Introduction
Today’s rapid development of affordable technologies that enable individuals to design and create high quality new media products such as music, movies, Web sites and games has expanded opportunities to act as media producers rather than media consumers.
While many youths are becoming “digital natives” who possess the technological and cognitive skills for success in the 21st century, a closer look reveals that a segment of our society – urban, minority youth – lag in the development of these capabilities. Some view this as a resource gap located in issues of access to technology, we argue, however, that the problem is a participatory gap caused by a lack of learning opportunities and forums for project development as well as presentation. As a consequence, many urban youth talk about becoming music producers or creating the next NBA video game, but they lack the tools and, more importantly, the skills to pursue these interests.
Research Overview
The goal of the Digital Youth Network (DYN) research component is to better understand 21st century learning processes and outcomes as it relates to this population. Four questions guide the research project lead by Drs. Brigid Barron, Associate Professor of Education at Stanford University, and Kimberely Gomez, Associate Professor of Education at the University of Pittsburgh:
Research Question: Under what conditions do new media design projects lead to a diversification and enrichment of students’ learning ecologies across school, home, and community settings?
Hypothesis: Existing research indicates that children learn across home, school, and community. Therefore, we are assessing the dimensions of student “learning ecologies” (Barron, 2004; 2006), which we define as the set of contexts (i.e., configurations of activities, relationships, and resources) that students access to support learning. We suspect that as youths become engaged in communities of design they will also seek out opportunities to enhance their ability to create.
Furthermore, the learning ecologies of students will diversify by increasing the variety of resources students access and use for learning as interest and access to new learning opportunities increases. The ecologies will also become enriched though an increase in the overall number of learning resources accessed. These resources include: DYN mentors and other learning partners, Internet communities that support design based activities, camps, clubs, elective courses and any additional structured learning opportunities, and learning tools, for example tutorials, students may use.
Research Question: What 21st century capacities are nurtured through new media design projects and how can we assess these?
Hypothesis: The research community is conducting multiple research efforts to define 21st century skills (e.g., SCANS, 1991; New London Group, 1996, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2004). Across all these efforts is a focus on capacities related to collaboration, project management, sense of audience, media savvy, and competent use of tools. We think DYN’s combination of formal, informal and virtual learning spaces will nurture 21st century capabilities. These emergent and complex competencies have no standardized method to assess growth. In response to this, we are developing rubrics to characterize student projects within a framework based on 21st century skills.
Research Question: How do design projects support students’ current and future identities as creators, authors, and critics of new media?
Hypothesis: Current theories of learning recognize the important influence of identity on learning. Self-perception in relation to activities and disciplines can influence aspirations and the strategies individuals select to achieve those goals (Boaler & Greeno, 2000; Gee, 2003; Nasir & Kirshner, 2003). We hypothesize that as students become engaged as producers of new media they will begin to recognize their capacity to act as authors, designers, critical consumers, and analysts (Mercier, Barron, O’Connor, 2006) as well as develop learning goals that develop these capacities. We also expect to see learners use media projects for reflection, communication, and the construction of positive changes in their communities.
Research Question: What design principles can be derived that might be shared with other sites?
Hypothesis: There is enormous national and international interest in finding ways to engage youth in learning activities outside of school that do not replicate the school setting yet offer a productive space for intellectual and social development. At the same time, many stakeholders who support learning in out-of-school settings find themselves challenged to develop models that can accomplish these goals. We expect the DYN model to provide some design principles for maximizing learning while preserving student autonomy in a more informal setting.
References
Barron, B. (2004). “Learning ecologies for technological fluency: Gender and experience differences.” Journal of Educational Computing Research, 31(1): 1-36.
Barron, B. (2006). “Configurations of learning settings and networks: Implications of a learning ecology perspective.” Human Development, 49: 229-231.
Boaler, J. & Greeno, J. (2000). “Identity, Agency and Knowing in Mathematics Worlds.” In J. Boaler (Ed.) Multiple Perspectives on Mathematics Teaching and Learning. Ablex Publishing: Westport, CT.
Gee, J. (2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mercier, E., Barron, B., O'Conner, K. (2006). Images of self and others as computer users: the role of gender and experience. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 22: 1-14. Special issue on Gender and New Digital Media.
Nasir, N. & Kirshner, B. (2003). “The cultural construction of moral and civic identities.” Applied Developmental Science, 7(3): 138-147.
Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2004). Learning for the 21st century. Project website: http://www.21stcenturyskills.org.
Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) (1991). What work requires of schools. Report published by the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), U.S. Department of Commerce.