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"

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.

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 New 3 E’s of Education: Enabled, Engaged and Empowered

Here's another report on trends in educational technology. The New 3E's of Education: Enabled, Engaged and Empowered is from the US K-12 sector but it provides a glimpse of the kind of students who will be entering postsecondary. It also confirms some of the findings of the Horizon Report about key trends in postsecondary educational technology. Unlike most of the net gen hype, this report is based on a very large data set and it provide details of the methodology used (see below).

The report argues there are three trends that educational planners need to take into account when framing educational policy: mobile learning, online and blended learning, and e-textbooks which lead to the need for the three E's of Education:
    •    Enabling access to resources and experts beyond the local environment,
    •    Engaging students to develop problem solving, creativity and critical thinking skills, and
    •    Empowering learners to take responsibility for their learning.
According the survey, students own cell phones, mobile phones, MP3 players, e-textbooks and use social networking sites on a regular basis, 'Students are already very effectively implementing this [vision] of socially-based, un-tethered and digitally-rich learning on their own, in and out of school, with or without the assistance and support of their teachers and schools' (p. 3).

Notes on Methdology
"In fall 2010, Project Tomorrow surveyed 294,399 K-12 students, 42,267 parents, 35,525 teachers, 2,125 librarians, 3,578 school/district administrators and 1,391 technology leaders representing 6,541 public and private schools from 1,340 districts. Schools from urban (34 percent), suburban (29 percent) and rural (37 percent) communities are represented. Over one-half of the schools that participated in Speak Up 2010 are Title I eligible (an indicator of student population poverty) and 34 percent have more than 50 percent minority population attending. The Speak Up 2010 surveys were available online for input between October 18, 2010 and January 21st, 2011.

The data results are a convenience sample; schools and districts self-select to participate and facilitate the survey-taking process for their students, educators and parents. Any school or school district in the United States is eligible to participate in Speak Up. In preparation for data analysis, the survey results are matched with school level demographic information, such as Title I, school locale (urban, rural and suburban), and ethnicity selected from the Core of Common Data compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/). The data is analyzed using standard cross-tab analysis and key variables (such as internet and device access) are tested for statistical significance.
To minimize bias in the survey results, Project Tomorrow conducts significant outreach to ensure adequate regional, socio-economic and racial/ethnic/cultural distribution. To participate in Speak Up, organizations register to participate, promote the survey to their constituents and schedule time for their stakeholders to take the 15 to 20 minute online survey. Starting in February 2011, all participating organizations receive free, online access to their data with comparative national benchmarks. Staff from Project Tomorrow summarize, analyze, and verify the national data through a series of focus groups and interviews with representative groups of students, educators and parents."(pp. 3-4)

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.

Digital Learners in Higher Education: Generation is Not the Issue

The idea that generation explains how young people use digital technologies and that these "digital natives" are fundamentally different from the older "digital natives" in how they use and understand technology has been successfully debunked. Our work and in particular, the article, Digital Learners in Higher Education: Generation is Not the Issue, is part of the significant body of research that has exposed the superficiality of the techno-determinist rhetoric of the popular futurists (e.g., Tapscott, Prensky, Palfrey & Gasser and others). This article has been accepted for publication in the Canadian Journal of Learning & Technology but will probably not be published until sometime in 2011 so we are making a pre-publication version of the article available now.

We and others (e.g., see special issues of Journal of Computer Assisted Learning and Learning, Media & Technology) have moved beyond the simplistic generational perspective and have begun to explore the deeper and more important issues related to how higher education learners understand and use digital technologies in different parts of their lives. Stay tuned for more on this.

Multitasking Lowers Academic Performance

It says something about how firmly entrenched the net generation myth has become that we need to conduct a study to show that being distracted and unfocused has a negative impact on academic performance.

One of the claims made by the net generation myth creators is that young people can multitask efficiently. They can do this, apparently, because they have grown up with digital technology and have become used to multitasking. This claim isn't based on any research but rather is a dubious conclusion based on observing that young people seem to be always doing so many things at the same time: texting, surfing the Internet,  chatting on mobile phones, and, somewhere in between, studying. They must, the simple-minded argument goes, be doing all of those things well. Well, no.

A study from the Open University of the Netherlands, reported in the Daily Mail, shows that students who were using Facebook while studying had exam results that were 20% lower than those who were not using Facebook but instead were focusing their attention on the studying.

Dr. Paul Kirschner who conducted the study says: "Our study, and other previous work, suggests that while people may think constant task-switching allows them to get more done in less time, the reality is it extends the amount of time needed to carry out tasks and leads to more mistakes...We should resist the fashionable views of educational gurus that children can multi-task, and that we should adapt our education systems accordingly to keep up with the times."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1309612/Using-Facebook-lower-exam-results-20.html##ixzz0ysMUC0eO

 

See also, the post: Multitaskers Bad at Multitasking from August 2009

The Digital Literacy of "Digital Natives"

A clear trend is emerging in the net gen literature. On one hand, the pundits and futurists continue to argue that "digital natives" are sophisticated users of the new technologies who critically analyze the information they access online. In most cases, we have to take their word for these claims because the underlying research (if there is any) is often proprietary and the authors reveal little of their methodology.

On the other hand, most of the academic research on this topic is showing that generation really isn't an important discriminator and that "digital natives", in fact, appear to have a superficial understanding of the new technologies, use the new technologies for very limited and specific purposes, and have superficial information-seeking and analysis skills. Now a new study has just been published that provides further evidence of the need to be extremely skeptical of the the often-repeated claims made by the likes of Tapscott, Prensky, and Palfery & Gasser and others.

Hargittai, Fullerton, Menchen-Trevino and Thomas (2010) investigated how young adults at a US university look for and evaluate online content. They found that the students they studied displayed an inordinate level of trust in search engine brand as a measure of credibility: "Over a quarter of the respondents mentioned that they chose a Web site because the search engine had returned that site as the first result suggesting considerable trust in these services. In some cases, the respondent regarded the search engine as the relevant entity for which to evaluate trustworthiness, rather than the Web site that contained the information." Only 10% of the students bothered to verify the site author's credentials: "These findings suggest that students' level of faith in their search engine of choice is so high they do not feel the need to verify for themselves who authored the pages they view or what their qualifications might be."

When asked how they decide to visit a Web site, the most important factor mentioned by the students was "being able to identify easily the sources of information on the site". However,  "knowing who owns the Web site" and "knowing what business and organizations financially support the site" were less important to students. When asked how they determine the credibility of the information, the least common actions were "checking if contact information is provided on the Web site" and "checking the qualifications or credentials of the author." Checking the "about us" section the Web site was also something that students did either rarely or on average.

Contrast these findings with what Tapscott (2009) has to say in Grown Up Digital:
"Net Geners are the new scrutinizers. Given the large number of information sources on the Web, not to mention unreliable information - today's youth have the ability to distinguish fact from fiction. The Net Generation knows to be skeptical whenever they're online. "

Palfrey & Gasser (2008) in Born Digital provide a slightly different, but equally positive, perspective on the critical faculties of "digital natives". They argue that "digital natives have a sophisticated process for gathering information from the Web that allows them to develop a deep understanding of current events and issues is often underestimated." "Digital natives" are "interacting with information in constructive ways", gathering information "through a multistep process that involves grazing, a 'deep dive', and a feedback loop. They are perfeting the art of grazing through the huge amount of information that comes their way on a daily basis."

But here's the important difference between the work of academic researchers like Hargittai and colleagues and books by people like Tapscott and Palfrey and Gasser: Hargittai's work has been subjected to peer review by experts in the field, has been published in academic journals and provides full details of the research methodology and how the research was funded and supported.

As Hargittai and colleagues conclude:
"While some have made overarching assumptions about young people's universal savvy with digital media due to their lifelong exposure to them (e.g., Prensky, 2001; Tapscott, 1998)...empirical evidence does not necessarily support this position...Students are not always turning to the most relevant cues to determine the credibility of online content."


Read the full article, Trust Online: Young Adults' Evaluation of Web Content.

Small Study Finds Gap between Educational and Informal Use

Only 29 students were surveyed in this study by Swapna Kumar so we have to be cautious about the results. The undergraduate education students at a large private university were asked about their perspectives on Web 2.0. technologies, specifically about their informal and educational use of these technologies.

The results confirm other studies that show that technology use is multifaceted and that we need to look more deeply at how the technology is being used. Like other studies, this study found students consumed far than they produced with technology. In other words they were primarily passive users of the technology and not making full use of the affordances of Web 2.0 technologies.

On the other hand, Kumar's finding contradicted other studies in finding that the students were able to transfer their personal expertise with the technologies to the academic context:

"the qualitative data summarized earlier in this paper reveal that students in this group use Instant Messenger when completing assignments, and Google Docs for archiving and group work, even if their professors are unfamiliar with Google Docs. They suggested innovative and relevant ways in which online videos, podcasts, and wikis can enhance their educational experience in contrast to research reported by Caruso and Kvavik (2005) and Kennedy et al. (2008). Students’ voluntary descriptions of how these resources have been used in courses that they have attended, as well as their enthusiastic suggestions, signify their interest in the use of new technologies in higher education."

But as Kumar points out, this interest in the academic use of the technology may have been driven by the students' interest in teaching and the fact they were enrolled in an educational foundations course. As we have said, the context is critical.

New Study Debunks Digital Native Myth...or does it?

One of my critiques of the net gen discourse is that it has been fuelled in large part by non-academic research. Many of the claims emerge from proprietary studies that have not been vetted through the academic peer review process. The authors of these studies are not required to disclose important details such as methodology, funding sources, and potential conflicts of interest. Without this kind of detail it is difficult to assess the quality of the research and the validity of the findings. Despite this, the conclusions are disseminated far and wide using social media and soon become entrenched.

Well, we have a new study that purports to show that digital natives aren't as technologically savvy as people like Tapscott and Presnky would have us believe. Our research certainly supports this conclusion but the trouble with this new study is that:
a) it was conducted by a private consulting company, Cengage Learning so, as far as I know, there was no requirement for peer review;
b) only very limited methodological details have been publically released.

Despite that, the headline that is appearing in the blogosphere is something like "Digital Native Myth Debunked". If we look at the data that this conclusion appears to be based on, it is pretty thin: "65 per cent of instructors think students are tech savvy when it comes to using digital tools in the classroom. Conversely, only 42 per cent of students believe there is enough support for educational technology, evidence of a perception gap in how adept students are versus how savvy they are presumed to be." Hardly myth-debunking evidence. What is more troubling is all we know about this study is that data was collected via a survey of 765 students and 308 instructors. We don't know where these instructors and students were, what the response rate was, how they were selected or what the actual survey questions are.

A Critique of the Net Gen Discourse from Germany

In Is There a Net Gener in the House? Dispelling a Mystification, Rolf Schulmeister analyzes the evidence for the existence of a "net generation" and concludes many of claims are overstated or unsupported

"Generation: Multivariate analyses of the use of media always arrive at different contours of the users and describe their diversity rather than their unity.

The Use of Media: It turns out that the use of media alone is not sufficient for the existence of the net generation but rather that the motives for the use of media are essential in the context of such an analysis.

The Motivation for the Use of Media: The preferences of the young for specific internet activities provide information about the spectrum of their interests; the age distribution of their preferences suggests that the actual interests are influenced by socialization.

Socialization: An interpretation of youth people’s use of media is the result of the understanding of their ontogenetic development and socialization. This perspective agrees with the basic assumption of the Uses & Gratification-approach, which presupposes that the needs of youth determine the choice of the media and not, to put the cart before the horse, assuming that media make the young. The young take up the media they require in order to satisfy their needs.

Student Responses and University Didactics: students value live teaching and prefer a moderate use of media. Active self-determined participation required by Web 2.0 is only pursued by a minority of students."

Report Concludes Generation Not the Issue

The Phase 1 report of the Digital Learners in Higher Education research project concludes that most of the net generation claims are not based on sound research and that discussions of technology in higher education need to move beyond generation. "The study revealed that while some of the descriptors of Net Generation learners are evident in BCIT learners, there is not a clear difference between generations of learners. In other words, generation does not help explain differences in how BCIT learners approach their studies, or how they learn, communicate and use technology. We suggest that it is more useful to look at the type of program and discipline as factors that influence use of ICTs."

Read the full report.

OECD Report Calls for More Research On Net Generation

The OECD has released a well-documented review of the net generation (or new millennium learner) research that confirms what most of the other methodologically sound research has suggested: "there is not enough empirical evidence yet to support that students' use of technology and digital media is transforming the way in which they learn, their social values and lifestyles, and finally their expectations about teaching and learning in higher education."

The report does conclude that students in higher education are heavy users of digital media and that they favour the use of technology but that they value technology use in education for its ability to improve access, convenience and productivity, not to radically change teaching and learning.

New Millennium Learners in Higher Education: Evidence and Policy Implications recommends that higher education institutions invest more in empirical research to "elucidate ways technology can provide more than convenience and productivity, in particular learning benefits either by providing a more rewarding experience or better learning outcomes, or both at the same time."

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.

Digital Learners in Austria

A study out of Austria provides more evidence that we need to carefully scrutinize the claims about the existence of a generation of digitally literate learners who are demanding new ways of learning and working.

Walther Nagler and Martin Ebner surveyed first year undergraduate students at Graz University of Technology in 2007 and 2008 about their use of digital technologies. Like other surveys of higher education students, they found widespread use of digital technologies and possession of devices such as laptops and mobile phones, but not a sophisticated use of the technology: "Although young students are technologically increasingly well-equipped, they do not exhaust the potential of their devices or the potential of common Web 2.0 applications." What is somewhat surprising then is Nagler and Ebner's conclusion that their evidence supports the need for a "rethinking of essential structural elements at universities."

Read the the paper, Is Your University Ready for the Ne(x)t-Generation.

The New Millennium Learner

New Millennium Learner is the OECD term for Net Gen Learner. The OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) has an NML project that aims to "analyse this new generation of learners and understand their expectations and attitudes. The background paper published in 2006 for this project is one of the few papers on this topic that avoids going overboard with calls for radical transformation. Although a bit long-winded, the policy recommendations are measured and thoughtful and include:

1. Bridging the gap between NML experiences of ICT-mediated inter-personal communication and knowledge management inside and outside classrooms by enriching schools’ range of available ICT devices and services, and by allowing room for using them in a variety of educational experiments and innovative practices.
2. Making arrangements to better take into account NML voices regarding how education should be.
   
3. Addressing gender and socio-economic imbalances.
4. Creating incentives for the software industry to develop educational software for a vast range of devices (from computers to cellular phones) that try to apply the principles that make video-games so attractive and successful among NML.
5. Engaging initial and in-service teacher training institutions in all these processes.

I do have concerns about this paper, however. Like most of the net gen literature it does not seriously question the underlying premise that this is a generational issue. In fact, the paper begins with the premise that there is a New Millennium Learner and that we need to define and characterize it. Although later in the paper the question is asked: is this "a generation-wide phenomenon: can the term be applied to cover all members of the generation?", the evidence used to answer it is sketchy at best: percentage of young people using computers and the Internet; the main uses of computers (information seeking, e-mail and instant messaging); and use of alternative devices such as cell phones. This kind of data says nothing about the impact on learning and does not support the many other claims that are made about this generation, some of which are repeated in this paper: preference for multimedia over text, expertise with multitasking, need for immediate feedback. The paper also repeats the claims about changes in social and personal values made by Tapscott and others: the NML is particularly hopeful, self-assured, determined etc. but then concludes, "there seems to be no empirical evidence yet to support this."

Overall the message of this paper is a bit contradictory. Unfounded claims are repeated and then dismissed but the basic premise of the existence of a distinct generation that needs our attention and requires policy responses remains unquestioned. On a more positive note, I was pleased to see a short discussion of socio-economic and gender issues. These are not often mentioned in the net gen literature.

Communication Preferences of Postsecondary Learners: Are Net Gen Learners Really that Different?

We presented at the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE) conference in Ottawa today. Here's the presentation.

View more presentations from Mark Bullen.

TLT Conference Presentation - better version

Here's a higher quality version of my presentation to the Teaching and Learning to the Power of Technology conference. It is divided into several six minute segments. I have included the Power Point presentation below.

View more presentations from Mark Bullen.

Generation is Not the Issue

Here is the presentation of the results of the research that looked at how students at the BC Institute of Technology are using information and communication technologies. The results clearly show that generational differences are not the issue. Contextual issues such as the nature of the program are more important considerations when making decisions about the integration of learning technologies.

Here's the SlideShare version which allows you to control the slides. Note, however, the audio does not sync up properly when you use the slide advance.

Net Gen P Dday09 Final

View more presentations from markbullen. (tags: learner millenial)