Convenience, Communications, and Control: How Students Use Technology

We expected to find that Net Generation students would demand greater use of technology in teaching and learning in the classroom. They did not. What we found was a moderate preference for technology.

We expected that it would be increasingly necessary for faculty to use technology in order to appeal to this generation of students. Ironically, we found that many of the students most skilled in the use of technology had mixed feelings about technology in the classroom.

We expected students to already possess good IT skills in support of learning. What we found was that many necessary skills had to be learned at the college or university and that the motivation for doing so was very much tied to the requirements of the curriculum. Similarly, the students in our survey had not gained the necessary skills to use technology in support of academic work outside the classroom. We found a significant need for further training in the use of information technology in support of learning and problem-solving skills.

Course management systems were used most by both faculty and students for communication of information and administrative activities and much less in support of learning.

The consequences of these findings are significant. Some complacency may have occurred because of the belief that Net Gen students require less training with technology. Student and faculty use of instructional technology is more limited than is often portrayed. Students appear to be slower developing adequate skills in using information technology in support of their academic activities, which limits technology's current value to the institution. Higher education's investment in learning technology may be paying less than optimal returns because students and faculty often lack the appropriate skills or motivation to use it effectively. Colleges and universities appear not to be reaching enough students and faculty with technology education and training.

Our findings are much like an audit—a snapshot in time or an early picture of a process that has great potential to support learning and is most promising. We were both surprised and disappointed by what we learned. We attribute much of what we saw to growing pains.¹⁷ We saw enough good practice and favorable, if not enthusiastic, commentary from the students to know that the potential of technology in the classroom is enormous.

In 1997, Michael Hooker proclaimed, "higher education is on the brink of a revolution." Hooker went on to note that two of the greatest challenges our institutions face are those of "harnessing the power of digital technology and responding to the information revolution."¹⁸ Hooker and many others, however, did not anticipate the likelihood that higher education's learning revolution would be a journey of a thousand miles rather than a discrete event. Indeed, a study of learning's last great revolution—the invention of moveable type—reveals, too, a revolution conducted over centuries leading to the emergence of a publishing industry, intellectual property rights law, the augmentation of customized lectures with textbooks, and so forth.

In the eight years since Hooker's proclamation, information technology has continued its inexorable penetration into myriad aspects of work, education, and recreation, including activities that our students and faculty hold dear. During this time, the videogame industry surpassed the motion picture industry in revenues, the University of Phoenix opened the University of Phoenix Online, many notable virtual university efforts came and went, and course management systems became a common element of higher education's base of enterprise applications. Also, the use of information technologies in classrooms and dormitories became widespread, and the research persuaded us that there were no significant differences in the learning outcomes from courses mediated by information technologies and those that were not. Finally, student access to computing and narrowband networking has become nearly ubiquitous, and access to broadband networking and online information resources is increasingly commonplace.

Both the ECAR study on faculty use of course management systems and this study of student experiences with information technology concluded that, while information technology is indeed making important inroads into classroom and learning activities, to date the effects are largely in the convenience of postsecondary teaching and learning and do not yet constitute a "learning revolution." This should not surprise us. The invention of moveable type enhanced, nearly immediately, access to published information and reduced the time needed to produce new publications. This invention did not itself change literacy levels, teaching styles, learning styles, or other key markers of a learning revolution. These changes, while catalyzed by the new technology, depended on slower social changes to institutions. I believe that is what we are witnessing in higher education today.

By : EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research and University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (Robert B. Kvavik)