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.

Crossing Boundaries: Digital Learners and the Social and Academic Use of Technology in Higher Education

Phase 2 of the Digital Learners in Higher Education project has uncovered some important insights into how learners in higher education are thinking about and using digital technologies for social and academic purposes and how they separate and integrate their uses.
We have submitted an article for publication but given how lengthy the scholarly publication process is, we have decided to release it here for feedback and comment.
Crossing Boundaries: Digital Learners and the Social and Academic Use of Technology in Higher Education
Tannis Morgan, Mark Bullen

 Abstract
This article reports on a study that used third generation Activity Theory as a framework to investigate how postsecondary students think about and use digital technologies in their social and academic lives. The results confirm the fallacy of the digital native stereotype but go further by uncovering important insights into how students at one institution can have quite different approaches to the use of digital technologies and different use profiles. We identified three dynamic and evolving use profiles: instrumental, separator and integrator. The aggregation of these profiles provides a starting point for understanding the nuances of digital learners in higher education.
Download the full article.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Separating Fact from Fiction in the Digital Generation Discourse

I will be making an online presentation on our digital learners research to Institute of Technology Silgo, in Ireland on January 19 at 4:10 pm GMT (8:10 am PST). You can find out more about the presentation and how to register at:
Separating Fact from Fiction in the Digital Generation Discourse

Learning, the Net Generation and Digital Natives

The journal, Learning, Media and Technology has just published an issue with  focus on the theme, Learning, the Net Generation and Digital Natives. I have only had chance to scan the articles but it looks like a very interesting issue that adds to the growing body of research that is helping to provide us with an evidence-based understanding of how young people are using digital technologies and how leisure and academic uses are interconnected. The issue is edited by Chris Jones from the UK Open University, Institute of Educational Technology.

From the editorial:

The articles in this issue paint a complex picture of change amongst young people, a picture at odds with the idea of a Net Generation composed of Digital Natives. They address the ways that leisure and study activities intertwine and suggest new methods for research need to be adopted to complement the predominantly survey methods currently deployed. The articles show that young people at school and university use technologies in ways that are related to their purposes and exhibit a diversity that contrasts with the idea of a sharp generational change. The articles agree that there are significant age-related changes but they suggest that these changes are mediated by the active appropriation of technology by young people who act purposively and in relation to influential institutional contexts.

Unfortunately, the journal is not open access so if you don't have access through your institution, you will have to pay to read this publically-funded research.

Thanks to Tannis Morgan for bringing this to my attention.

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.

German Study Casts Doubt on Net Gen Claims

Research out of Germany that investigated students’ use of Internet services, media types and e-learning preferences has concluded that the "vast army of internet-enthusiasts" that" was expected to descend upon the universities" has not yet appeared.

In a chapter in Looking Toward the Future of Technology-Enhanced Education: Ubiquitous Learning and the Digital Native, edited by Martin Ebner and Mandy Schiefner, Rolf Schulmeister says his results are "sobering for anyone – deceived by the steep rise of user numbers in Web 2.0 Communities – who assumed that a new era of university education was dawning with the rise of interactive environments." One of his key conclusions is consistent with the findings of our research that shows that students are very pragmatic and instrumental in their use of ICTs. It has "become apparent that education is not the primary purpose of media use and that there is no transfer from extensive computer experience to learning."

Read the Students, Internet, E-Learning and Web 2.0.

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.

Spanish Study Questions Net Gen Claims

The Open University of Catalonia has replicated the survey first administered in Canada at the BC Institute of Technology and the results are almost the same: there is no substantial difference between net generation-aged students and others in terms of their technology preferences and characteristics.

The survey sought to explore students' use of technology to communicate with peers and instructors, and the extent to which students fit the typical net generation profile: social, preference for group work, need for structure, skilled multitaskers.

Marc Romero, Montse Guitert and Albert Sangrá, in a paper submitted to the 2010 European Distance and E-Learning Network conference, conclude, "Based on the analysis of this data, we can say there is very little difference between the study and communication preferences of net generation and non-net generation learners at UOC. This finding is consistent with the findings of the BCIT study and is further evidence that the notion of the Net Generation as presented in the literature is more a speculation than real."

The UOC survey is part of the Digital Learners in Higher Education research project involving BCIT, UOC and the University of Regina.

Research Questions Technological Determinist Net Gen Discourse

A study of first-year students' use of technology at five UK universities concludes there is much more diversity than is portrayed in the popular net generation literature. According to Jones & Ramanau (2009), "the broad brush approaches to generational changes obscure the subtle but important differences between students" of the same generation. And Jones & Cross (2009) argue that the net generation is more like a "collection of minorities with a small number of technophobic students and large numbers of others making use of new technologies but in ways that do not fully correspond with many of the expectations built into the Net Generation and Digital Natives theses".

Their study of about 600 first year students in five UK universities found widespread use of many digital technologies but found limited use of participatory digital technologies such as blogs, wikis and virtual worlds: "there is no evidence of a significant uptake of any of these technologies amongst the first students." The study was conducted in the Spring of 2008.

They conclude that educational policy makers in universities and government should be cautious about "adopting technological determinist arguments that suggest that universities simply have to adapt to a changing student population who are described as a single group with definite and known characteristics."

Exposing the Shaky Foundations of the Net Gen Discourse

It is always reassuring when your thinking is confirmed by others. It is a particularly reassuring when somebody as articulate as Neil Selwyn does it. In The Digital Native: Myth and Reality, Selwyn adds to the growing body of literature that is exposing the shaky or non-existent foundations of the popular discourse on the net generation. In doing so, he sums up our views precisely but more articulately. Selwyn reviews the literature on young people and digital technology in information sciences, education studies and communication/media studies and concludes that: "young people's engagements with digital technologies are varied and often unspectacular - in stark contrast to popular portrayals of the digital native."

But more than that, he sums up exactly what is wrong with the current net generation discourse:

"Whilst often compelling and persuasive, the overall tenor of these discursive constructions of young people and technology tends towards exaggeration and inconsistency. The digital native discourse as articulated currently cannot be said to provide an especially accurate or objective account of young people and technology. A we shall go on to discuss in further detail, claims, for instance, over the innate skills and abilities of young people are grounded rarely, if at all, in rigorous, objective empirical studies conducted with representative samples. At best the “evidence base" for much of the digital native literature is rooted in informal observation and anecdote. Within many of the accounts outlined above, the use of actual evidence or objective analysis appears not to be a major consideration as long as a persuasive case can be. Thus, at best the digital native literature tends to adopt a legalistic rather than social scientific notion of “evidence” in terms of helping establish a particular case or point of view regardless of contradictory findings (Gorard, 2002)."

Digital Native/Immigrant Distinction Not Supported by Evidence

Here's another study that contradicts the widely-held view about the existence of a "digital divide" between so-called digital natives and digital immigrants. Guo, Dobson and Petrina (2008) collected data from over 2,000 pre-service teachers between 2001 and 2004 and concluded:

"there was not a statistically significant difference with respect to ICT competence among different age groups for either pre-program or post-program surveys. This study implies that the digital divide thought to exist between “native” and “immigrant” users may be misleading, distracting education researchers from more careful consideration of the diversity of ICT users and the nuances of their ICT competencies. "

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: An Analysis of Age and ICT Competency in Teacher Education

An Informed Review of Grown Up Digital

In an earlier post, I took a somewhat skeptical view of Don Tapscott's latest book, Grown Up Digital. I said I was put off by the techno-utopic language but encouraged by the amount of data he had collected. At least one reader took me to task for appearing to pass judgment without having read the book. Fair enough.

Well I"m now making my way through the book so I'm in a positon to make a more informed review. Over the next few days I will post my observations beginning with the following:

According to Tapscott, there are eight "norms" that distinguish the Net Generation from other generations. One of them is what he calls "Scrutiny": "Net Geners are the new scrutinzers. Given the large number of information sources on the Web, not to mention unreliable information - spam, phishers, inaccuracies, hoaxes, scams, and misrepresentations - today's youth have the ability to distinguish fact from fiction...The Net Generation knows to be skeptical whenever they're online." (p. 80)

But he goes even further: "On the Net, children have to search for, rather than simply look at, information. This forces them to develop thinking and investigative skills – and much more. They must become critics. Which Web sites are good? How can I tell what is real and what is fictitious – whether in a data source or in the teenage movie star in a chat session.” (p. 21)

How do we reconcile these claims with the results of a substantial study conducted in the UK that found exactly the opposite:

• the information literacy of young people, has not improved with the widening access to technology: in fact, their apparent facility with computers disguises some worrying problems

• internet research shows that the speed of young people’s web searching means that little time is spent in evaluating information, either for relevance, accuracy or authority

• young people have a poor understanding of their information needs and thus find it difficult to develop effective search strategies as a result, they exhibit a strong preference for expressing themselves in natural language rather than analysing which key words might be more effective

• faced with a long list of search hits, young people find it difficult to assess the relevance of the materials presented and often print off pages with no more than a perfunctory glance at them

The problem is Tapscott's conclusion is not based on the right evidence. The evidence he uses is the Net Gen respondents self-reported online behavior when searching for product information: "Almost two-thirds of Net Geners tell us they search for information about products that interest them before purchase. They compare and contrast product information online; they read blogs, forums and reviews; and they consult friends." (p. 323). But this is hardly evidence of critical thinking skills and highly developed information literacy skills.

More in the coming days.