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.

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.

The Net Gen and Web 2.0

Here's more evidence that suggests the need for skepticism when it comes to the hype about the Net Gen and technology use.

This article in The Social Computing Journal suggests that the growth in use of social networking technologies like Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In is not among the Net Generation but among older users:

"Baby boomers... are embracing popular consumer technology applications nearly 20 times faster than younger generations. Compared to a year ago, Gen Y consumers between the ages of 18 and 24, are decelerating their use of consumer electronics and related services including social networking, blogging, listening to podcasts and posting video on the Internet. Yet, there was a 67 percent increase among baby boomers reading blogs or listening to podcasts."

The article suggests three explanations for this:
1. The Net Gen are not early adopters but rather followers waiting to see what the older, more experienced peers latch on to before they jump in.

2. The Net Gen has an innate sense that too much connectivity and too much time online is unproductive

3. The Net Gen is all about being cool, and these tools are no longer leading edge, and therefore cool.

But maybe the real explanation is that this isn't a generational issue. Bennett et al. (2008), for example, suggest there may be as much variation within generations as between. So perhaps analyzing technology use in this way isn't very helpful. Certainly making educational technology decisions based on generation is not useful.

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.

A Critical Review of the Net Gen Evidence

According to three Australian researchers, our skepticism of the grand claims made about the "net generation" and the supposed impact on education is well-founded. According to Sue Bennett, Karl Maton and Lisa Kervin, the claims that this generation of learners is so different from previous generations that a fundamental change to our educational systems is needed "have been subjected to little critical scrutiny, are undertheorised, and lack a sound empirical basis"(p. 776).

In their article in the latest issue of the British Journal of Educational Technology (Vol. 39, No. 5, 775-786). The three researchers from the University of Wollongong and the University of Sydney review the evidence and analyze the debate. They conclude that "...rather than being empirically and theoretically informed, the debate can be likened to an academic form of a 'moral panic'" (p. 775).

Abstract
The idea that a new generation of students is entering the education system has excited recent attention among educators and education commentators. Termed `digital natives' or the `Net generation', these young people are said to have been immersed in technology all their lives, imbuing them with sophisticated technical skills and learning preferences for which traditional education is unprepared. Grand claims are being made about the nature of this generational change and about the urgent necessity for educational reform in response. A sense of impending crisis pervades this debate. However, the actual situation is far from clear. In this paper, the authors draw on the fields of education and sociology to analyse the digital natives debate. The paper presents and questions the main claims made about digital natives and analyses the nature of the debate itself. We argue that rather than being empirically and theoretically informed, the debate can be likened to an academic form of a `moral panic'. We propose that a more measured and disinterested approach is now required to investigate `digital natives' and their implications for education.

The full article is accessible online through library e-journal databases.

Thanks to George Siemens for alerting me to this article.