The study included a questionnaire survey of 160 students, followed up by in-depth interviews with 8 students and 8 staff members at both institutions. The findings show that many young students are far from being the epitomic global, connected, socially-networked technologically-fluent digital native who has little patience for passive and linear forms of learning. Students use a limited range of technologies for formal and informal learning. These are mainly established ICTs - institutional VLE, Google and Wikipedia and mobile phones. Students make limited, recreational use of social technologies such as media sharing tools and social networking. Findings point to a very low level of use and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools such as wikis, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies.
Randolph Hollingsworth on 16 Jun 13We are members of the Australian and New Zealand Virtual Worlds Working Group. Sue Gregory, Christine Newman, Helen Farley, Lisa Jacka, Sheila Scutter and Marcus McDonald are conducting this research to determine users' attitudes to the use of virtual worlds in education in the past, present and future. Sue Gregory School of Education University of New England sue.gregory@une.edu.au +61 (2) 6773 5054 Christine Newman eLearning Services Queensland University of Technology christine.newman@qut.edu.au 07 3138 9779 Helen Farley Australian Digital Futures Institute University of Southern Queensland helen.farley@usq.edu.au 07 4631 1738 Lisa Jacka School of Education Southern Cross University lisa.jacka@scu.edu.au 0438 995 870 Sheila Scutter School of Medicine and Dentistry James Cook University Sheila.scutter@jcu.edu.au 0412 144 611 Marcus McDonald Health Sciences RMIT University Marcus.mcdonald@rmit.edu.au 03 9925 7602
