An Asian Perspective on the Digital Learners Discourse

One of our criticisms of the digital natives discourse has been that it was originally grounded almost entirely in a North American context. The critical reaction to this discourse has tended to be more geographically and culturally balanced with research coming from a number of European countries as well as Australia. To date, however, there has been little research conducted in developing countries or in Asia. David M. Kennedy and Bob Fox have started to fill that gap with their research conducted at the University of Hong Kong.
In Digital natives’: An Asian perspective for using learning technologies, the authors investigated how first year undergraduate students used and understood various digital technologies. Their findings are consistent with the findings of our research: while they found the first-year undergraduate students at HKU were using a wide range of digital technologies, they also found they were using them primarily for "personal empowerment and entertainment" and that the students were "not always digitally literate in using technology to support their learning. This is particularly evident when it comes to student use of technology as consumers of content rather than creators of content specifically for academic purposes"

New Directions for the Digital Natives Discourse

In her thoughtful analysis of the digital natives literature (The Digital Native Debate in Higher Education: A Comparative Analysis of Recent Literature), Erika Smith concludes:
Much of the criticism regarding the digital native debate underscores a lack of research that
authentically maps not only the rapidly shifting technology developments, but also the emergent
nature of the perceptions and viewpoints informing the learner, educator, and researcher
assumptions and beliefs underlying such debates.. She goes on to urge researchers to "move beyond the digital native debate toward other authentic understandings of today’s learners" (as we have with our Digital Learners in Higher Education project) and suggests a focus on the following questions researchers focus on the following questions:

• What is the role of the language in both informing and reflecting our perceptions of and
  experiences with emerging technologies in education, to which Prensky (2001a) and
  Seely Brown (2002) allude?
• If there is a new teaching and learning ecology, as Seely Brown (2002) states, how can
  we authentically understanding and engage with this ecology beyond the binaries of
  digital native/immigrant?
• Rather than simply considering technology usage and digital emergences, how might we
  further understand the various perceptions, values, and perspectives.

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.

Generational Explanation is a Gross Oversimplification

There is a growing body of solid research-based evidence that contradicts the popular view of the digital native as part of a technologically-savvy generation that differs fundamentally from previous generations. The latest evidence comes from a special issue of the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, Desribing or Debunking: The Net Generation and Digital Natives. The four articles in the special edition reject the popular view as a gross oversimplification and argue that the issues at play are more complex and nuanced that we have been led to believe. The articles show that generation is not a useful or accurate variable and that technology adoption and use is much more varied within the net generation age group than the popular discourse suggests. For example, in the article, Beyond Natives and Immigrants: Exploring Types of Net Generation Students, Kennedy et al. identified four statistically robust types of student technology users: Power, Ordinary, Irregular, Basic. All of these were within the net generation age group. This, they say, confirms previous research that found widespread diversity in students' technology experiences. They conclude: "the clear implications of these findings is that large scale changes in curriculum or teaching approach based on assumptions about the technology experience of this generation of students as suggestted, for example, by Prensky (2001a) snd by Oblinger (2008) cnnot be justified."


I haven't read the other three articles but, based on the abstracts, they appear to provide some new and more useful insights into the issue.

Table of Contents:
Beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate: Towards a more nuanced understanding of students' technology experiences, S. Bennett and K. Maton
Beyond natives and immigrants: exploring types of net generation students,
G. Kennedy, T. Judd, B. Dalgarno and J. Waycott
Net generation students: agency and choice and the new technologies,
C. Jones and G. Healing
Debunking the ‘digital native’: beyond digital apartheid, towards digital democracy,
C. Brown and L. Czerniewicz

Journal of Computer Assisted Learning: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jca.2010.26.issue-5/

The only shortcoming of this special journal issue is it is not open access.

New Study Highlights Superficiality of Digital Native Concept

One of our main criticisms of the digital native or net generation discourse is that presents a simplistic and superficial picture of an entire generation and ignores the complexity of technology use and its relationship to context. Eszter Hargittai has published an interesting study that reveals some of this complexity and provides compelling evidence for why we need to take a more nuanced approach to research in this area. Hargittai's study concludes that the premise that the net generation are universally knowledgeable about the web is not supported by the data, "rather, we observe systematic variation in online know-how even among a highly wired group of young adults based on user background...Overall, the results of this study show support for the importance of taking a more nuanced approach to studying the relationship of Internet use to social inequality. Far from being simply dependent on mere access, systematic differences are present in how people incorporate digital media into their lives even when we control for basic connectivity. Moreover, these differences hold even among a group of college students, precisely the type of population that popular rhetoric assumes to be universally wired and digitally savvy. These assumptions are not supported by the evidence, however.

Read the full article.

Abstract

People who have grown up with digital media are often assumed to be universally savvy with information and communication technologies. Such assumptions are rarely grounded in empirical evidence, however. This article draws on unique data with information about a diverse group of young adults’ Internet uses and skills to suggest that even when controlling for Internet access and experiences, people differ in their online abilities and activities. Additionally, findings suggest that Internet know-how is not randomly distributed among the population, rather, higher levels of parental education, being a male, and being white or Asian American are associated with higher levels of Web-use skill. These user characteristics are also related to the extent to which young adults engage in diverse types of online activities. Moreover, skill itself is positively associated with types of uses. Overall, these findings suggest that even when controlling for basic Internet access, among a group of young adults, socioeconomic status is an important predictor of how people are incorporating the Web into their everyday lives with those from more privileged backgrounds using it in more informed ways for a larger number of activities.

Evidence Doesn't Support Generational Distinction

It has become accepted, almost without question, that the so-called net generation is fundamentally different than previous generations and that we must change they way we treat net geners in the workplace, in our educational institutions and in the marketplace. Leading proponents of this view include Canadian futurist and consultant, Don Tapscott, Marc Prensky, Neil Howe and William Strauss and Diana & James Oblinger.

The basic premise of this group of pundits is that the generation born after 1982 (or thereabouts as actual definitions of the generation vary) has been profoundly affected by growing up in a digital world. In the words of Marc Prensky, they are digital natives (as opposed to the digital immigrants born before 1982) and they have a fundamentally different relationship with technology. They are at ease with and it is an integral part of their lives. But the net gen pundits go further than this. Because they have been immersed in the digital technological world since birth, the pundits argue, this experience has changed the way they learn and interact with others, changed their values and beliefs, and even changed their brains. These claims have been made with such authority and frequency and have received such widespread coverage in the popular media that many educators and business people are now pushing for major changes in how they organize their institutions and businesses.

The list of defining characteristics that these pundits claim the Net Generation exhibits include the ability to effectively multitask, the need for immediate and frequent feedback, a strong preference for social interaction, a preference for teamwork, and a strong social conscience.

But what are these claims based on? If one actually examines the evidence it becomes clear that the net generation discourse is built on shaky foundations. Three recent reviews of the academic literature suggest that, contrary to what Tapscott and others claim, there is little evidence to support the view that significant generational differences exist. After reviewing over 20 reports and studies, Thomas Reeves and Eunjung Oh conclude, "There is very little consensus of opinion and scholarship about whether generational differences exist that are worth taking into consideration in the workplace, colleges, and universities, and other contexts. The gross generalizations based on weak survey research and the speculation of profit-oriented consultants should be treated with extreme caution in a research and development context." A group researchers from the BC Institute of Technology (Mark Bullen, Tannis Morgan, Karen Belfer, Adnan Qayyum) came to a similar conclusion after reviewing nearly a dozen studies and articles. They conclude, "What all of these works have in common is that they make grand claims about the difference between the millennial generation and all previous generations and they argue that this difference has huge implications for education. But most significantly, these claims are made with reference to almost no empirical data. For the most part they rely on anecdotal observations or speculation. In the rare cases where there is hard data, it is usually not representative." Three British researcher also reviewed the evidence and concluded, "the picture beginning to emerge from research on young people's relationships with technology is much more complex than the digital native characterisation suggests. While technology is embedded in their lives, young people's use and skills are not uniform...there is no evidence... of a distinctly different learning style the like of which has never been seen before."

Despite a lack of strong research to support their claims, the consultants and pundits continue to sell the idea that this generation has a fundamentally different way of interacting with the world. They urge us to make radical changes in how we educate this generation and now they argue we need to change how we recruit, retain and support them in the workplace (Globe & Mail, Feb. 13: The Just-in-time Performance Review). Increasingly educators and businesses seem to be buying into these claims. There may well be grounds for making changes to how we organize our schools and workplaces but doing this based on unsupported claims about generational differences is dangerous and irresponsible. As Sue Bennett, Karl Maton and Lisa Kervin argue in their review, "The time has come for a considered and disinterested examination of the assumptions underpinning the claims about the digital natives...considered and rigorous investigation that...seeks to understand the situation before proclaiming the need for widespread change."

Articles referenced:

• Bennett, S., Maton, K & Kervin, L. (2008). The Digital Natives Debate: A Critical Review of the Evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39, No. 5, 775-786
• Bullen, M., Morgan, T., Belfer, K., & Qayyum, A. (2009). The Net Generation in Higher Education: Rhetoric and Reality. International Journal of Excellence in E-Learning, 2(1).
• Howe, N. & Strauss, W. (2000). Millenials Rising: The Next Great Generation. New York: Random House.
• Oblinger, D.G. & Oblinger, J.L. (Eds) (2005). Educating the Net Generation. Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE.
• Prensky, M. (2001a). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5)?
• Prensky, M. (2001b ). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II; Do They Really Think Differently? On the Horizon, 9(6).?
• Reeves, T. & Oh, E. (2007). Generational Differences. In M. Spector, M. D. Merrill, J. van Merrienboer, & M. P. Driscoll (Eds). The Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology (pp. 296-303).
• Tapscostt, D. (1998). Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. Toronto: McGraw-Hill.

Born Digital Research Methods

One of the problems with the net generation discourse is that, for the most part, it is not being driven by issues that have been identified in academic research. Instead, educators are responding to the hype, speculation and murky research in the lay press and often accepting uncritically the claims that these writers are making. The popular literature that does claim to have a basis in research rarely reports the kind of methodological detail that would allow readers to make an informed judgement of its quality.

Elsewhere I highlighted the methodological problems with Grown Up Digital. Surprisingly, despite being the work of two academics, Born Digital provides us with even fewer methodological details. So, it may well be based on sound research, but all we are told about the research that informs the book is contained in two paragraphs:

• They conducted a series of focus groups and interviews of young people.
• They held 100 converstaions with young people from around the world about the technologies they use, their online identities and their views on privacy and safety.
• They held conversations with about 150 informants.

They tell us nothing about how the data was analyzed, how the informants and interview subjects were chosen, what specific questions were asked, nor how their study is grounded in the existing literature. These, of course, are the requirements of academic research, not popular writing, but the problem is academics are citing the popular net gen literature as if it were academic research. I have stopped counting the number of articles that refer to claims made by Prensky, Tapscott and other as if they were based on conclusive evidence. Some like Danah Boyd even argue that academics worry too much about academic rigour and should be more willing to accept generalizations: "Academics tend to err on the side of nuance and precision, eschewing generalizations and coarse labels. This is great for documenting cultural dynamics, but not so great for making intervention." But isn't this precisely the problem? Interventions are being advocated, based on speculation and/or research that has not undergone the accepted process of scholarly review and publication. It is fine to raise the issues in the popular press but when the claims are accepted uncritically by educators and cloaked in an aura of research respectability, we have problems.