Nandita Gurjar, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Literacy Education

Nandita GurjarOffice: 107C Schindler Education Center, Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Phone: (319) 273-5695
Email: nandita.gurjar@uni.edu

Education: Ph.D. (Education) University of Central Florida; M.Ed. (Curriculum and Instruction), Texas A&M University   

Research Interests: Informal Social Learning Networks and New Literacies, Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning with Inclusivity, Socially-Just, Innovative Practices for Equitable Learning in K-12 and Beyond

“I was not a social media person at all,” Dr. Nandita Gurjar  explained, when recalling her discovery of Twitter and other social media platforms as valuable tools for education. Gurjar was a new Ph.D. student at the University of Central Florida at the time, and had signed up for a class on the rhetoric of digital literacy. In this class she was required  to participate on Twitter and thought “I won’t last long--it’s too much social media.” But she persisted, and Twitter changed her entire focus of study. “A whole new world of virtual learning opened up for me,” she said. “Wow. ” Gurjar ended up basing her dissertation on Twitter as a tool for professional development. Since coming  to UNI in 2017, her research continues to focus on the intersections between technology and literacy, and  has blossomed in three main directions. 

Informal Social Learning Networks and New Literacies
First, Gurjar continues to examine the way mobile applications such as Twitter, microblogging, and vlogs can help pre-service K-12 teachers connect within and across borders to enrich their education with authentic learning. For example, by engaging in professional Twitter conversations that happen among professors, principals, and practicing teachers, (e.g., at hashtags such as #ILAchat and #NCTEChat), pre-service teachers are introduced to a variety of people across national boundaries, and encounter common conversations about topics that are relevant to literacy education, such as “We need diverse books” or  “Every child has a right to read.” As Gurjar explains, these students are able to contribute their thoughts and feel empowered, but “they also can read what others are thinking, what works for them, what doesn't work, what is basically effective educational practice.” Gurjar has discovered that introducing pre-service teachers to mobile applications  early on in their educational journey strengthens their emerging professional identity as future educators. Gurjar has also found that technology adoption mediates global collaboration among educators in heralding innovation and creativity. For example, she compared nearly 200 teacher education students from India and Namibia while using WhatsApp, and found that WhatsApp could engage users in an informal and formal learning support and delivery environment. She also has written a conceptual paper on  the use of the Flipgrid social media platform in an elementary classroom.

Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning with Inclusivity
Second, Gurjar is interested in creating inclusive online learning communities, again with the goal of authentic learning. Humanizing online course design, curriculum, and pedagogy and making it culturally inclusive with ethics of care is something she has been examining through various collaborations. Most of the large-scale online MOOC content is culturally neutral and serves as a source of information dissemination. Gurjar’s collaborative research encourages instructional designers to be more culturally inclusive through  measurement tools (the Culturally Inclusive Instructional Design scale--CIID), matrices (the Culturally Inclusive Dialogue Design Matrix--CIDDM), and pedagogical tools to authentically assess and guide designers and instructors.  Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is integrated seamlessly into online research as it lowers barriers to access.

Socially-Just, Innovative Practices for Equitable Learning in K-12 and Beyond
Finally, Gurjar examines innovative, creative practices that can be applicable in K-12 education to guide preservice and in-service teachers. For example, in analyzing character representation in storybook apps for children, she has found that people of color and people with disabilities are rarely portrayed as main characters. These educational reading apps do not adequately represent our diverse society and may have  implications for children’s emerging identity and self-concept. Also, Gurjar has studied the hands-on experiential learning techniques of the Italian makerspace based on the approaches of Reggio Emilia and the concept of multiple languages of creativity. “This  is something we should all encourage in the test-driven culture where children are falling behind,” Gurjar writes. Another project in this category involves an ambitious Open Educational Resource (OER) project in collaboration with UNI Literacy Education colleague Dr. Sohyun Meacham and Constance Beecher (Iowa State University) to create a Teaching Methods for Early Literacy textbook. “The goal is to reduce the textbook cost for our students while creating a comprehensive multimodal, accessible resource that addresses diversity, inclusion, and equity,” Gurjar explains. Collaboration between major institutions in Iowa will help to align the educational opportunities for future teachers' experience, share knowledge and expertise across institutions, and create course materials that are relevant to the local context.

Gurjar grew up in Delhi, India and in Kenya, East Africa  in a family filled with educators--her mother was a high school chemistry teacher and her father was civil engineer. As it turns out, studying at the University of Central Florida was a family affair, as Gurjar’s three other sisters worked on advanced degrees there at different points of time.. While Gurjar was discovering Twitter for the first time, one of her sisters was earning her doctorate in instructional technology; another in mental health counseling, and third in microbiology. Gurjar grew up speaking Hindi, English, Swahili, German,  and French.  She went to Kiel, Germany under a student exchange program in high school, and grew up appreciating diversity of linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

An extremely active scholar, Gurjar publishes her work  in both technology and reading/literacy journals. She also involves technology in all of her classes (e.g., Book creator, Padlet, FlipGrid, PearDeck, and of course, Twitter). She encourages her students to connect with literacy professionals through #UNILitEd hashtag.