Formulations and Findings Page v1 i2

Parents as Learning Partners in the Development of Technological Fluency

May

2009

This paper presents research on parent support of the development of new media skills and technological fluency. Parents' roles in their children's learning were identified based on interviews with eight middle school students and their parents. All eight students were highly experienced with technology activities. Seven distinct parental roles that supported learning were identified and defined: Teacher, Collaborator, Learning Broker, Resource Provider, Nontechnical Consultant, Employer, and Learner. The parents in this sample varied in their level of technological knowledge, though in every family at least one parent worked in the computer industry as an engineer or designer. The paper presents the approach used to identify these roles, the coding system used, and examples of each role across the cases. The diversity and density of roles played by parents for individual students are also quantified. Findings indicate that for these eight learners parents play significant roles in supporting creative technologically mediated activities. The findings highlight the importance of understanding family-based learning relationships when considering pathways to early expertise with new media.

Youth, Creativity, and Copyright in the Digital Age

May

2009

New digital networked technologies enable users to participate in the consumption, distribution, and creation of content in ways that are revolutionary for both culture and industry. As a result, Digital Natives--young people growing up in the digital world with access to the technologies and the skills to use them in sophisticated ways are now confronting copyright law on a regular basis. This article presents qualitative research conducted with students age 12-22 that explores youth understanding, attitudes, and discourse on the topic of digital creativity and copyright law. Our findings suggest that young people operate in the digital realm overwhelmingly ignorant of the rights, and to a lesser degree the restrictions, established in copyright law. They often engage in unlawful behavior, such as illegal peer-to-peer music downloading, yet they nevertheless demonstrate an interest in the rights and livelihoods of creators. Building upon our findings of the disconnect between technical, legal, and social norms as pertaining to copyright law, we present the initial stages of the development of an educational intervention that posits students as creators: the Creative Rights copyright curriculum. Educating youth about copyright law is important for empowering young people as actors in society, both in terms of their ability to contribute to cultural knowledge with creative practices and to engage with the laws that govern society.

Epistemic Network Analysis: A Prototype for 21st-Century Assessment of Learning

May

2009

In this article we examine educational assessment in the 21st century. Digital learning environments emphasize learning in action. In such environments, assessments need to focus on performance in context rather than on tests of abstracted and isolated skills and knowledge. Digital learning environments also provide the potential to assess performance in context, because digital tools make it possible to record rich streams of data about learning in progress. But what assessment methods will use this data to measure mastery of complex problem solvingthe kind of thinking in action that takes place in digital learning environments? Here we argue that one way to address this challenge is through evidence-centered design-framework for developing assessments by systematically linking models of understanding, observable actions, and evaluation rubrics to provide evidence of learning. We examine how evidence-centered design can address the challenge of assessment in new media learning environments by presenting one specific theory-based approach to digital learning, known as epistemic games (http://epistemicgames.org/eg/), and describing a method, epistemic network analysis (ENA), to assess learner performance based on this theory. We use the theory and its related assessment method to illustrate the concept of a digital learning systema system composed of a theory of learning and its accompanying method of assessment, linked into an evidence-based, digital intervention. We argue that whatever tools of learning and assessment digital environments use, they need to be integrated into a coherent digital learning system linking learning and assessment through evidence-centered design.