Student expectations of technology

JISC have just released the results of a study they commissioned to find out what digital natives expectations are of the use of technology in university teaching.

• 65% ‘regularly’ use social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace or Flickr (females more than males - 71% and 59% respectively) and only 5% ‘never’ use them
• A quarter (27%) ‘regularly’ use wikis, blogs or online networks
• Very few ‘regularly’ take part in an online community, for example a ‘virtual world’ such as Second Life (8%)
• 62% agree with the statement ‘I expect IT to play a much bigger role in my learning than it does now’ with regard to their time at university, although qualitative insight suggest that perhaps it’s not clear to them how
• Of those who have at least begun the process of preparing for university application 50% have looked at or asked for information about the types of IT provision
• Of those who had looked at or asked about IT provision 42% said that there was more IT provision than they expected.

Personally, I'm not sure how to interpret that. Just because students use Facebook, doesn't necessarily mean they want their university to use it to communicate with them. Similarly perhaps their lack of social attachment to Second Life would make them more willing to enter it as a learning space.

Their conclusions are very interesting:

The traditional methods of teacher/pupil learning seem neither hierarchical nor outmoded to them. They see personal, face to face interaction as the backbone of their learning. It would be interesting and relevant to carry out a similar study with first-year undergraduates, who have begun to appreciate the many different ways learning can happen at university, to see if opinions differ significantly and if the potential for ICT is more easily understood once they have experienced the different teacher-learner relationships of university.

The audience for our research thinks that technology should:

• support established methods of teaching and admin
• act as an additional resource for research and communication
• be a core part of social engagement and facilitate face-to-face friendships at university

These principles run across all groups identified in the online research. Those who are leading edge users or have high use of ICT at school are perhaps more technology savvy and open to its use, but they do not want technology to encroach on their learning or social experiences.

Fundamentally, this age group suspects that if all learning is mediated through technology, this will diminish the value of the learning.

For more on Facebook see the OUseful and Ed Techie blogs.