Spanish Study Finds Generation is Irrelevant

To date the published results from the international research project, Digital Learners in Higher Education, have been based on data from one North American post secondary institution. Now we have the first results from one of our European partners, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). In Do UOC Students Fit the Net Generation Profile: An Approach to Their Habits in ICT Use, Marc Romero and colleagues sought to determine whether or not UOC students fit the popular Net Generation or Digital Native profile and whether there were any generational differences in how they perceived their social, academic and professional uses of ICT. Their results add to the growing body of evidence which is increasaingly showing that generation is not relevant in trying to understand the impact of digital technology in higher education. Romero et al. conclude: 
"Taking into account the difference between the UOC’s Net Generation students and non-Net Generation ones regarding their use of ICT in academic and social activities, our findings seem to support the irrelevance of the age factor: We could not find any general and significant difference between the two groups in the vast majority of items...The analysis of the data gathered demonstrates that the difference among our students is produced more by their use of ICT than by their age."

Read the full article in the International Review of Research in Open & Distance Learning.

Comparing Digital Learners in Face-to-Face and Virtual Universities

The digital native/net generation hype has quieted down in recent months and thankfully has given way to an increasing amount of solid research into how learners are using digital technologies and what the impact might be of their growing social and educational use. One of the more positive features of some of the new research is that it is not just coming out of conventional North American University contexts.
Beyond the Net Generation Debate: A Comparison of Digital Learners in Face-to-Face and Virtual Universities reports on research conducted by Begoña Gros, Iolanda Garcia and Anna Escofet who compared the behaviour and preferences towards ICT of face-to-face students and online students in five Spanish universities (one offers online education and four offer face-to-face education with LMS teaching support). Their research attempted to answer the following questions:

1. What are the differences between the use of “living” technologies and “learning” technologies by younger and older students?
2. What kinds of activities are supported by those technologies in everyday life and in academic life among younger and older students?
3. In which way does the university model affect learners in terms of ICT use and preferences? 

Their conclusions are similar to those of many of the other studies that have examined digital technology use in higher education: age or generation is not the issue and there are more important factors at play that educators need to consider:
"Although access to and use of ICT is widespread, the influence of teaching methodology is very decisive. For academic purposes, students seem to respond to the requirements of their courses, programmes, and universities, as suggested by Brown and Czerniewicz (2008). In all cases, there is a clear relationship between the students’ perception of usefulness regarding certain ICT resources and the teachers’ suggested uses of technologies. The most highly rated technologies correspond with those proposed by teachers. In face-to face environments, the pedagogical model seems to be based on a traditional model in which the teacher provides the content and students value the use of ICT to present this content. In online environments, students perceived technology as supporting learning and communication. In this case, the value of ICT is not related to the content but to the learning process."
This is remarkably similar to the Digital Learners in Higher Education research which is guided by the following research questions:

1. Do postsecondary students distinguish their social and educational use of ICTs?
2. What impact do students’ social use of ICTs have on postsecondary learning environments?
3. What is the relationship between social and educational uses of ICTs at in postsecondary education

In particular see Learning in Digital: An Approach to Digital Learners in the UOC Scenario which also examined the use digital technologies in a Spanish virtual university and Digital Learners in Higher Education: Generation is Not the Issue which examined the issues in a Canadian technical/vocational institutional context.

Researchers of Tomorrow Lack Digital Skills

In the UK, JISC has just released a large study of the research behaviour of doctoral students born between 1982 and 1994. This is the supposedly digitally fluent "net generation". The digital natives who live and breath digital technology. Not so according to this study. Here the key findings:

• "This generation of doctoral students operate in an environment where their research behaviour does not use the full potential of innovative technology.
• Doctoral students are insufficiently trained or informed to be able to fully embrace the latest opportunities in the digital information environment.
• Doctoral students are increasingly reliant on secondary research resources (eg journal articles, books), moving away from primary materials (eg primary archival material and large datasets).
• Access to relevant resources is a major constraint for doctoral students’ progress. 
• Open access and copyright appear to be a source of confusion for Generation Y doctoral students, rather than encouraging innovation and collaborative research. Authentication access and licence limitations to subscription-based resources, such as e-journals, are particularly problematic. "

The three year study was jointly commissioned by the British Library and JISC and began in 2009. It involved 17,000 doctoral students from 70 universities at various stages in the project.

Read the full report.

Students Confused by Digital Technologies

"New research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), has revealed that some university students are confused by the array of technologies available to them during the course of their studies. The report, led by Dr Christopher Jones from the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University, also found that whilst many students are distracted by social networking sites during study, a small minority of their peers do not even use e-mail."

Read more: http://www.scienceomega.com/article/301/is-the-net-generation-a-myth#ixzz1t9jXjBjh

The New Net Generation Myth

I guess it was bound to happen. As new technologies develop and spread, new myths are created.  We have had 10 years of unfounded hype about the "net generation" which we were told was fundamentally different than previous generations because of its exposure to digital technology. Never mind that most of these claims are not supported by research. Now we have many of the same claims being made but about the specific impact of mobile technologies and as a result we have new generational labels like the "mobile generation" or the "re-generation".

According to Tammy Erickson, in How Mobile Technologies are Shaping a New Generation, "the "Re-Generation" began to take shape around 2008. Individuals at the formative ages of 11 to 13, those born after about 1995, were part of a substantively different world than the one that had shaped 11 to 13 year olds over the preceding fifteen or so years...they are the first unconscious participants in an era when everyone has access to everything, everywhere, at every time. This is the generation of mobile technology, wireless communication, and clouds of constant content.

And what are the characteristics of this generation?

A pervasive sense of connection
Options (not obligations)
Anonymity and the ability to hide
Confidence and control . . . to be an initiator, designer, problem-solver

Sounds familiar. It is too easy to look at statistics on use and make all sorts of inferences but what good research has shown is that using a computer, tablet or smart phone for one task doesn't necessarily translate to others, doesn't make the user a sophisticated user of the technology and doesn't necessarily have any impact on other skills and traits.

Yes, the data clearly show widespread use of digital technology and mobile technology but it is a big leap from this to claims like,  " a generation of  unconsciously competent users of both computers and of the Internet. " or "a generation that is used to asking big questions — and is confident of finding answers. ... They have had the experience of digging deeply into a burning
question because they have access to a mountain of information."

We have only just managed to debunk the net generation myth. Let's not start again with a "regeneration" myth.

The Role of Digital Technology in Learning

Here's another study that suggests student use of digital technology in higher education is more complex and nuanced that the net gen discourse suggests. Gabriel et al's approach and findings are very similar to ours in the Digital Learners in Higher Education project. Among other things, like us, they found differences in how students thought about and used digital technologies in their academic and non-academic live:

"Students' most frequent use of technology outside of school was email, Internet, social media, texting on cell phones, instant messaging, and talking on cell phones. The focus was on communication and socializing with others. The students' most frequent use of digital technologies in school were (in descending order) accessing information on the Internet, using email, word processing, math and science programs, texting on cell phones, and accessing electronic databases. In school, the students tended to use digital technologies to collect, select, and work with information. The differences between these two lists are significant. Some students felt that there was a place for all technologies in an educational form, while others wanted to maintain a separate digital footprint for inside the classroom as well as outside the classroom digital technologies."

The Role of Digital Technology in Learning: Expectations of First Year University Student

Students Oppose Online Learning in Ontario

It's interesting that some of the most outspoken criticism of Ontario's plans to use more online learning in higher education is coming from.....students. Weren't we told that today's learners want more technology and less lecturing? That the current model of education is outmoded and that students wouldn't put up with it anymore?

From the Canadian Federation of Students:
"The fact that they're talking about such a massive overhaul without having reached out to faculty or students is cause for concern," said president Sandy Hudson.
"To think that three in five of all courses — the majority of courses in a year that students would be doing — would be online, that is definitely harming the quality of education," she added.
"If this is a measure to save money ... how far behind are Ontario students going to be with the rest of the country, with the rest of the world, if most of the learning that we're doing isn't even in front of a lecturer that we can then approach for assistance?"

So much for the net generation.

Understanding Digital Learners

David White and his colleagues at Oxford University are doing some interesting research that parallels what we have been doing in our Digital Learners in Higher Education project. Like us, they are finding there is much more to how learners are engaging with digital technologies and digital information than age and technology. This interview provides an overview of their findings to date and explains the digital visitors and residents framework that is guiding their research.

Profiles of Use: Resistors to Integrators

One of the major problems with the digital native discourse is that it frames digital literacy in generational terms and portrays all people of a certain age as possessing a uniform set of digital technology skills. Of course, we now know this is not accurate. Research shows the issue is much more complex. Our research is contributing to a deeper understanding of how learners think about and use digital technology in different aspects of their lives. Our preliminary analysis of the in-depth interviews we conducted with learners from the British Columbia Institute of Technology in 2010 and 2011 is suggesting a continuum of four "profiles of use" with the profile consisting of attitudes towards technology and use of technology. The profiles are:

Resistors
Resistors deliberately limit their use of digital technology or avoid it all together. They would rather be doing other things, or are in a phase of returning to the ‘basics’, engaging in alternative practices such as letter writing instead of e-mailing. They are resentful of the idea that their age defines their digital literacy.


Cautious Users
Cautious users express concern about privacy, and consciously separate their academic and social identities. Often they will maintain this separation even when it is inconvenient. For these users, Facebook seen as purely a social and entertainment tool.

Instrumental Users
Instrumental users also conscious separate their academic, social and professional identities. Their use is driven by specific interests or needs. For example, some of our subjects talked about their passion for digital gaming, photography and sports statistics and how they used online and digital technologies to pursue these interests but not more much else. Their use tended to be separated by location. i.e, social use at home, academic use at school. This included strategies such as leaving a laptop at home in order to avoid the distractions it presented when brought to the class.

Integrators
Integrators tend to be heavy smart phone users who are constantly connected. For this group the convenience of portability in one device that the smart phone provides is key. They only use a laptop or desktop computer if absolutely necessary. They value integration of technology and don't see the point of keeping academic and social activities separate.

The Sad State of Educational Research

After four years of digging into the digital native/net generation/millennial learner rhetoric, I have come to a distressing conclusion. The main culprits in promoting and perpetuating the unfounded claims and stereotypes are not just the pundits and commentators who started this ball rolling but educational researchers who have accepted and repeated these claims without subjecting them to the critical scrutiny you would expect.

So what we have is a process that begins with somebody making an unfounded claim that has resonance and at first glance seems to make sense (young people have been exposed to digital technology from birth so they must technologically fluent and educators need to respond this). Educators then repeat this claim and begin to frame research according to this unfounded perspective. Other researchers then cite the research of their colleagues which is based on these unfounded claims and pretty soon the original unfounded claims have been virtually accepted as self-evident truths.

This was brought to light quite vividly as I read the newly-published article, PowerPoint and Learning Theories: Reaching Out to the Millennials by Karen Gardner and Jolanta Aleksejuniene. Their study attempted to map student preferences for Power Point styles with Cognitive Load, Multimedia and Visual Learning Theories. Nothing wrong with this except their rationale was couched in the now discredited and unfounded millennial learner discourse: “As millennials, today’s students are independent, inclusive (move between global and virtual communities), opinionated and aware, investigative (use technology), and expect immediacy (information at light speed) (Lippincott, 2010)… There is a developing awareness that millennial students consider technology central to communication. As we continue to introduce technology into our teaching and learning, it behooves us to make this form of communication as effective as possible.”

I thought I had read almost everything that had been written on this issue but I wasn’t familiar with the author that Gardner and Aleksejuniene cited to support their claim: Lippincott.  So before I jumped to conclusions I thought I should check the Lippincott article (Informationcommons: Meeting millennials, needs. Journalof Library Administration, 50(1), 27-37) to see if she had conducted some research that supported this claim or at least cited some research I was not aware of. What I found was more of the same. No original research but rather the repetition of the unfounded claims made by the usual sources like Prensky, Palfrey & Gasser and Oblinger & Oblinger to support her conclusion that this generation has distinctive learning styles, is fluent with digital technology, and is able to multitask efficiently. Based on this she concludes: “libraries need to understand the style of their net generation students to provide environments conducive to engagement and learning; these include how libraries present access to their collections and licensed materials, how they instruct students, how they promote services, and how they configure their spaces.” But what about all the research that debunks the millennial myth? No problem, Lippincott dismisses that in one line: “Although some believe that the characterization of an entire generation constitutes a stereotype or is just plain erroneous, others accept that there are some common ways in which many of this current generation of students are different from those who came before." So research isn’t about investigation and critical analysis it’s just about choosing which perspective you like. Some say this, others say that. I think I’ll go with this one.

In summary, we have a house of cards. Research informed by unfounded claims based on other unfounded claims. If we want educational research to be taken seriously, we need to do better.

Will Practice Catch up to Research?

Two items that appeared in my news reader this week that make me wonder about the educational profession. First there was this one:

"Open University Research Explodes the Myth of the Digital Native"
It's not like we need any more evidence to put this discredited discourse to bed but this study does more than simply add to the growing pile of research that shows how thoroughly unsupported the digital native claims are. It also provides a glimpse of the kind of interesting issues that emerge when we look beyond the generational stereotypes and start to explore exactly what is happening with learners and digital technology (something we at Digital Learners in Higher Education are doing, by the way). So while this study of 4,000 UK Open University students simply confirmed what others have already found in other institutions - "no evidence for any discontinuity in technology use around the age of 30 as would be predicted by the Net Generation and Digital Natives hypothesis", the more interesting findings were the ones that have nothing to do with age. For example, the researchers discovered a correlation between attitudes to technology and approaches to studying. "In short, students who more readily use technology for their studies are more likely than others to be deeply engaged with their work."

So, after reading about this latest research I start thinking perhaps, finally, the tide has turned and that the digital native hype may be on the wane. Then I read this:

Mastering the Millennial in Seven Easy Steps. A workshop that will teach you how to connect and engage with this notoriously difficult generation. All in seven easy steps and only for $345. According to the seminar organizers:
"Millennial students have a unique way of seeing the world and often have high expectations of how others should work for them. This generation has the distinction of being seen as hard to work with and engage, while at the same time being extremely passionate and technologically savvy. This seminar is designed to help faculty and staff better understand and motivate millennial students in and out of the classroom."

It puzzles me why it is acceptable to stereotype based on age when we would never get away with doing this based on ethnicity or gender. Replace "millennial" in the above description with "female" or "asian" or "african-american" and you'll see what I mean.

The research is clear: there is no evidence to support the major digital native claims. Millennial students are not a homogeneous group who can be treated like a species of animal. One day, I hope, practice will catch up to the research.

And the beat goes on....

 While futurists and pundits continue to crank out the books portraying the "digital native" as some kind of newly-discovered tribe whose habits, language and culture we need to understand (see, for example, Dancing with Digital Natives), researchers continue to show how unfounded the generational claims are. And the research is coming from all parts of the world.

The latest piece of research I have read comes from the Caribbean, where Emanule Rapetti and Stewart Marshall have completed a study of learners at the Open Campus of the University of the West Indies. Their study, which is remarkably similar to our Digital Learners in Higher Education research, sought to determine whether UWIOC students fit the "digital native" profile and to develop a deeper understanding of how UWIOC students are using ICTs for learning.

Their results show that, while younger students are more familiar with ICT use in non-educational contexts,  there is not a clear gap between younger and older students in terms of their use and familiarity with digital technologies for learning. They also found that older students tend to prefer e-learning slightly more than younger students. They conclude, "it is necessary to contextualize the discourse about learners and to avoid generalizations about their - supposed - technological skills; our research shows that it is highly risky to split the tech-savvy learners simply according to the age factor."

Read the full article, Observing ICTs in Learners' Experiences around the World.

Digital Learners not Digital Natives

It appears the tide is finally turning and the uncritical acceptance of the digital natives discourse is giving way to a more nuanced perspective on digital technologies in higher education. The research has clearly demonstrated that this is not a generational issue but rather a social phenomenon that involves everybody to a greater or lesser degree and that we need to work harder to try to understand what it means for higher education. The generational myth provided a dangerously simplistic solution that prevented us from making sense of the phenomenon and its implications. The recent ED-MEDIA conference in Lisbon highlighted how the discourse has shifted. As I reported in a previous post there were several conference presentations on the topic that acknowledged the irrelevance of generation.

What I find troubling, however, is that while many researchers have acknowledged that the notion of the digital native is not supported by research and that the digital natives/immigrants dichotomy is unhelpful, they continue to frame the issue in generational terms. As an example, The Life of the Digital Native, reports on an excellent piece of research that used an original and creative methodology to develop an understanding of how students at one Australian university are using digital technologies in their social and academic lives. But note the title, The Life of the Digital Native. If we agree that age is not relevant, why not focus on digital learners, regardless of age? Similarly, The Natives are Restless: Meeting the Diversity and Needs of Millennial Students in a Large Undergraduate University (again, note the title) reported on course design strategies that were employed to address the perceived needs of millennial students even though the authors acknowledge, "the assumption that all Gen Y students are digitally native may in fact be a gross overgeneralsation." In Digital Natives and Technology Literate Students: Do Teachers Follow Their Lead,  the authors again acknowledge the weakness of the digital natives argument, "Even though youth is extensively using the new technologies, it does not mean that they use them appropriately... they lack the necessary knowledge  and skills in order to safely, effectively and efficiently use the Web 2.0 tools.", but they then proceed to investigate the issue from generational perspective. Even Bates & Sangrà in their new book, Managing Technology in Higher Education: Strategies for Transforming Higher Education, give undue prominence to the millennial myth by suggesting one of the rationales for using e-learning is to address the needs of the digital native. In a section entitled Accommodating the Learning Style of Millennials, they devote the better part of a page to describing the purported characteristics of digital natives before then pointing out the evidence doesn't support the digital native claims. They conclude,"we are not  failing just Millennials, we are failing all our students if we don't use technology to its full potential." But this misses the point: there are no millennial students. There are no digital natives. There are only digital learners.

ED-MEDIA Helps Put the Nail in the "Digital Natives" Coffin

One of the highlights of the EDMEDIA 2011 conference in Lisbon has been the number of presentations on research into the use of digital technologies in higher education that acknowledge the complete lack of empirical support for the digital native rhetoric.

Here are the relevant presentations:
Teaching the Net Generation: Exploring Networked Learning and Digital Collaboration Methods - Natalia Gilewicz, Ryerson University, Canada.
The Natives are Restless: Meeting the Diversity and Needs of Millennial Students in a Large Undergraduate Unit -  Mark McMahon, Jo Jung, Edith Cowan University, Australia.
Digital Natives and Technology Literate Students: Do Teachers Follow Their Lead? - Nikleia Eteokleous, Victoria Pavlou, Frederick University, Cyprus.
(Unfortunately these authors did not show up to present but their paper is online.)
ICT Literacy and the Second Digital Divide: Understanding Students' Experiences with Technology - Tiffani Cameron, Sue Bennett, Shirley Agostinho, University of Wollongong, Australia.
The Life of a Digital Native - Linda Corrin, Lori Lockyer, Sue Bennett, University of Wollongong, Australia
Digital Learners in Higher Education: Looking Beyond Stereotypes - Mark Bullen, British Columbia Institute of Technology, Tannis Morgan, Justice Institute of BC, Adnan Qayyum, University of Ottawa.

These all report on important research in this area and are worth reading. My only disappointment with some of them is that they continue to frame the discussion in terms of generation even after acknowledging the lack of empirical support. We now know that generation is not the issue so let's stop using these discredited concepts and terms to guide our inquiry.

Australian Study Finds Generation is Irrelevant

From a survey of 812 students at the University of South Australia:

"The findings from this survey indicate that there is greater diversity in students‟ experiences of ICTs among “net generation” learners than previously claimed... while our younger students are already participating in and using contemporary technologies more than older students, there is considerable variability in the nature of the technologies they use and their level of engagement. Our findings suggest that while age is a factor, the differences in patterns of use cannot be attributed simply to any particular generational group. "

Read the full paper:
The future may have arrived, but engagement with ICTs is not equal among our diverse “net gen” learners by David Wood, Alice Barnes, Rebecca Vivian, Shiela Scutter, and Frederick Stokes-Thompson

The Scholary Publishing Process Finally Catches Up

We finished writing this article back in December 2009. Fifteen months later it has finally been published in the Canadian Journal of Learning Technology. We released a pre-publication version several months ago so if you read that, there is nothing new here. For the record, here is the publication version of Digital Learners in Higher Education: Generation is Not the Issue.

Abstract   
 
Generation is often used to explain and rationalize the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education. However, a comprehensive review of the research and popular literature on the topic and an empirical study at one postsecondary institution in Canada suggest there are no meaningful generational differences in how learners say they use ICTs or their perceived behavioural characteristics. The study also concluded that the post-secondary students at the institution in question use a limited set of ICTs and their use is driven by three key issues: familiarity, cost, and immediacy. The findings are based on focus group interviews with 69 students and survey responses from a random sample of 438 second year students in 14 different programs in five schools in the institution. The results of this investigation add to a growing body of research that questions the popular view that generation can be used to explain the use of ICTs in higher education.

Systemic Shredding?

According to Stephen Downes, Jim Shimabukuro,  does a "systemic shredding" of my research and other research that is reaching the same conclusions. Well, if by "systemic shredding", he means attacking my motives, misreading our research and selectively choosing the statements and conclusions that support his perspective then he may be right. But if he means that Shimabukuro has systematically reviewed our research and all the other research on this issue and revealed methodological flaws that make our conclusions suspect then he is wrong.

Shimabukuro biggest beef seems to be that our research at BCIT is not generalizable and that our sampling methods are suspect. Well, we never claimed that our BCIT research was generalizable beyond our institution. We make that very clear in all of our written work and presentations. As for our sampling methods, readers can judge for themselves. We followed accepted sampling procedures to produce a random sample of BCIT students.  All the details are spelled out in our article.

Shimabukuro then resorts to an attack on our motives. Surely if we are spending so much energy on this research there must be something going on. We couldn't just be doing it because we want to understand the issue better. So he checks my website and finds out I am a Dean and have been in this field for a long time so he concludes, "In short, he has invested a lot of his time and the colleges’ resources in developing and maintaining current practices, and one has to wonder if this track record might explain his efforts to defend the status quo against the real or imagined dangers that the Net Gens represent." This attack is hardly worth responding to but let me just say a) it is not true and b) this isn't just me. I am working with colleagues in three other institutions and there are well-regarded researchers in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, South Africa, Australia and the US who are reaching similar conclusions. Links to these studies are available on our research website.

The most annoying part of Shimabukro's "shredding" is his bizarre logic. It goes like this: a) the net generation discourse is one that advocates educational change via educational technology, b) we need educational change and greater use of educational technology, c) by exposing the fact that the net generation discourse is not based on evidence we are opposed to educational change. In his own words:

"Regardless of whether or not Net Gens are different, colleges ought to be looking at ways to use technology to improve learning. In other words, change and improvement, as goals, are independent of generational differences or similarities. To use the lack of difference as justification for continuing business as usual is missing the point of technology altogether. Technology is here to stay, and its presence will only grow exponentially in the coming months and years. This fact alone ought to motivate educators to explore ways to adapt or adopt it in innovative ways. The quibble about Net Gens is, at best, a distraction. "

While I disagree strongly with his deterministic conclusion, I do agree that change and improvement are independent of generation. And that is the whole point of our research: finding out what kind of change is needed, what impact digital technology is having, how students are using it in different contexts and not basing decisions on unsupported generalizations. We are in the midst of in depth interviews with our students about these issues and our findings are quite revealing. So far they confirm our survey findings: our students do not fit the net generation profile, they are not pushing for greater use of technology or radical changes to teaching. Does this mean all is well and nothing needs to be changed? No. But it does mean that making sweeping institutional changes based on the assumption that our students want and need it would be a mistake. Each institution has specific needs that are tied to its particular students, faculty and programs. Change needs to be grounded in the context not hype. But if you're skeptical of me because I've been doing my job for too long, then check out the nearly 30 other studies and articles that have been published from researches in seven different countries.

Another Dutch Study Fails to Find the Net Generation

I missed this article when it was first published late last year but like the one I reported on yesterday, it also comes from the Netherlands and also concludes that framing the issue of digital technology use in terms of generation is simplistic and misleading.

A. van den Beemt, S. Akkerman & P.R.J. Simons in Patterns of Interactive Media Use Among Contemporary Youth investigated patterns of interactive media use by young people in the Netherlands. 2138 students aged 9 to 23 in education levels ranging from primary to higher professional education were surveyed. Using factor analysis, the researchers found four categories of interactive media activities:  interacting, performing, interchanging, and authoring and four clusters of interactive media users, Traditionalists, Gamers, Networkers, and Producers were identified using cluster analysis.

They conclude:
The diversity in interactive media use combined with the characteristic aspects of our dataset, imply caution in drawing conclusions about the educational consequences in using these media. The small percentage of Producers among the respondents together with the low means for authoring of the other user groups, indicate that not all of today’s youth are active in interactive media production as described in the Net Generation literature. Furthermore, our respondents did not express preferences for games or social software in a unified way. Thus, these results ask for a made to measure application of interactive media as learning tools. We consider the potential of this application as an important aspect of future analysis.

Unfortunately, this article is also published in a closed journal so good luck trying to access it.

No Net Generation in the Netherlands

Researchers in the Netherlands went looking for the net generation and they came up empty-handed. In Reviewing the Need for Gaming in Education To Accommodate the Net Generation, G. Bekebrede, H.J.G. Warmelink,  and I.S. Mayer conclude, "there is little difference, and no statistically significant difference, in active, collaborative and technology-rich learning preferences between the representatives and non-representatives of the net generation. Furthermore, no large or statistically significant differences were found between representatives and non-representatives of the net generation with respect to the value they accorded to gaming in education. Overall our dataset did not fit the expectations raised by the net generation theory, with the percentage of students who fit the criteria being much lower than expected....Based on these results, we conclude that in the Netherlands, as elsewhere, the net generation, characterised as frequent game players and avid users of technology, does not exist."

Unfortunately this article is published in a closed journal so if you want to read more than the abstract and you don't belong to an organization that has bought a subscription, you will have to pay.

Digital Natives: Where is the Evidence?

In Digital Natives: Where is the Evidence?,  Ellen Helsper and Rebecca Eynon try to untangle what it means to be a "digital native" and, more specifically, whether this is determined by age, experience using the Internet and breadth of use of the Internet. They define a digital native as someone who multitasks, has access to a range of new technologies, is confident in their use of technologies, uses the Internet as a first port of call for information, and uses the Internet for learning.

Their findings, based on data collected in the UK,  are consistent with ours and contribute to growing body of evidence that debunks the popular net generation claims about a generation transformed by its immersion in the digital world. According to Helsper and Eynon, their data make it very clear "that it is not helpful to define digital natives and immigrants as two distinct, dichotomous generations. While there were differences in how generations engaged with the Internet, there were similarities across generations as well, mainly based on how much experience people have with using technologies....Internet use lies along a continuum of engagement instead being a dichotomous divide between users and non-users."

Helsper & Enyon conclude with a call for research that goes further than simply surveying users, that looks at what people are actually doing online, and how the use of digital technologies is connected to learning: "Reporting of use of the Internet is not the same as understanding the learning that may take place as a result of this use."

Unfortunately this article is published in the British Educational Research Journal which means, unless you have access through your institution, you will have to pay to read the article.