valuable, flexible and timely open resource for all SUNY students, lifelong learners, and educators interested in incorporating these concepts into their teaching. This panel presentation will discuss the design process working with members of the core team from the Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative, additional content developers for each module, as well as an Instructional Designer and Videographers. This IITG project builds on the previous experience of the Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative in designing three different Metaliteracy MOOCs using different approaches, including Connectivist, Coursera, and Canvas. That work, in addition to the development of a Metaliteracy Digital Badging system, led to our interest in designing a hybrid MOOC that combined connectivist and X-MOOC elements in the same MOOC experience. This approach, coupled with the need for creating an open resource for teachers and learners to grapple with the concerns of a post-truth society, inspired the Open EdX project that applied metaliteracy as a pedagogical framework to video content and learning activities to promote collaborative metaliterate learning in reinventing a truthful world and rebuilding communities of trust. As part of this interactive panel presentation, we will survey the audience for feedback on the primary themes of the course, and the major milestones that we achieved as part of the development process.

Presenter Material/Slides

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