Metaliteracy scope
The learning situation identified in the M2 course project blog is Exercise Physiology. This is a course that allows students to learn about Kinesiology, human movement, and biomechanics. Specifically, I would like to teach about Vo2 max and lactate threshold testing and its importance on training. Vo2 max is the measure of the amount of oxygen used up during an exercise while lactate testing involves the determination of the amount of energy during an exercise. The target learners are scheduled to be athletic trainers, personal trainers, strength coaches, students, and other faculty members as well as any other adult who would have an interest in learning this course. Vo2 max/lactate testing can sometimes be difficult learners to comprehend because it requires a lot of learning and voluminous analysis of information. Therefore, to make the learning interesting and participative, I plan to focus on the use of three forms of metaliteracy and ensure that they enhance their cognitive activities through various exercises such as giving a theme to the students and allowing them to practice their creativity.
I plan to use digital literacy to enable learners to develop the ability to access and use information from online sources. According to Paul Gilster, digital literacy allows someone to make an informed decision on the information he/she finds on-line (Fantin, 2010). In that way, I will equip my learners with skills of this form of metaliteracy to enhance their critical thinking which will eventually enable them to apply the knowledge gained from the online platforms to create their information. I would incorporate videos in digital literacy platforms such as YouTube where my target learners will watch the practical side of Vo2 max and lactate testing to relate theoretical knowledge learned in class with real-life events. After watching, I will give weekly themes to the students where they will have a chance to showcase their creativity through varying presentations such as PowerPoint, essays, or building something related to the course.
The other metaliteracy skill that I will teach my targeted learners is visual literacy. This form of information learning allows a learner to interpret and sort symbols and visual actions (Mackey & Jacobson, 2011). In other words, it equips the visually literate people with the ability to communicate using numerous forms such as combining text with symbols or images in a manner that indicates competency in imaginative writing. The importance of visual literacy is that it can be applied in hybrid classes. Thus, learners will have the opportunity to apply their knowledge of visual literacy to come up with handwritten responses demonstrating their creativity by incorporating images and texts to the themes that I will be giving to the class.
The third metaliteracy skill that I intend to teach my students is Cyberliteracy. The idea behind this type of information learning is to allow learners to be active participants in the process of learning (Yano, 2007). Besides, cyberliteracy introduces the learners to web-environments and the internet. I will utilize the opportunity availed by this form of metaliteracy to equip my targeted students with skills to extract relevant information from the internet and use numerous internet media to air their opinions. Also, I will emphasize the understanding of ethical and social issues while using the internet to communicate such as respect for people’s privacy, accessibility of various media, and online diversity. The theme exercise will enable students to extract information from the internet based on the topic of the theme and thereafter come up with individual responses and presentations on internet platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
References
Fantin, M. (2010). Perspectives on Media Literacy, Digital Literacy and Information Literacy. International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence, 1(4), 10–15. https://doi.org/10.4018/jdldc.2010100102
Mackey, T. P., & Jacobson, T. E. (2011). Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy. College & Research Libraries, 72(1), 62–78. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl-76r1
Yano, N. (2007). What is cyberliteracy? Journal of Information Processing and Management, 49(12), 696–699. https://doi.org/10.1241/johokanri.49.696
