ISTE Standards for Students 1.1 – Empowered Learner

This standard indicates that students leverage technology to actively choose, achieve, and demonstrate competency in learning goals informed by the learning sciences. Therefore, students should:

1.1.a. articulate and set personal learning goals, develop strategies leveraging technology to achieve them, and reflect on the learning process to improve learning outcomes.

1.1.b. build networks and customize their learning environments to support the learning process.

1.1.c. use technology to seek feedback that informs and improves their practice and to demonstrate their learning in various ways.

1.1.d. understand the fundamental concepts of technology operations, demonstrate the ability to choose, use, and troubleshoot current technologies, and can transfer their knowledge to explore emerging technologies.

In line with my mission statement, three (3) guiding principles support my digital learning mission statement, including empowering, holistic transformation, and wisdom in using technology. Empowering learners is the heart of the learning process. In the digital era, particularly in higher education, as an educator, I am responsible for empowering students to transform their lives through the digital learning process. In this regard, encouraging students to use technology more wisely during learning is compulsory. In other words, I am responsible for promoting learner agency to cultivate their potential and incorporate technology in their learning process.

As seen in my post, Technology in Higher Education: Leveraging Technology to Maximize Student Success in the Digital Era, teachers embrace technology to support learners in achieving success. Therefore, stakeholders at schools and universities should accommodate learners with technologies hand-in-hand. In higher education, I help students to achieve elements of student success, such as (1) exposure to knowledge in a variety of areas, (2) the development of intellectual abilities necessary for gathering information and processing it, and (3) applied professional and technical skills (Schroeder, 2011). In particular, as an educator, I keep learning to support students in articulating and setting personal learning goals, developing strategies leveraging technology to achieve them, and reflecting on the learning process to improve learning outcomes (Standard 1.1.a.). To illustrate, I have been implementing personalized learning instruction in my EFL classrooms, such as Curriculum and Technology Design and Content Writing, by leveraging digital technologies. I embrace various platforms to enhance student learning, including learning management systems, video conferences, social media, Google apps, audio-visual presentation apps, and many more. To empower students, particularly in improving learning outcomes and promoting student agency, I require students to use a Learning Planner while implementing personalized learning instruction. This way, students practice their self-direction skills and self-leadership to manage their learning path. Besides, I also require students to complete their Weekly Progress Report to monitor their learning progress. In this weekly progress report, I provide them with some comments and feedback to help them improve their learning.

Moreover, as a higher education educator, I encourage students to build networks and customize their learning environments to support the learning process (Standard 1.1.b.). Within synchronous and asynchronous online learning, I accommodate students’ networks and learning with discussion forum activities, such as LMS forum discussions, WhatsApp Group discussions, Class conferences, and Individual conferences. Through LMS forum discussions, I encourage students to share their ideas, resources, and artifacts of their QUEST Project. I use a WhatsApp Group to facilitate question-answer sessions and discussions throughout the semester. These group discussions accommodate asynchronous learning activities and encourage students to build networks and flexible learning environments. I conduct individual conferences via Zoom to monitor students’ learning progress, mainly to check whether or not they face problems and challenges in working with their Playlist Project and Genius Hour Project. To further understand students’ problems and challenges in implementing personalized learning instruction, I conducted a preliminary study on Implementing Personalized Learning Instruction in EFL Classroom: Benefits and Challenges (A Preliminary Study). Then, I will disseminate the results in the 7th International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (The 7th ICOLLITE). This publication is a part of my Doctor by Research Program. Another synchronous learning activity is conducted through the Guest Lecture sessions. In this session, I invited some speakers (practitioners) to share their expertise, such as Instructional Design (Curriculum and Technology Design) and SEO Strategy in Content Writing.

To sum up, as I mentioned in my post, Technology in Higher Education: Leveraging Technology to Maximize Student Success in the Digital Era, since technology promotes personalized learning, students can be empowered to take ownership of their learning. This point aligns with the ISTE student standards (ISTE, 2021). This way, they grow in multiple ways and discover things about themselves they would never discover in a lecture-only classroom. Importantly, technology enables students to access learning opportunities apart from the traditional barriers of time and place. These are the intangibles they will use long after the content you taught has faded away.

While implementing personalized learning instruction, I also encourage students to use technology to seek feedback that informs and improves their practice and to demonstrate their learning in various ways (Standard 1.1.c.). In implementing personalized learning instruction, feedback is essential in improving learning performance. Therefore, I provided a room for students to seek feedback from peers and instructors. To this extent, I use Google Docs and Sheets for peer review, as seen in Peer Review in Playlist Project.

Students are also encouraged to use some applications, such as plagiarism checker apps (Grammarly, https://www.plagiarismchecker.co/, quillBot, https://www.check-plagiarism.com/, https://searchenginereports.net/plagiarism-checker, Turnitin) as seen in Playlist Project on Critical Review Paper to improve their practice and demonstrate their learning in various ways. This way, students can understand the fundamental concepts of technology operations, demonstrate the ability to choose, use, and troubleshoot current technologies, and transfer their knowledge to explore emerging technologies (Standard 1.1.d.). Besides providing a room to explore other tools, students can create artifacts in the QUESTS projects, such as Canva and blog templates. I just provided an option, but the students can select their preferred tools supporting their learning and maximizing their success in the digital era, as elaborated in my post entitled Technology in Higher Education: Leveraging Technology to Maximize Student Success in the Digital Era – Ignasia Yuyun.

Overall, restating my mission statement, empowering students in the digital and disruptive era should embrace technological advancement by encouraging students to actively choose, achieve, and demonstrate competency in learning goals informed by the learning sciences.