Lots of interesting stuff in the ECAR study of undergraduate students and IT:
http://www.educause.edu/ECAR/TheECARStudyofUndergraduateStu/163283
Most students, it concludes, only want 'moderate' IT on their courses, which seemed quite surprising for largely young (under 25) traditional students. Their reasons are interesting too [my numbering]:
1. The fact that it tends to mean they have to ‘teach themselves’
2. Lack of face-to-face interaction
3. In their eyes, it facilitates cheating
4. Tech problems
There is a quote from one student who said that nothing can replace a face-to-face lecture, though s/he couldn't articulate exactly why. I'm convinced that this difficult to articulate quality is what is behind factors 1 and 2 here. Maybe we just 'switch on' for f2f in a way that we are not wired to do for online? In a similar way it's been shown that reading online is much more likely to involve skimming than reading from hard copy. A bit of amateur evolutionary biology here would suggest that we are 'wired' to respond to human contact, rather than screens and texts. (It is worth noting that 1 and 2 are as much negatives of reading in hard copy as online learning.)
Factor 1 is interesting. Are they being lazy about participative learning (something that afflicts most of us now and agan perhaps)? Or is it a justified criticism? My own observation of students and my own learning suggests that, though it may be a surer route to learning, it's definitely a much slower one.
3 and 4 may seems easier to solve but behind them, too, perhaps lies something deeper. They both indicate our lack of control of interactions which are technology mediated, and therefore a distancing that many find unmotivating.
Interestingly, it was older and part-time students who were more keen on more IT - a function of convenience, perhaps, but also maybe of the less central role that socialising might perform in their lives by that stage.
Once again, I resolve to pursue this further in the research!
Comments
They have to 'teach themselves'
Hi Sue
I was wondering about this point. Could it be that students perceive f2f teaching as 'real teaching' and on-line learning, because there is often no obvious tutor or teacher figure involved on a day to day basis, as being less 'real' or authoritative?
I think that this links back to a point made in Block 1 when considering distance learning in Nepal and Bhutan. Rennie and Mason (2007) in Wk2b A5 said 'where a belief in the importance of content and the authority of the teacher as knowledge expert prevails, those forms of distributed education which pass more control to the learner are inherently suspect.'
Our students may have that view in common with those in Nepal and Bhutan.
(or, if I'm feeling less generous, they prefer a 'surface approach' as it is less demanding)
Kind Regards
Vikki
Why students don't want to teach themselves
Hi Vikki,
Thanks for your comment. The point about authority is a really important factor, I agree. It's something that is increasingly recognized in relation to students from other cultures (i.e. not 'Western'). Our discussion of Richardson in Elluminate also made me wonder how much it applies to students at home too. I'd guess that some demographics are associated with an authority-focused conception of what teaching is and what teachers do and would influence these students' ways of engaging with a course. It would be nice to get some sort of diagnostic on this going at the beginning of a course and tackle it explicitly perhaps.
All the best,
Sue