Emerging Practice in a Digital Age

It is refreshing to read a report on the use of digital technologies in education that doesn't frame the issue in generational terms. Emerging Practice in a Digital Age provides a very useful and interesting summary of 10 case studies of emerging practice using digital technologies in British higher education. Terms such as digital native, millennial learner, or net generation are nowhere to be found in this document. Instead, the drivers of change identified are: increased personalization and choice, developing new markets and economic pressures.

The 10 case studies are organized into three themes:
1. Working in partnership with students
2. Developing students' employability potential
3. Preparing for the future

The report cautions:
"in our enthusiasm to embrace the new we should not assume that ownership of new technologies and the apparent fluency with which they are used in daily life implies knowledge of how to use them effectively to support learning. We need a better understanding of the digital literacies that students and staff need to take advantage of the new opportunities, and we need to integrate these in our programmes of study and continuing professional development."

Emerging Practice in a Digital Age  was published by the British educational technology organization, JISC

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.

The Challenges of Constant Connectivity

In my previous post I highlighted Neil Selwyn's EDMEDIA debate presentation in which he argued that too much of the social media in education discourse is happening within an "ed tech bubble". He referred to the "self-contained, self- referencing and self-defining nature of the debate" and he called for a broader discussion with people outside "the bubble".

I'm not sure if Sherry Turkle would be considered outside the ed tech community but she is certainly somebody who brings a refreshingly thoughtful perspective on the issues related to the use and impact of digital technologies.

Here is an edited version of an interview she gave for the excellent PBS series, Digital Nation, in which she talks about the challenges of constant connectivity and argues for a more considered approach to digital technologies that recognizes that we are in the early days of learning how to use these technologies and understanding their impact.


"I don’t really care what technology wants. It’s up to people to develop technologies, see what affordances the technology has. Very often these affordances tap into our vulnerabilities. I would feel bereft if, because technology wants us to read short, simple stories, we bequeath to our children a world of short, simple stories. What technology makes easy is not always what nurtures the human spirit."

Read: Digital Demands: The Challenges of Constant Connectivity

Social to Learning Technology Transfer Not Automatic

Back in August 2008 I posted a link to two Australian conference presentations based on research done by Gregor Kennedy and colleagues. Here's an article in the Australian Journal of Educational Technology that reports on that research, First Year Students Experience with Technology: Are They Really Digital Natives.

One of the key conclusions of this study is consistent with the findings of our research:

More research is needed to determine the specific circumstances under which students would like their 'living technologies' to be adapted as 'learning technologies'. The positive association between students' use of technology and their preference for its use at University leaves unanswered the question as to whether students' everyday skills with emerging technologies will correspond to skills associated with beneficial, technology based learning. As noted by a number of authors (Kirkwood & Price, 2005; Katz, 2005) the transfer from a social or entertainment technology (a living technology) to a learning technology is neither automatic nor guaranteed. These issues point to many unresolved issues that warrant further investigation.

Read the full article.

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)

Communication Preferences of the Net Generation

Further to the previous post on the BCIT research, we also examined our students' communication preferences. We wanted to find out how they were using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to communicate with their peers and with their instructors. We were also interested in finding out if there were any differences in ICT use and age.

Our survey of a random sample of over 400 BCIT students did find some statistically significant differences but overall, we found that net generation and non-net gen students were not using ICTs more than face to face communication to interact with their peers.

We found that net gen students were more likely to use instant messaging, text messaging, Facebook/MySpace and phone to communicate with peers than non-net gen students.

However, when communicating with instructors, the only significant difference in use of ICTs between net gen and non net gen was with WebCT. Non-net gen students were more likely to use WebCT than net gen students.

By far the most common mode for communicating with instructors for both net gen and non net gen sudents is talking in person.

More on Generational Differences

Here's another review of the literature that raises serious questions about the conventional wisdom around generational differences. According to Thomas Reeves and Eujong Oh, "Generational differences are the subject of much popular speculation but relatively little substantive research. Among the speculations are suggestions that instructional designers should take generational differences into account when developing instruction and that games and simulations will be more effective learning environments with today's younger generation than they have been with earlier ones...Most of the popular literature on the subject...appears to rest on limited data, almost always conducted by survey methods characterized by a lack of reliability and validity data."

Read the full chapter from the Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology (2007), edited by J. Michael Spector, M. David Merrill, Jeroen van Merrienboer, Marcy P. Driscoll.

Thanks to Norm Friesen for drawing my attention to this.

More Mythbusting Evidence

Two British researchers have just completed a study of undergraduate students that found "many young students are far from being the epitomic global, connected, socially-networked technologically-fluent digital native who has little patience for passive and linear forms of learning." Instead, the study found that students use a limited range of technologies for both formal and informal learning and that there is a "very low level of use and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools such as wikis, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies."

The study was conducted by Anoush Margaryan and Allison Littlejohn at Glasgow Caledonian and Strathclyde Universities in the UK. Here is a summary of their findings. A full article is in the works.

This study investigated the extent and nature of use of technologies – primarily communication technologies, social software and mobile devices – by undergraduate students in two disciplines, social work and education, in Glasgow Caledonian and Strathclyde Universities in the UK. The study included a questionnaire survey of 160 students, followed up by in-depth interviews with 8 students and 8 staff members at both institutions. The findings show that many young students are far from being the epitomic global, connected, socially-networked technologically-fluent digital native who has little patience for passive and linear forms of learning. Students use a limited range of technologies for formal and informal learning. These are mainly established ICTs - institutional VLE, Google and Wikipedia and mobile phones. Students make limited, recreational use of social technologies such as media sharing tools and social networking. Findings point to a very low level of use and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools such as wikis, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies. The study did not find evidence to support the claims regarding students adopting radically different patterns of knowledge creation and sharing suggested by some previous studies. This study reveals that students’ attitudes to learning appear to be influenced by the approaches adopted by their lecturers. Far from demanding lecturers change their practice, students appear to conform to fairly traditional pedagogies, albeit with minor uses of technology tools that deliver content. In fact their expectations were that they would be “taught” in traditional ways – even though many of these students were engaged in courses that are viewed by these Universities as adopting innovative approaches to technology-enhanced learning. The study didn’t find age differences in patterns of technology use – the young students were just as likely to be conservative in the extent and nature of technology use as the older ones. Margaryan, A., & Littlejohn, A. (2008). The myth of the digital native: Students’ use of technologies. Presentation at an Academy Horizons Seminar, Caledonian Academy, Glasgow Caledonian University. Available online at http://www.slideshare.net/anoush/myth-of-digital-native-students-use-of-technologies-presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: digital_natives seminars)