Web Seminars Contributed by EDUCAUSE, Net Generation Learner, and EDUCAUSE Live!

Are Web 2.0 technologies growing in popularity among your students and faculty members? Are you wondering how to integrate them into teaching and learning in a meaningful way, while supporting them across your institution? Join us for an interactive session as we explore four critical issues about incorporating Web 2.0 into higher education: Web 2.0 and the 21st-century learner, pedagogy and support tools, faculty development possibilities, and institutional support.

As international culture and commerce become increasingly reliant on visual communications, visual literacy has developed into an essential skill for 21st-century college graduates. With advancements in technology and the digitizing of information, digital literacy has also grown in importance. Digital visual literacy (DVL) is the ability to critically analyze digital visual materials, create effective visual communications, and make judgments and decisions using visual representations of thoughts and ideas. These skills, which actively engage our cognitive processing of visual images, have evolved from concepts at the intersection of a range of established disciplines. This session will discuss this exciting new literacy, showcase the free materials developed under a National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education grant, and share recent feedback from instructors who have integrated these pioneering instructional modules into their courses. The discussion will benefit faculty, staff, and administrators infusing their curriculum with fresh IT skills.

In response to increasing rates of media piracy, particularly among college-aged students, the content industry has tried a variety of methods to dissuade questionable file-sharing practices, including airing commercials, filing lawsuits, and urging schools to provide access to sanctioned legal services, but progress to date has been minimal. Students themselves have not been consulted about their actual attitudes and behavior in this arena, although diverse motives have been ascribed to them. To gain a richer understanding of this key demographic, 42 undergraduates from a major East Coast university were interviewed at length about their media-acquisition habits and their responses to industry antipiracy efforts. This presentation will cover the students' viewpoints on this controversial topic.

For the past decade, we have talked about how information technology has changed how we work, live, and learn. At the same time, learners have changed. The learning styles, attitudes, and approaches of today's high school students differ from those of 18–22-year-old college students as well adult learners. An essential component of creating effective learning environments is understanding learners. The purpose of this presentation is to describe what we know about the next-generation learner and consider the implications for higher education.