Reflections on delivering online digital media courses: learning from the learners

In this paper, we describe the development of two online courses designed to enhance staff digital literacy: Ten Days of Twitter (10Dot), which introduces staff to the use of Twitter for academic purposes; and 5 Minutes of Digital Literacy (5MoDL), which supports Anglia Ruskin University’s (ARU) Digital Literacy Framework (DLF). The ARU version of 10DoT, #ARU10DoT [1], attracts roughly 35 participants each time. Participants subscribe to a WordPress blog and each day, for ten (working) days, learn a different aspect of Twitter, and complete an associated task, in ten minutes. The introduction in 2017 of a Digital Badge for successful completion of all ten tasks almost doubled page views on the blog, and some previous participants repeated the course to acquire the badge.5 Minutes of Digital Literacy (5MoDL) [2] is based on the 10DoT format and delivery. The course was designed to support ARU’s DLF [3], which defines levels of competency (i.e. Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced). It addresses five key areas in five-minute segments on the five days of the first full working week of the month, for five months. 5MoDL was created in response to the lessons learned while running its predecessor, 5 Days of Digital Literacy (5DoDL) [4]. Both courses attracted high levels of satisfaction, and most participants report changes to their practice as a direct consequence of them.