The “Google generation” of today’s students has grown up in a digital world. Most are completely au fait with the microblogging site Twitter; they organise their social lives through Facebook and MySpace; 75% of students have a profile on at least one social networking site. And they spend up to four hours a day online.
Modern students are happy to share and participate but are prone to impatience – being used to quick answers – and are casual about evaluating information and attributing it, and also about legal and copyright issues.
Time to get with the program?
A report says universities’ use of virtual technologies is ‘patchy’. But that may not always be a bad thing
by Anthea Lipsett
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/may/12/computer-science-
With almost weekly developments in technology and research added to increasingly web-savvy students’ expectations, how are British universities keeping up?
Pretty well, according to Sir David Melville, chair of Lifelong Learning UK and author of a new report into how students’ use of new technologies will affect higher education.
“The rate of change in students’ take-up of these technologies is breathtaking,” he says. “Whilst UK higher education is as advanced as any country in its development, there are major issues to address if universities and colleges are to keep up with these changes in student practice and attitude.”
Social networking
Melville’s year-long study, published today, finds “patchy” use of social networking in university learning and teaching, but he says UK institutions are well served with broadband width.
Students still want face-to-face contact with staff, but more use of the kind of technologies they have grown up with, though they need to be persuaded to use them to study. They also need to learn how to critically evaluate online sources, while academics need more help in using the technologies.
Social networking technologies, widely used by 11- to 15-year-olds, help them to develop the same kinds of skills that they will need in the workplace, Melville says, and they can be used to develop learning and teaching.
But the use of Web 2.0 – a concept, rather than physical technology, to describe the way the internet now allows groups to interact online – is far from systematic in universities. Largely, it is driven by enthusiastic individuals who have embraced the opportunities it offers, he says.
Martin Weller, professor of educational technology at the Open University, is one such early adopter. “We’re still finding out what these things do and how students like to use them,” he says. “Twitter is great for general interaction between people, but not for pedagogic questions. The new technologies are good for peer-to-peer connection and students are more likely to stay in touch after the course that way. That’s really important and provides more motivation for students to carry on studying than speaking to tutors.”
But academics and universities should beware of infiltrating Facebook, Weller says. “If you ask students: do you want the university to come on Facebook, the answer is no. They don’t want their professor as a friend.”
Where Twitter and the like are most valuable is in building an online network, which is what digital scholarship is all about, he says. Fellow academics can raise new questions and post links to other sources online.
“Very quickly that becomes better than conventional networks because at the same time you can talk about personal interests – films and so on – and people are more likely to help out when you have a problem or a question,” he explains.
But it will be some time before the technology is embraced by the whole academic community, Weller says. There is a still a question over whether a well-respected blog is the same as having peer-reviewed research articles, for instance, and using new technologies is still “bottom up” rather than forced on academics by their managers.
“People like me try to encourage people to blog,” he says. “Universities as a whole are moving to recognise digital scholarship as a valid form of academic activity, and starting to recognise things in promotion criteria such as blogs and being part of an online community. We’re trying to encourage that, particularly for the OU,” he says. “TV defined us previously and digital is going to define us now.”
Brian Kelly, whose job is UK web focus at UKOLN – the national centre of expertise in digital information management, based at the University of Bath – says Web 2.0 was initially seen as a threat by universities. Now, they are keen to use its potential. The University of Sheffield, for example, has decided to use Google Mail rather than provide its own inhouse email. “Institutions are having discussions about when it’s sensible to develop services in house – such as virtual learning environments – and when it’s best to use services in the clouds, such as email.”
The social web is about openness and trust, which is a key part of what academic life is involved in, says Kelly. “Initially we did this in research, with open access work and making publications openly available, and now it’s teaching and learning resources.”
Edge Hill University was one of the first to take a high profile on Facebook for marketing and to attract potential new students, he says. This is now fairly well established.
Informal learning
But universities that have not rushed to set up accounts on iTunes and Facebook should not be seen as lagging behind, according to Kelly. “Facebook is the equivalent of students chatting in the pub after a lecture, in which case it’s not for universities to get involved in that informal learning,” he explains.
Kelly says early adopters of the technologies exist in most academic areas and he’s “quite optimistic about what we’re doing and how we’re going about it”.
But increasing digital literacy among staff and students is important. “Students aren’t just passive consumers of content. They need to be able to evaluate it and should be creating it themselves,” he says, citing the example of online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, where users can revise and update content.
Some university student unions are also warning students about online ethics and the danger of slagging people off online, or posting pictures of drunken nights out that they wouldn’t want their mother or future employers to get their hands on, he says. “We’ve had no time to develop a culture. Everyone knows how to answer a telephone but it takes time for those conventions to come about, and there are no conventions for cyberspace.”
For now, students will live with the differences in their approach and that of universities. But not for long, the report warns. Universities will have to produce far more online materials and courses if they want to keep pace with what new students want. “The next generation is unlikely to be so accommodating, and some rapprochement will be necessary if higher education is to continue to provide a learning experience that is recognised as stimulating, challenging and relevant.” Universities, you have been warned.