LiDA100: Learning in a Digital Age

Welcome to LIDA100: Learning in a Digital Age

Specific information about this course and its requirements can be found below. For more general information about taking Saylor Academy courses, including information about Community and Academic Codes of Conduct, please read the Student Handbook.

 

Original Course Designer

Open Education Resource Foundation

 

Course Description

Develop and apply digital and learning literacies that are critical for learning success in tertiary education in the 21st century.

 

Course Introduction

In this course, you will develop the digital and learning literacies to maximize their learning in a contemporary digital learning environment for higher education. You will develop the academic skills to discern the credibility, accuracy, and integrity of open access resources available on the Internet and corresponding digital tools to research, analyze, and present information for academic purposes.

You will also develop competence in a range of digital tools, including social media, communication and collaboration tools, and publishing tools to support learning in contemporary society. This will include knowledge of copyright, open licensing, media literacy, and digital citizenship.

This course is offered concurrently in partnership with OERu. You are more than welcome to work through all four sections at your own pace, but you may be able to interact with more students if you follow the schedule used by OERu and their community of learners.

This course includes the following sections:

• Digital Skills for Online Learning (LiDA101)
• Digital Citizenship (LiDA102)
• Open Education, Copyright, and Open Licensing in a Digital World
• Critical Media Literacy and Associated Digital Skills (LiDA104)

 

Course Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course you will be able to:

• apply digital tools effectively to demonstrate learning literacies including advanced search strategies to identify and select relevant open access resources to research, analyze, produce, and present information for tertiary education purposes;
• develop a positive digital online identity in support of learning commensurate with good practice for privacy, security, and interpersonal communication;
• develop and effectively apply knowledge of copyright, open licensing, and license remix compatibility using open education practices to support tertiary learning in a global digital context; and
• develop critical media literacy skills and use multimodal communication to express outputs of learning effectively in a digital online environment.

 

Course Materials

The primary learning materials for this course are articles, lectures, and videos.

All course materials are free to access and can be found in each unit of the course. Pay close attention to the notes that accompany these course materials, as they will tell you what to focus on in each resource, and will help you to understand how the learning materials fit into the course as a whole. You can also see a list of all the learning materials in this course by clicking on Resources in the navigation bar.

 

Course Discussions

Throughout this course, you will find numerous prompts to participate in course discussions. Most of these prompts include a link to a topic on the discussion forum where you can post your replies. Each of those topics already includes tags that will allow your reply posts to also be fed into one of the larger Learning in a Digital Age course feeds, connecting you to a global audience of learners. There is one feed for each section, such as this feed for LiDA101.

You are also encouraged to start your own discussions based on what you learn in this course. You can create new discussions by signing into the discussion forum and starting a new topic. Make sure to tag your topics with either lida101, lida102, lida103, or lida104, depending on the section of the course. You can also use these links to organize posts by tag:

• LiDA101 Discussions
• LiDA102 Discussions
• LiDA103 Discussions
• LiDA104 Discussions

 

Earning College Credit and Micro-credentials

If you would like to gain formal academic credit, this course forms part of the OERu's free first year of study with pathways to achieve one of two exit qualifications:

• Certificate Higher Education Business (OERu) at the University of the Highlands and Islands, UK; or
• Undergraduate Certificate in First Year Foundations at Thomas Edison State University, USA.

You will also be able to earn an optional micro-credential for assessed learning from Edubits. Successfully completing the four micro-credentials for the Learning in a digital age course will qualify you for transcript credit towards the Certificate of Higher Education in Business (OERu).

 

Tips for Success

LIDA100: Learning in a Digital Age is a self-paced course, which means that you can decide when you will start and when you will complete the course. There is no instructor or an assigned schedule to follow. We estimate that the "average" student will take 30 hours to complete each section. We recommend that you work through the course at a pace that is comfortable for you and allows you to make regular progress. It's a good idea to also schedule your study time in advance and try as best as you can to stick to that schedule.

Learning new material can be challenging, so we've compiled a few study strategies to help you succeed:

• Take notes on the various terms, practices, and theories that you come across. This can help you put each concept into context, and will create a refresher that you can use as you study later on.
• As you work through the materials, take some time to test yourself on what you remember and how well you understand the concepts. Reflecting on what you've learned is important for your long-term memory, and will make you more likely to retain information over time.
• Although you may work through this course completely independently, you may find it helpful to connect with other Saylor students through the discussion forums. You may access the discussion forums at https://discourse.saylor.org.

 

Technical Requirements

This course is delivered entirely online. You will be required to have access to a computer or web-capable mobile device and have consistent access to the internet to either view or download the necessary course resources and to attempt any auto-graded course assessments and the final exam.

• To access the full course including assessments and the final exam, you will need to be logged into your Saylor Academy account and enrolled in the course. If you do not already have an account, you may create one for free here. Although you can access some of the course without logging in to your account, you should log in to maximize your course experience. For example, you cannot take assessments or track your progress unless you are logged in.

For additional guidance, check out Saylor Academy's FAQ.

 

Additional Accounts

Learning in a Digital Age is a course about learning on the internet. Because of that, you will need to create accounts on different platforms. At the start of your course, we recommend that you also create an account on the OERu LiDA101 micro-course site by clicking on the "Log in/Register" link at the top of the site.

 

Fees

This course is entirely free to enroll in and to access. Everything linked in the course, including textbooks, videos, webpages, and activities, is available for no charge. This course also contains a free final exam and course completion certificate.

If you decide to be assessed for formal college credit, there is a cost for the assessment options. More details about those assessment options and their costs can be found in each section of the course.

 

International Collaboration

The LIDA100 course a unique international collaboration between Saylor Academy and the OERu international network of institutions. Saylor Academy's learning community has the opportunity to interact with the OERu learning community using open technology platforms.