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.

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.

Will Practice Catch up to Research?

Two items that appeared in my news reader this week that make me wonder about the educational profession. First there was this one:

"Open University Research Explodes the Myth of the Digital Native"
It's not like we need any more evidence to put this discredited discourse to bed but this study does more than simply add to the growing pile of research that shows how thoroughly unsupported the digital native claims are. It also provides a glimpse of the kind of interesting issues that emerge when we look beyond the generational stereotypes and start to explore exactly what is happening with learners and digital technology (something we at Digital Learners in Higher Education are doing, by the way). So while this study of 4,000 UK Open University students simply confirmed what others have already found in other institutions - "no evidence for any discontinuity in technology use around the age of 30 as would be predicted by the Net Generation and Digital Natives hypothesis", the more interesting findings were the ones that have nothing to do with age. For example, the researchers discovered a correlation between attitudes to technology and approaches to studying. "In short, students who more readily use technology for their studies are more likely than others to be deeply engaged with their work."

So, after reading about this latest research I start thinking perhaps, finally, the tide has turned and that the digital native hype may be on the wane. Then I read this:

Mastering the Millennial in Seven Easy Steps. A workshop that will teach you how to connect and engage with this notoriously difficult generation. All in seven easy steps and only for $345. According to the seminar organizers:
"Millennial students have a unique way of seeing the world and often have high expectations of how others should work for them. This generation has the distinction of being seen as hard to work with and engage, while at the same time being extremely passionate and technologically savvy. This seminar is designed to help faculty and staff better understand and motivate millennial students in and out of the classroom."

It puzzles me why it is acceptable to stereotype based on age when we would never get away with doing this based on ethnicity or gender. Replace "millennial" in the above description with "female" or "asian" or "african-american" and you'll see what I mean.

The research is clear: there is no evidence to support the major digital native claims. Millennial students are not a homogeneous group who can be treated like a species of animal. One day, I hope, practice will catch up to the research.

And the beat goes on....

 While futurists and pundits continue to crank out the books portraying the "digital native" as some kind of newly-discovered tribe whose habits, language and culture we need to understand (see, for example, Dancing with Digital Natives), researchers continue to show how unfounded the generational claims are. And the research is coming from all parts of the world.

The latest piece of research I have read comes from the Caribbean, where Emanule Rapetti and Stewart Marshall have completed a study of learners at the Open Campus of the University of the West Indies. Their study, which is remarkably similar to our Digital Learners in Higher Education research, sought to determine whether UWIOC students fit the "digital native" profile and to develop a deeper understanding of how UWIOC students are using ICTs for learning.

Their results show that, while younger students are more familiar with ICT use in non-educational contexts,  there is not a clear gap between younger and older students in terms of their use and familiarity with digital technologies for learning. They also found that older students tend to prefer e-learning slightly more than younger students. They conclude, "it is necessary to contextualize the discourse about learners and to avoid generalizations about their - supposed - technological skills; our research shows that it is highly risky to split the tech-savvy learners simply according to the age factor."

Read the full article, Observing ICTs in Learners' Experiences around the World.

Digital Learners not Digital Natives

It appears the tide is finally turning and the uncritical acceptance of the digital natives discourse is giving way to a more nuanced perspective on digital technologies in higher education. The research has clearly demonstrated that this is not a generational issue but rather a social phenomenon that involves everybody to a greater or lesser degree and that we need to work harder to try to understand what it means for higher education. The generational myth provided a dangerously simplistic solution that prevented us from making sense of the phenomenon and its implications. The recent ED-MEDIA conference in Lisbon highlighted how the discourse has shifted. As I reported in a previous post there were several conference presentations on the topic that acknowledged the irrelevance of generation.

What I find troubling, however, is that while many researchers have acknowledged that the notion of the digital native is not supported by research and that the digital natives/immigrants dichotomy is unhelpful, they continue to frame the issue in generational terms. As an example, The Life of the Digital Native, reports on an excellent piece of research that used an original and creative methodology to develop an understanding of how students at one Australian university are using digital technologies in their social and academic lives. But note the title, The Life of the Digital Native. If we agree that age is not relevant, why not focus on digital learners, regardless of age? Similarly, The Natives are Restless: Meeting the Diversity and Needs of Millennial Students in a Large Undergraduate University (again, note the title) reported on course design strategies that were employed to address the perceived needs of millennial students even though the authors acknowledge, "the assumption that all Gen Y students are digitally native may in fact be a gross overgeneralsation." In Digital Natives and Technology Literate Students: Do Teachers Follow Their Lead,  the authors again acknowledge the weakness of the digital natives argument, "Even though youth is extensively using the new technologies, it does not mean that they use them appropriately... they lack the necessary knowledge  and skills in order to safely, effectively and efficiently use the Web 2.0 tools.", but they then proceed to investigate the issue from generational perspective. Even Bates & Sangrà in their new book, Managing Technology in Higher Education: Strategies for Transforming Higher Education, give undue prominence to the millennial myth by suggesting one of the rationales for using e-learning is to address the needs of the digital native. In a section entitled Accommodating the Learning Style of Millennials, they devote the better part of a page to describing the purported characteristics of digital natives before then pointing out the evidence doesn't support the digital native claims. They conclude,"we are not  failing just Millennials, we are failing all our students if we don't use technology to its full potential." But this misses the point: there are no millennial students. There are no digital natives. There are only digital learners.

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

Technology as the Architect of Self: Implications for Higher Education

Sherry Turkle is one of the most thoughtful commentators on the impact of digital technology on society. Here is a presentation she gave at the recent Campus Technology conference.

Abstract
"With a special focus on our evolving and technology-infused higher education environments, Turkle will consider how contemporary digital connectivity is changing the nature of the ‘self,’ including our ‘selves’ in academia. What are the deeper implications of changes in our students, especially those whose generation has grown up “tethered” to connectivity devices and in a new regime of privacy? Now that we know the challenges for teaching and research with digital communications, are we living the lives as educators that we want to live?"

A summary of the presentation is available here.

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)

The Scholary Publishing Process Finally Catches Up

We finished writing this article back in December 2009. Fifteen months later it has finally been published in the Canadian Journal of Learning Technology. We released a pre-publication version several months ago so if you read that, there is nothing new here. For the record, here is the publication version of Digital Learners in Higher Education: Generation is Not the Issue.

Abstract   
 
Generation is often used to explain and rationalize the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education. However, a comprehensive review of the research and popular literature on the topic and an empirical study at one postsecondary institution in Canada suggest there are no meaningful generational differences in how learners say they use ICTs or their perceived behavioural characteristics. The study also concluded that the post-secondary students at the institution in question use a limited set of ICTs and their use is driven by three key issues: familiarity, cost, and immediacy. The findings are based on focus group interviews with 69 students and survey responses from a random sample of 438 second year students in 14 different programs in five schools in the institution. The results of this investigation add to a growing body of research that questions the popular view that generation can be used to explain the use of ICTs in higher education.

Systemic Shredding?

According to Stephen Downes, Jim Shimabukuro,  does a "systemic shredding" of my research and other research that is reaching the same conclusions. Well, if by "systemic shredding", he means attacking my motives, misreading our research and selectively choosing the statements and conclusions that support his perspective then he may be right. But if he means that Shimabukuro has systematically reviewed our research and all the other research on this issue and revealed methodological flaws that make our conclusions suspect then he is wrong.

Shimabukuro biggest beef seems to be that our research at BCIT is not generalizable and that our sampling methods are suspect. Well, we never claimed that our BCIT research was generalizable beyond our institution. We make that very clear in all of our written work and presentations. As for our sampling methods, readers can judge for themselves. We followed accepted sampling procedures to produce a random sample of BCIT students.  All the details are spelled out in our article.

Shimabukuro then resorts to an attack on our motives. Surely if we are spending so much energy on this research there must be something going on. We couldn't just be doing it because we want to understand the issue better. So he checks my website and finds out I am a Dean and have been in this field for a long time so he concludes, "In short, he has invested a lot of his time and the colleges’ resources in developing and maintaining current practices, and one has to wonder if this track record might explain his efforts to defend the status quo against the real or imagined dangers that the Net Gens represent." This attack is hardly worth responding to but let me just say a) it is not true and b) this isn't just me. I am working with colleagues in three other institutions and there are well-regarded researchers in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, South Africa, Australia and the US who are reaching similar conclusions. Links to these studies are available on our research website.

The most annoying part of Shimabukro's "shredding" is his bizarre logic. It goes like this: a) the net generation discourse is one that advocates educational change via educational technology, b) we need educational change and greater use of educational technology, c) by exposing the fact that the net generation discourse is not based on evidence we are opposed to educational change. In his own words:

"Regardless of whether or not Net Gens are different, colleges ought to be looking at ways to use technology to improve learning. In other words, change and improvement, as goals, are independent of generational differences or similarities. To use the lack of difference as justification for continuing business as usual is missing the point of technology altogether. Technology is here to stay, and its presence will only grow exponentially in the coming months and years. This fact alone ought to motivate educators to explore ways to adapt or adopt it in innovative ways. The quibble about Net Gens is, at best, a distraction. "

While I disagree strongly with his deterministic conclusion, I do agree that change and improvement are independent of generation. And that is the whole point of our research: finding out what kind of change is needed, what impact digital technology is having, how students are using it in different contexts and not basing decisions on unsupported generalizations. We are in the midst of in depth interviews with our students about these issues and our findings are quite revealing. So far they confirm our survey findings: our students do not fit the net generation profile, they are not pushing for greater use of technology or radical changes to teaching. Does this mean all is well and nothing needs to be changed? No. But it does mean that making sweeping institutional changes based on the assumption that our students want and need it would be a mistake. Each institution has specific needs that are tied to its particular students, faculty and programs. Change needs to be grounded in the context not hype. But if you're skeptical of me because I've been doing my job for too long, then check out the nearly 30 other studies and articles that have been published from researches in seven different countries.

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.

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.

Digital Natives: Where is the Evidence?

In Digital Natives: Where is the Evidence?,  Ellen Helsper and Rebecca Eynon try to untangle what it means to be a "digital native" and, more specifically, whether this is determined by age, experience using the Internet and breadth of use of the Internet. They define a digital native as someone who multitasks, has access to a range of new technologies, is confident in their use of technologies, uses the Internet as a first port of call for information, and uses the Internet for learning.

Their findings, based on data collected in the UK,  are consistent with ours and contribute to growing body of evidence that debunks the popular net generation claims about a generation transformed by its immersion in the digital world. According to Helsper and Eynon, their data make it very clear "that it is not helpful to define digital natives and immigrants as two distinct, dichotomous generations. While there were differences in how generations engaged with the Internet, there were similarities across generations as well, mainly based on how much experience people have with using technologies....Internet use lies along a continuum of engagement instead being a dichotomous divide between users and non-users."

Helsper & Enyon conclude with a call for research that goes further than simply surveying users, that looks at what people are actually doing online, and how the use of digital technologies is connected to learning: "Reporting of use of the Internet is not the same as understanding the learning that may take place as a result of this use."

Unfortunately this article is published in the British Educational Research Journal which means, unless you have access through your institution, you will have to pay to read the article.

Alone Together

 "We make our technologies, and they, in turn, shape us. So, of every technology we must ask, Does it serve our human purposes? - a question that causes us to reconsider what these purposes are. Technologies in every generation, present opportunities to reflect on our values and direction." - Sherry Turkle, Alone Together, p. 19

Amidst all the buzz and hype surrounding the social media "revolution", comes the refreshingly profound and thoughtful voice of Sherry Turkle. Her just-released book, Alone Together takes a critical look at how our digital technologies are shaping our lives. Turkle worries that while digital technology enables us to connect with each other more easily, it also shapes the nature of those connections, favoring superficiality, and the "new language of abbreviation in which letters stand for words and emoticons for feelings." So, while we are increasingly connected by digital technology, Turkle suggests we may actually be more alone: "in intimacy, new solitudes".

I have only just begun to read this book but so far I am impressed with Turkle's provocative and original perspective. I will have more complete review when I have finished the book.

Presentation to IT Silgo - Ireland

My presentation to the Institute of Technology in Silgo, Ireland is available here:
Separating Fact from Fiction in the Digital Generation Discourse.

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