Group items tagged

There have been many attempts to define the generation of students who emerged with the Web and new digital technologies in the early 1990s. The term "digital native" refers to the generation born after 1980, which has grown up in a world where digital te

"This systematic literature review was undertaken primarily to examine the role that print and digitally mediums play in text comprehension. Overall, results suggest that medium plays an influential role under certain text or task conditions or for certain readers. Additional goals were to identify how researchers defined and measured comprehension, and the various trends that have emerged over the past 25 years, since Dillon's review. Analysis showed that relatively few researchers defined either reading or digital reading, and that the majority of studies relied on researcher-developed measures. Three types of trends were identified in this body of work: incremental (significant increase; e.g., number of studies conducted, variety of digital devices used), stationary (relative stability; e.g., research setting, chose of participants), and iterative (wide fluctuation; e.g., text length, text manipulations). The review concludes by considering the significance of these findings for future empirical research on reading in print or digital mediums."

"We found that our students could not be usefully categorised as Digital Natives or Digital Immigrants. ....... it simply provides the excuse that some people 'just don't get it' which is why your new approach has failed so badly… "

Thought provoking blog post from David White. Some interesting ideas that have come out of interviews related to his Digital Residents and Natives and Open Edducational Resources research, viz the "emergency collaboration" 24 hours from coursework submission (I'm sure that goes on a lot in Swansea) and Google> Wikipedia> References which is a popular technique with students but is kept hidden because of the overt discouragement of academics for Google and Wikipedia as valid academic research tools. I've personally never had a problem with either G or W in my own learning. Am I prejudiced against them in my students' learning?

Last Friday David White (University of Oxford) and Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway (OCLC) presented some of the findings from their JISC-funded work on Digital Visitors and Residents. Slides, audio and a recording of the Blackboard Collaborate session can be found below:

Universities have been warned not to assume that "digital native" students will embrace all e-learning initiatives, or indeed prefer them to traditional forms of education.