Executive SummaryThe development of digital information literacy (DIL) has been slow in comparison to changes in information communication technologies, and this remains an issue for the higher education sector. Competency in such skills is essential to full participation in society and work. In addition, these skills are regarded as underpinning the ability to maintain life long learning. Evidence suggests that simple exposure to technology is not sufficient to promote adequate levels of literacy.Why has DIL development been so slow? How can we speed the process up? The purpose of this study was to identify obstacles and supports to fostering the development of DIL to staff and students in higher education.The literature identified a range of obstacles that hindered students' ability to develop their technology related skills. The issue of access and the digital divide that has been of interest to those concerned with social equity continues to generate lively discussion. The students' own beliefs and attitudes to learning new technology can also become barriers to the students' learning progress when they experience low self-efficacy or anxiety about their ability to develop digital skills. Conversely, students who are over-confident regarding their technical proficiency can also be hindered in their ability to develop good digital information skills.Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contact HPublisher@InformingScience.orgH to request redistribution permiss Three broad strategies were inferred from the learning principles advocated nearly 80 years ago by Dewey as having the potential to support the development of digital information skills. The first of these was collaboration and sharing.ion. Editor: Thomas Connolly Developing Digital Information LiteracyWhile the benefits of collaboration were established decades ago, the advent of the Internet has made this a reality through online communities of practice. Dewey's advocacy of experiential learning has been widely applied on the Internet in the form of bricolage. Finally, personal relevance, the third of Dewey's principles, is an inherent part of the Web 2. 0 tools that personalize online environments to the individual.Using a case study design, four higher education institutions ran 10 two-hour workshops in which participants were given autonomy over their learning and goals and were encouraged to collaborate and to engage in explorative trial-and-error le...

Under COVID-19 conditions higher education institutions responded rapidly with technological solutions to maintain teaching and assessment for students and to adjust support mechanisms to compensate for the lack of face-to-face interaction with students. Using critical reflection as a research method, this paper captures the experiences of three education developers from different institutions to business as usual in the context of emergency remote teaching. The authors utilise the Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition (SAMR) model of technology integration as a conceptual frame to compare their institutions’ approaches to educational delivery during the pandemic. Additionally, the authors reflect on student diversity, inclusion and equity during the period of emergency remote teaching.

Professional and academic staff with a focus on learning and technology are both increasingly present in Australasian universities and seen as vitally important in the delivery of high-quality learning experiences. These professional staff often have titles such as learning designers, technology integrators, educational designers and similar. Yet their precise position and role within higher education, and indeed, the requisite skills and knowledge required to successfully perform these roles often remains vague, especially for academic staff with whom they work. These roles became even more important during the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (McIntosh & Nutt, 2022).   These staff often work in what is described as the “third space” (Whitchurch, 2008), a hybridized zone that requires an understanding of different types of learning programs, and ways in which these can be delivered most effectively in a virtual environment (Zellweger, Moser & Bachmann, 2010). In this way, they are boundary crossers (Watermeyer, Crick & Knight, 2021) between the academic and professional spaces, required to work within both, but belonging to neither. This can often contribute to feelings of professional isolation amongst these staff, as well as a lack of clarity about career progression. Mentoring is recognised as an avenue for welcoming new members of the profession. It combines more experienced members with less experienced members and takes the form of regular meetings to discuss challenges and opportunities (Bean & Hyers, 2014; Donelly & Mcsweeney, 2010). The online variant is hardly new, although it has grown significantly during the pandemic (Joseph, Lahiri-Roy & Bunn, 2022). It offers advantages in terms of reach and scalability to participants, although there are potential weaknesses, too. Traditionally, mentoring is an activity that takes place between one mentor and one protégé. However, group mentoring is on the increase. This presentation reports on how a group approach taken in a community mentoring program (CMP) comprised of five staff from different universities (three mentors and two mentees) provided an avenue for third space staff to share their experiences with each other in order to begin formulating a collective professional identity. Group mentoring allowed a greater diversity of experiences and ideas, which in turn contributed to a greater feeling of ‘being in it together’. The CMP became a space for the exploration and discussion of different roles within higher education, as well as the sharing of common experiences, successes and frustrations. Our reflections may inspire you to create a similar opportunity within your own institutions, or through the ASCILITE Mentoring Program.

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What strategies and support are effective for shifting the mindset of expert teachers to become expert e-learning teachers? This chapter outlines the process followed in a large polytechnic institution to introduce online and other technologies to begin to replace the traditional with more flexible, blended alternatives, delivered through a commercial course management system (CMS). Integral to the process was a matrix, devised to assist the academic development unit when working with faculty to make decisions about the degree of e-learning appropriate for their purposes. The matrix has guided the incorporation of technologies for teaching across the whole institute. The chapter outlines the institutional support that was provided for the different levels on the matrix, which enabled expert teachers to retain control over a quality learning experience for their students, and briefly explores some of the issues that arose and lessons that were learned.