student perspectives

1. Enhancing first year engagement through technology: personalized learning, study support and collaboration in a networked world student perspectives

2. The changing student experience and changing landscapes of learning Michael Wesch YouTube video:‘A vision of students today’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o As part of a HE Academy funded project, the University of Central Lancashire is piloting the use of an open source social networking environment (Elgg) and investigating how Web 2.0 technologies might be used by first year students, formally and informally, to enhance their learning and integration into university life.

3. Figure 3 Changing relationship between institution and learner (from In Their Own Words, Jisc)

4. UCLAN pathfinder project We have conducted a series of consultative surveys, individual interviews and focus groups with prospective and first year students around their experience and use of technology, particularly Web 2.0 applications. Students were asked to talk about the role that technology plays in their engagement with academic study, the university and more broadly the place that it has in their lives, as well as to evaluate a trial version of the Elgg communities@UCLan site.

5. snapshots of student life Mike was interviewed last summer he had just finished a gap year travelling abroad and was coming to UCLAN to study Drama, having completed A Levels a year earlier. Mike uses his computer ‘quite a bit’ and is a gamer. Andy is studying Illustration and Design and, when he was interviewed, had just completed his A-Levels. Andy is a keen artist and uses computers a lot in his art practice. Chido is in the first year of an Accounting and Finance degree. She has come to UCLAN straight from college. Chido considers herself a confident ICT user: ‘I have used computers from primary school, and I studied IT in High School.’ Matt is in his early twenties and returned to study in the autumn after a few years working as a retail manager. Matt is less comfortable around computers than the other 3 students, classifying himself as only ‘partly confident’. However, he does use email and the internet: ‘I know what I know. I know what websites I go on and I just go on the same ones all the time.’

6. emerging themes and issues • ‘digital natives’? • ‘digital learners’? • identity in on-line environments • academic literacy in on-line environments

7. Digital Natives? ‘socially, emotionally, sometimes physically, and intellectually’ on-line lives are intimately connected to and blended into offline lives and the two worlds have ‘conflated into one’ (Thomas, 2006) John Naughton characterizes the generation that Marc Prensky has called ‘digital natives’ (Jefferies et al., 2007) as follows: • they take technology for granted; • expect to be permanently connected; • are used to multi-tasking; • generate content; • see research in terms of search engines. Naughton suggests that their expectations about ways of working with people and information are being conditioned by social networking sites in terms of, for example, 24 hour a day connectivity and their ability to move non-sequentially between a variety of tasks and communications. He argues that this everyday familiarity with networked technologies has profound implications both for future employment and educational institutions (Naughton, 2007).

8. ‘Digital natives’?: student voices 61% of UCLAN prospective students surveyed during the pre-university summer schools used social networking sites at least daily and 90% of the first years interviewed in February and March 2008 were regular users of Facebook. ‘[from] about 14 to 16 years old, I sat at my computer most evenings talking to people. It was the easiest way to do things, and to make friends and to keep up with people at school.’(Andy) ‘From 16 years old, I’ve been on MSN for like 5 hours a day.’(Chido) ‘Everyone’s got a Facebook account at University – you’ve got to.’(Matt) ‘I don’t have a TV, so I use my computer for everything; I do my work on it, my homework and go on Facebook... show off our pictures. I use it to keep in contact with my friends and family.’(Chido) ‘in the morning I go on Facebook...and then I go on again at night to see what’s happened during the day...– I only signed up in October and if it got taken away, I don’t know what I’d do’(Matt).

9. the digital underworld Rhona Sharpe in an interview for an article in the JISC Inform newsletter describes an ‘underworld’ of technology use ‘not sanctioned by the learner’s institution’, for example, ‘using mobile phones to record lectures or instant chat to support group project work’ (Sharpe, 2007). If Matt is stuck with his work, he will email or text one of his close friends and say: ‘I’m sending you this can you have a quick read through it and tell me where I’ve gone wrong or what I’ve missed off, things like that.’

10. Building the university community on-line Barry Wellman argues that online communities can offer ‘sociability, support, information, and a feeling of belonging’ (cited in Mäkinen, 2006). Chido describes how in her first semester: ‘I didn’t have many friends and I really hated this place. I was trying to transfer to Manchester. But I didn’t and then I went on Facebook... and got invited to parties and met new people.’ Matt makes a case for access to online communities of prospective Students prior to coming to university: ‘I know they have the freshers’ week but I didn’t go to that. I was still living in Blackpool at the time trying to find a house. I think it’s a good idea before you come to university, you can meet friends online and then meet up with them, so at least you’ve got friends when you need them.’

11. but… ‘I only signed up [to Facebook] when I came away to university....We never had a computer at me mams so I never wanted to sign up to anything because I would have to go down to the library or to a friends to check on it, so I never really did anything till I got a computer about 2 years ago and I brought my own laptop at Christmas...I don’t really explore different websites. I use Sky Sports and Facebook and then the university one when I need to get some work.’(Matt) ‘Networking and things can get quite frustrating ...I still don’t have the ability to start talking to people I don’t know, or go into a situation with a group of friends and end up meeting people. I wasn’t particularly good at it...in the end it got a bit boring… It feels very awkward talking to them like that…It doesn’t feel like they are my friends; it feels like they are digital names and typing words together....in shorthand. I can do that but I don’t because it bugs me if I am honest. It seems really strange to me.’(Andy)

12. Digital learners? Collaboration Mike’s participation in the multi-player online game that he plays provides an example of how, in an informal context, such social learning might take place. The players have a forum for communications which Mike says ‘is vital, if we do not have that then we cannot fly’: Personalized learning Andy views technologies primarily as tools to develop his art practice: ‘everything gets drawn, then goes on to Photoshop, coloured in Painter and then put in Illustrator so you can find the document. So I have a process.” He also uses internet tutorials to help him learn how to use digital art applications and values internet sites, such as Deviant Art, which Provide online gallery space and contact with other artists.

13. Or not digital learners… Chido argues that she doesn’t need the internet for her work, but says that ‘it’s easier...it’s easy to find answers’: ‘I need to use newspapers and without the internet it would be hard ...and NTFetch – it’s got like work from the previous semester, shared Documents. I google everything. I use wikipedia.’ The Ipsos Mori report for JISC shows that the 17-18 year old respondents tended to see access to the internet as ‘a useful auxiliary tool to recap what was happening in class’ and ‘through giving them more access to data and research resources, rather than imagining totally new methods of teaching, learning, or interacting with peers and lecturers’ (Student Expectations Survey, 2007). ‘I don’t use [the internet] for research purposes that often. I usually just go and get books out of the library.’(Matt)

14. academic literacy in on-line spaces ‘I constantly remind educators that, while in the past kids grew up in the dark intellectually and our role (and value) as teachers was to enlighten them, in the twenty-first century our kids grow up in the light, connected to the world by television, mobile phones and the internet long before they ever go to school.’ (Prensky, 2007 cited in the conclusion to In Their Own Words, 2007) but… There is a tendency within discussions of networked learning to ‘[assume] a mature, reflective learner with a sophisticated conception of learning’ (Goodyear, 2005): ‘Pupils and students are summoned to detect their own needs, to discover in themselves their learning ability...to see and value those capacities that can direct learning and construct knowledge, and to take responsibility for all this.’ (Lambeir & Ramaekers, 2006)

15. some student views ‘I can’t work on the internet...I wouldn’t know what word to type in, then about ten pages come up...which is the right one to go on?...I prefer to read it in a book because I know it’s definitely there and I’m not searching all over the place round the internet for the correct info’.(Matt) They can see that academic networking sites like Elgg might enhance their learning: ‘you could get lecturers to put on relevant websites, so instead of typing it into Google and going all over the place it could be provided for you which would help students a lot.’(Matt) But he goes on to argue that you would still need tutors to ‘give it a tick’. Chido demonstrates a similar distrust of learning from her peers: ‘I don’t like sharing my information, I’m very competitive. Only if I’m getting ideas from someone really intelligent like a teacher.’

16. learner identities in on-line spaces To use these applications effectively students need to develop a sense of identity as an on-line learner and as a member of an on-line academic community. This requires a different set of ‘social, linguistic and communicative practices’ (Thomas, 2006) to those that they employ on purely social sites. ‘I think students aren’t really mature enough and we prefer things that are silly and stupid and things that will make people laugh. We’re not ready for the real world yet...That seems like a real sensible one, whereas Facebook is a fun one....could do with more whacky pictures on it. Maybe the wording of it – like instead of you – it needs to be more colourful like text speech and add a bit of colour... you’ve got to like put things on it that students are going to want to look at.’(Matt) Whilst Mike and Andy show some characteristics of autonomous learners and the informal learning that they have encountered on the internet has given them an awareness of alternative ways of working, Chido and Matt, although avid users of Facebook, share more traditional ‘learner’ identities.

17. Some final questions University-based networking platforms might provide opportunities for first year students to begin to develop ‘their personal voice and [become] active members in a larger conversation.’ (Garrett et al. 2007). However, the case studies discussed above suggest that progress towards such technology-enabled autonomous and collaborative learning raises issues in terms of student identity and emerging genres of academic literacy • Does this matter? • Is it okay for students to choose whether or not they incorporate modern technologies into their learning? • What does it mean to prepare students for the 21st century?

18. references • Garrett, N., Thomas, B., Soffer, M., & Ryan, T. Extending the Elgg Social Networking System to Enhance the Campus Conversation. 2007. Proceedings: 2nd International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems & Technology (DESRIST 2007). • Goodyear, P., Jones, C., Ascencio, M., Hodgson, V., & Steeples, C. Networked learning in higher education: students' expectations and experiences. Higher Education 50[3], 473-508. 2005. • In their Own Words: exploring the learner's perspective on e-learning, 2007a. JISC: Phase 1 of e-Learning Programme. • Jefferies, A., Quadri, N., & Kornbrot, D. Investigating University Students' prior experiences of technology and their expectations of using technology in their studies, in Beyond control: learning technology for the social network generation. Research Proceedings of the 14th Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C 2007).Held 4 - 6 September 2007, Nottingham University, England, UK, S. Wheeler & N. Whitton, (eds)., pp. 201-211. • Mäkinen, M. 2006, Digital Empowerment as a Process for Enhancing Citizens' Participation, E-Learning, 3 [3] pp. 381-396. • Naughton, J. The future is already here: it’s just not evenly distributed, presentation at the Open University Regional Conference for Associate Lecturers, Manchester December 12 2007 • Sharpe, R. in Learning about learners JISC Inform Issue 17 spring 2007 p. 8-9 www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/inform17spring2007_wordversion.doc (accessed 20/10/ 2007) • Student Expectations Study: key findings from online research and discussion evenings held in June 2007 for the Joint Information Systems Committee. 2007b. Ipsos Mori for JISC.