New study on Undergraduate Students and IT

Some interesting points, as summarized by ACRLog's Steven B , on 11/6/08:

The annual ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology is a good indicator of the state of college students’ application of technology. The report provides insight into our students technology tools and their skill and comfort levels with different types of technology, and their preferences for learning technologies. The 2008 Study contains information of interest to academic librarians.

There’s a lot to learn from this document. For example, despite claims that students seeking information go everywhere but the library website, the ECAR Study suggests that’s not the case. In fact, there were three technologies that were most frequently used by many respondents. Two were spreadsheets and presentation software. The third was the library website. An average of 68% of students reported accessing the library website during the semester. That sounds encouraging, but without knowing more about what they are accessing the library website for I would withhold my excitement. Are we talking about just using the library catalog? Does that mean just going to the library home page to click on a link to a database? At what level of engagement are the students using the library’s website? Table 4-4 on page 47 tells us what Internet and technology activity in which students report they are engaged. Social networking sites and course management systems are heavily used (in the 80% range), contributing to blogs and wikis is less popular (in the 30% range) and virtual world activity is still quite low at only an 8% participation rate. That may help us make better sense of how we can get the most out of “being where the students are”.

Read the key findings.
Read the full study.

Digital Natives

John Palfrey and Urs Gasser have just published a book called "Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives." In this interview, they talk about some of the concepts they cover in the book. Here's a really interesting description of how digital natives gather information:

"Digital natives gather information — as a building block in any learning process — through a multistep process that involves grazing, a deep dive, and a feedback loop. Digital natives are good at grazing through the vast ocean of information online. While browsing the Web, digital natives might decide to go beyond the headlines of a story and to take a deep dive, for example by following a hypertext link, listen to a commentary, or download a video clip on the topic of interest. In this way, they are searching for what’s behind the bit of information that got their attention in the first place. The feedback loop, finally, includes some sort of enhanced interactivity with the content they’re interested in."

There are also some suggestions for how institutions should adapt to handle digital natives including:

• having libraries figure out how to best "acquire, catalog, and make e-resources accessible to users"
• educating student in basic digital literacy that goes beyond the standalone computer class by being integrated into what people learn throughout their educational experience.

Understanding the Net Generation's Texts

From TL Infobits August 2008 (thanks to Rob Estes for sharing..):

UNDERSTANDING THE NET GENERATION'S TEXTS

In "Why Professor Johnny Can't Read: Understanding the Net Generation's Texts" (INNOVATE, vol. 4,no. 6, August/September 2008), Mark Mabrito and Rebecca Medley of Purdue University Calumet discuss the difference in literacy skills between the current generation of college students and the faculty who teach them. They describe the differences between the two groups as "not a generation gap but an information processing gap" that can be bridged by faculty experiencing the digital world from the students' perspectives.

"Much has been written about the way in which the [Net-Generation] learner acquires and processes information. Coming of age in an environment saturated by technology, where the digital world interacts more and more seamlessly with the "real" world, means that these students represent the first generation of virtual learners--learners accustomed to seeking and building knowledge in a technology-enhanced environment. When these learners seek information, they are more likely to look for it online than anywhere else since this is the environment with which they are most familiar. Are educators rising to the challenge of teaching these students? Some evidence suggests that they are not."

The paper is available online at
http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=510
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