The Digital Student

This week on Teach Online we are looking at areas relating to Cloud, Collaboration and Connectivity. As part of that we're looking at the Digital Student. As I was putting this section together I thought it'd be a good idea to write a blog post as a summary of some of the main arguments/ viewpoints around Prensky's idea of 'digital natives V's digital immigrants' for those who maybe new to the notion.


Prensky (2001) states that times have changed so rapidly that we are no longer teaching the students that we were designed to teach, this is due to the rapid growth of digital technologies in the 20th century. He refers to young students as native speakers of the digital language, coining them 'digital natives' and those that have not been brought up using technology and computers daily, namely our educators, he refers to as 'digital immigrants'. Prensky's classification has been subject some criticism, some have disagreed with his analogy of young students being natives and teachers being immigrants due to the classifications seeming to rigid based on age. Is that what our students think? Are we really dealing with digital natives and are our academic staff the digital immigrants? 


Whilst Prensky makes some interesting points, some have not agreed with his thinking, Bennet et al (2008) and similarly, Margaryan and Littlejohn (2008) all believe that not all of our students are as 'digitally speaking' as Prensky suggests. And such generalisations cannot be applied to all.


White and Le Cornu (2011) offer an alternative to Prensky's classification of native and immigrant, and offer a different metaphor centered on the uptake of social media. This metaphor is based on 'place' referring to the social dimensions and spaces in which people meet and hold common ground, and 'tool' which can be used a as metaphor of how and why people use technology. This leads them to the alternative classification of 'resident and visitor'. Visitors are more functional, they turn to the web solely to in order to carry out a task. Resident's on the other hand are heavy users of social media, they are comfortable in communicating online, blogging, shopping online and expressing themselves as part of a community in a virtual place. Others such as Helpser and Eynon (2010) align with White and Le Cornu's view that it is not a simple case of generational gap defining the gap between teacher and student. 




Working within the field of educational technology I can relate to Prensky's view. However from personal experience in supporting academic staff and in particular during the current economic climate I have seen a growing number of what White and Le Cornu have coined as 'visitors' seeking advice in utilising technology in their teaching. As White and Le Cornu have set out, these visitors arrive with a specific task in mind and often hold fears that the 'residents' or 'natives' are ahead of the game in terms of both technical skills and knowledge. For example, a member of staff coming to me with a specific teaching problem that they would lie to improve using technology. 
  

This year we are asking our SALT team (Student Ambassadors for Learning and Teaching) to talk to students about the use of technology in their teaching. Although there will be a focus on mobile, it'll be interesting to see what kind of information they gather from students in our faculty and in particular we may well uncover indicators as to whether or not this notion of ‘digital native’ exists or if students feel the need for additional support in utilising tools and technologies.

References 

BENNET, S., MATON, .K and KERVIN, L. (2008) The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology. Volume 39 (5) pp775–786.

HELSPER, .E., & EYNON, .R. (2010) Digital natives: Where is the evidence? British Educational Research Journal. Volume 36(3) pp503–520. Available from:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/communia2010/sites/communia2010/images/Helsper_Enyon_Digital_Natives.pdf 

MARGARYAN, .A. & LITTLEJOHN, A. (2008) Are digital natives a myth or reality?: Students’ use of technologies for learning. Available from: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.172.7940&rep=rep1&type=pdf 

PRENSKY, M (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, On the Horizon. Volume 9(5). MCB University Press. Available at: http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf

WHITE, D., & LE CORNU, A. (2011) Visitors and residents: Towards a new typology for online engagement. First Monday 16(9). Available from: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3171/3049

Achieving Our Potential #2

Wow, is it June already? Time certainly does fly when you're looking at ways in which we can reach our potential! This is the second part of a blog post that I started  a couple of months ago in looking at some of the factors that impact on us unlocking our potential to support  and develop quality teaching in particlaur I'm looking at this from a TEL perceptive (for quite obvious reasons). To recap, please read my previous post Achieving Our Potential #1 or if you'd prefer you'll get the jist from looking at the 3 questions I'm exploring in relation to faculty work.

1. How do we support our academic staff in harnessing the potential of tools and technologies to draw out the student attributes that we would associate with quality learning and teaching? (critical thinking, curiosity, analytical, creativity etc)

2. How do we develop quality blended learning that provides extended learning opportunities for those students that want to engage above the 'baseline'. 

3. Are we doing enough?  

It's been a busy coupe of months  since I last wrote on this subject and I've been thinking about some of the initiatives going on at present that serve to the above questions. One project I want to talk about in this post is some work I've been doing with my colleague over in Social Science, Ros Walker who is also a Learning Technologist which is a new staff development course called Teach Online that we have developed.

 

 

The main aim of the programme is to discover how distance and blended learning courses can be supported by technology to engage students online. Through out the 3 weeks we'll be looking at a range of tools and methods used to engage learners online, explore a range of e-learning pedagogy and models which underpin these methods and approaches and exploring the ways in which students learn online  and how that differs from face-to-face teaching.

What makes this programme any different from the rest you may ask? Both Ros and I identified a need for a academic development in the area, more crucially we recognised a need for development in relation to not only the technical side of things which is something that is already available but there seemed to be lack of opportunity to discover some of the theory and reasoning around why we'd want to take an online approach with our students. 

ADDED BONUS- As this is a cross disciplinary programme (open to colleagues in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health AND the Faculty of Social Sciences we've got a brilliant blend of disciplines, backgrounds and experiences amongst the co-hort. Today was the first contact session and we had lots of opportunities to for colleagues to discuss issues around blended learning approaches.

We won't see our group of 34 now until the very end of June, in the mean time we'll be be able to communicate with them via our G+ Community, the VLE, via our online activities and our webinar next week. The next couple of weeks we'll work through the themes Online Engagement & Facilitation, Cloud, Collaboration & Connectivity and we'll be asking participants to work towards a self analysis and action plan.

So, going back to the questions above in particular questions 1 & 2. This is just one of the initiatives I've been working on to serve the development of quality online teaching, we hope that our academic colleagues will gain an insight into how they can design online teaching to engage students beyond the baseline using a range of tools and sharing top tips. This is by no means the only staff development available in this area, I tend to run workshops in my Faculty and there are other options available centrally but this is the first one of this slightly lengthier format encompassing technology, theories and discussion with colleagues looking at hot topics around online teaching and beyond just the 'how to' aspect of teaching online. We hope to build a real sense of community on the course and the outcomes will not only be of benefit to the colleagues taking part but also to us to shape future staff development and gain further insight into what support is required by academic colleges in this area.