Student Experiences of Technologies
This study yielded both expected and unexpected findings in terms of students’ use of technologies. The expected findings are useful in terms of providing valuable up-to-date empirical evidence of students’ current learning environment. The unexpected findings give a hint of the student learning environment of tomorrow and raise a host of important implications for policy and practice.
Executive summary
The Web is unequivocally the first port of call for students – with extensive examples across the study of how students are using search engines, dedicated subject-specific sites and ejournals to find information of relevance to their studies. What is surprising perhaps is the extent of this as a common practice amongst the students and the sophisticated ways in which they are finding and synthesising information and integrating across multiple sources of data. Similarly technologies are used extensively by students to communicate with fellow peers and tutors, with students demonstrating use of a variety of tools (email, MSN chat, skype, mobile phones, etc) to support a range of different communicative acts. Again the level and type of communication is notable – there is strong evidence of peer support and peer community, resonant with the rhetoric inherent in the idea of social networking and the world of Web 2.0. The key picture that emerges is that students are appropriating technologies to meet their own personal, individual needs – mixing use of general ICT tools and resources, with official course or institutional tools and resources.
The above findings point to a profound shift in the way in which students are working and suggest a rich and complex inter-relationship between the individuals and the tools. The following eight factors emerge from the data in terms of the changing nature of the way students are working.
- Pervasive and integrated Students are using technologies extensively to find, manage and produce content. They use technologies to support all aspects of their study. Students are using tools in a combination of ways to suit individual needs. There is evidence of mixing and matching. They are comfortable with switching between media, sites, tools, content, etc. They said that technologies provide them with more flexibility in terms of being able to undertake learning anytime, anywhere
- Personalised They appropriate the technologies to suit their own needs. They use the computer, the internet and books simultaneously. Their learning is interactive and multifaceted, and they use strategies such as annotation and adaptation of materials to meet their learning needs
- Social Students are part of a wider, networked, community of peers. They are members of a range of communities of practice - to share resources, ask for help and peer assess
- Interactive Students’ perception of the nature and inherent worth of ‘content’ is changing: they have access to a rich variety of free material that is easily downloaded via the Internet. Students expect high quality, interactive materials with a preference for ‘byte’ sized and condensed forms of information that can easily reviewed anytime, anywhere and store on handheld devices. Content is no longer ‘fixed’ and ‘valued’, it is a starting point, something to interact with, to cut and paste, to adapt and remix
- Changing skills set Students are demonstrating new skills in terms of harnessing the potential of technologies for their learning. These include developing new forms of evaluation skills and strategies (searching, restructuring, validating), which enable them to critique and make critical decisions about a variety of sources and content. Students are becoming sophisticated at finding and managing hybrid forms of information drawn from a multitude of traditional (text books), existing (Google search engines) and emerging (blogs, Wikipedia) sources
- Transferability They see the PC as their central learning tool. They are used to having easy access to information (for travel, entertainment etc) and therefore have an expectation of the same for their courses. There is evidence of the transfer of practices of their use of technologies in other aspects of their lives to their learning context: for example MSN chat, Amazon, ebay and Skype
- Time The concept of ‘time’ is changing – both in terms of expectation of information and results on demand. There is evidence that despite the fragmentation of the learning timetable, technological tools (email, mobile phone, MSN, Skype, WebCT) are mediating and allowing students to remain connected and synchronised
- Changing working patterns New working practices using an integrated range of tools are emerging. The use of these tools is changing the way they gather, use and create knowledge. There is a shift in the nature of the basic skills with a shift from lower to higher levels of Blooms’ taxonomy, necessary to make sense of their complex technologically enriched learning environment
Students are evidently comfortable with using technology and see it as integral to their learning. They are generally sophisticated users, using technologies in a variety of different ways to support different aspects of their learning. They are critically aware of the pros and cons of the use of different technologies and ‘vote with their feet’ – i.e. they don’t use technologies just for the sake of it – there needs to be a purpose and clear personal benefit. They have an expectation of being able to access up to date and relevant information and resources and see this as vital. They don’t see the technology as anything special; but see it as just another tool to support their learning.