Since the term ‘digital natives’ was coined by Mark Prensky in 2001 I’ve put down my mobile phone fumbling and blankness when faced by ‘twittering‘ and ‘twining‘ to the fact that I’m on the cusp of Gen X and boomer generations and have had to learn my technology skills rather than having grown up with them. But a study from academics at the University of Melbourne and Griffith University published in the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology says that the so-called ‘digital natives’ have diverse levels of experience in the use of technology and this has implications for teaching and learning in higher education.
The study interrogates the assumptions made by Prensky in relation to ‘digital natives’. The idea of ‘digital natives’ versus ‘digital immigrants’ makes sense - we would assume that because young people have been exposed to technology from birth and use it that this would then translate into general ‘native-type’ competence, ability or understanding. And the rest of it, well, we have to learn the hard way. This study tests those assumptions.
The study’s findings have important implications for how we approach the use of techology in teaching and learning, and should make us review assumptions we may have about the levels of student competence with technology, and their desire to use them for learning and study purposes.
In essence the research team (Kennedy, Judd, Churchward, Gray and Krause) finds that amongst the 17-21-year-old first-year university students surveyed, there is significant diversity in the use of technology and the types of technologies used. They also suggest that students’ use of some core technologies does not necessarily translate into competence in the use of other technologies, or correspond to information literacy.
This study makes it clear that assumptions of competence and confidence need to be tested, and support may be required to ensure student equity because of the diverse levels of experience.
It would be interesting to see the results of similar studies at other universities - the cohort for this study was from the University of Melbourne. Other universities may have student communities that demonstrate even more dramatic differences.
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[…] I mentioned some Australian research by academics from Griffith University and the University of Melbourne in a previous post which challenges the digital native assumption. […]
[…] I wrote a post awhile ago about research undertaken at the University of Melbourne that suggested that the Net Generation, GenY (or whatever you want to call those born after 1980) were not the ‘digital natives’ we’d been lead to believe by some commentators. This 2007 report “The Net Generation are not big users of Web2.0 technologies” is a summary of the preliminary findings from an ALTC-funded research project and the findings are essential reading. The report essentially pricks the balloon of Web2.0 hype: “For example more than 80% of students surveyed had never produced a Podcast and had never contributed to a Wiki. More then 70% had never kept their own Blog. More than 50% had never used a social networking site, read someone else’s Blog or downloaded a Podcast. Nevertheless there is a sizable minority of students who are very frequent users of Web 2.0 technologies. For example, 16% of students indicated that they use social networking software once per day or several times per day, and nearly 18% of students comment on blogs at least once per week. Similarly, 15% of students produce and contribute to their own blog on a daily or weekly basis. There is a significant subset of students who are downloading and/or sharing MP3 files on a daily or weekly basis (43.2%) and sharing photographs or other digital files (24.3%).” […]
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