Oblinger

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Educating today’s learners to become Net Savvy

Edited by the authors starting from the discussion emanating from Diana Oblinger’s OCC2007 conference presentation "Balancing Stability and Agility in Higher Education" (Oblinger, 2007a).

Authors: (1)Maria Chiara Pettenati, (1)Elisabetta Cigognini and (2)Palitha Edirisingha.

Email: mariachiara.pettenati@unifi.it, Elisabetta.cigognini@unifi.it, pe27@leicester.ac.uk

Affiliations: (1) Electronics and Telecommunications Department, University of Florence (IT) (2) Beyond Distance Research Alliance University of Leicester (UK)


Following Diana Oblinger’s conference presentation (Oblinger, 2007a) a number of themes have been discussed by the conference participants, both synchronously and asynchronously. Discussions on topics covered and inspired by her presentation have been published through several channels.

  • The discussions held in OCC2007 Moodle mainly through their multi-thematic and multi-threads forum (OCC2007, 2007a).
  • Several multi-lingual and thematic blogs and blog posts made all aver the world by OCC2007 participants who tagged their post with “OCC2007” according to the instructions of the conference organizers (OCC2007, 2007b).
  • Blog posts and comments made by OCC2007 official “context filters”. (OCC2007, 2007c)
  • The transcript of Diana’s speech (Oblinger, 2007b).

Topics are hereafter synthesized according to the main themes which emerged in comments and postings by participants. This is in order to present the vision and concerns expressed by all contributors.


Introduction

Knowledge today is complex, ever changing, and information is overabundant. Knowledge no longer resides in a single place, in a brain, in one person or a cadre of experts - it is in the connections we make, our networks of learning (Siemens, 2006). Technology is evolving and affords us the opportunity to connect and share. As our network grows it impacts upon our assumptions regarding learning infrastructures, authority, and certainty of "knowing". We need to recognize that a textbook, a professor is a node not a touchstone. Textbooks and professors can guide learners, can provide trusted nodes, a framework, a foundation and skill set that enables and maximizes the learner’s journey. Today’s learners have so much opportunity and so many resources available to them. It is truly an exciting and rewarding time for them. Encouraging learners to contribute their own viewpoints in a clear and thoughtful way is so much a part of the learning journey. We need to develop attitudes and skills to be able to balance technological and cognitive agility, and capacity in defining and achieving our goals (OCC2007, 2007b). Today’s learners might use communication tools differently, but the important thing is that they learn the impact that their communication can have on others and the possible utilization of these tools. We must become truly aware that students are not expert learners, but they can become so. To use the internet effectively can open doors for increasing learning in ways that were simply not available only a few years ago. In this chapter we first characterize the Net Generation of learners, highlighting their attitudes and behaviors as perceived by today’s teachers and parents. We will consider how to support Net Generation learners in acquiring specific competences and skills for acting, interacting and learning in the online world. We then illustrate a mindmap which schematises and details the key learning skills for the leaner. The mindmap is drawn from the authors’ previous work and the contributions of OCC2007 participants through their online interactions. We argue that teachers and parents play a fundamental role in shaping the skills of today’s learners in that they can act both as guides and experienced learners. To achieve this, however, teachers and parents have to acquire a new set of competencies which are briefly discussed in this chapter. Lastly, such analysis allows us to draw some conclusions related to the implications for “Learning” where the capital “L” stresses the role of institutional practice, which is the formal operational context for teachers, learners and parents.

Net Generation and Technology

As more and more younger children gain access to a variety of technologies for communication, socialization and creativity, both parents and teachers face concerns such as: Which is the ideal age to be confronted with net-tools? And what are the conditions under which the use of technology is safe? Should teachers set up social network sites for their students? (Oblinger, 2007a) We acknowledge that supervision and modeling appropriate behaviour are key to facilitating the learning of attitudes and skills amongst young children. However, these two elements bring about a number of very important consequences for educational institutions, teachers, students and parents. The question might really be who should be setting the examples in cyberspace? Is this a new role for schools? These were some of the key issues discussed by the OCC2007 conference participants.


The Net Generation Learners

The increasingly pervasive use of Internet technologies has a great impact on the personal lives, relationships and attitudes of the different generations that employ their services (Oblinger, 2005; Oblinger, 2006; Oblinger, 2007c). Many lables exist that try to define boundaries between different categories of generations, most focusing on behavioral changes and differences amongst generations (Prensky, 2001a, 2001b; Fryer, 2006). Today’s learners, at least those in many developed countries who are part of the Net Generation, tend to take the internet, like electricity, for granted. Unlike electricity however, access to the internet can have a profound effect on the user’s behavior in terms of how he or she interacts with others.

Some observe that for today’s learners being connected is more important than communication (Oblinger, 2007a). Many younger learners today tend to focus their attention on the process and outcome of communication rather than the accuracy of the language or the words used. Analysis of young people’s text messages and content on chat rooms provides numerous examples of how they manage to communicate with ‘broad sweeping strokes’ and words with un-conventional spellings (Thurlow, 2003; Merchant, 2001; Grinter and Palen, 2002). In a sense, its not what you are saying that’s necessarily important, but that you are saying it at all. Establishing relationships appears to be more important than conveying meaning (McLuhan, 1962; McLuhan, 1964).

Today’s learners are action oriented. Their way of learning is different because they focus on learning-by-doing. They learn how technology works-through trial and error, through exploration, rather than by following carefully drafted explanations and guidance (Windham, 2005). Children are very creative and will find their own uses for any new tools they encounter. For them, learning is an on-going process (Oblinger, 2007a).

As a consequence of being immersed in technology, today’s learners are used to sharing their attention across a number of simultaneous tasks (chatting, reading, listening to music, writing, managing multiple applications, etc.). Whether such ‘multi-tasking’ skills are advantageous, however, is questionable with regard to learning. We don’t know enough about whether and how ‘multi-tasking’ is helpful in learning. Indeed, such increased cognitive load should be studied with respect to the effectiveness of learning (Landriscina, 2005).

Another consequence of the pervasive use of technologies is rapid changes in language. Although language is constantly evolving, ‘quickfire’ written conversations , face-to-face chatting in multiple windows, combined with additional digital information exchange (photos, video, etc.) in ‘chat rooms’ (Merchant, 2001) and other internet communication tools, force rapid language evolution. This is occurring at a faster pace than was ever the case with technologies such as the telephone. This is also one of the reasons why today’s learners are often perceived as becoming “illiterate”. Teachers often remark that there is a growing trend in the lack of writing skills (BBC, 2003). Many of the conference participants were concerned about students use of text language in academic settings. “One result of the explosion of IM and text messaging?.... I now have to tell my students that “u” is not an acceptable substitute for “you,” as commented by teachers at the OCC 2007 conference (Oblinger, 2007a; OCC2007, 2007a).

Although today’s young learners are able to acquire the skills required for the internet age, their basic characteristics are not very different from those of previous generations. We can recognise similarities between McLuhan’s description of the ‘television child’ more than 40 years ago (McLuhan, 1962; McLuhan, 1964) and current descriptions of the ‘Net generation’ child. What is common to young learners of all generations is that they are still growing emotionally, socially, psychologically and physically. They are not necessarily capable of distinguishing between what is good and what is evil. The difference with today’s learners is that, from a younger age, they are exposed to a wider world through the Internet than ever before. Having "standard" utilization abilities for the technology alone is not adequate to become an expert and astute user of the technology.

There is therefore a recognized need that becoming “Net Savvy” (Oblinger, 2007b) is a key competence of today’s learners. The essential question, in a context where technology is changing and advancing so rapidly and learner’s attitudes to technology are adapting and reshaping their behaviour, is how can we aim to educate learners to become Net Savvy?

Learners’ skills on the Internet

While constructivists believe that students need skills to construct understanding of new knowledge, connectivists believe that they need skills to connect with new knowledge. Connectivism, advanced by Siemens (2004) as a theory to capture the process of learning in the digital age, has its emphasis on the networked nature of the ever-growing array of technologies and information sources with the potential for learning. However, when using the Internet to manage one's own knowledge through access to contents and shared relations, the need to develop a set of complex skills has emerged in many discussions.

One question that emerged through discussion was: are these skills self-learned or do they need to be taught?

Two distinct views surfaced from the discussions amongst participants. One view advocated that it is not necessary to teach the learners how to become skill-full users of internet tools. The group questioned:

Did we have to learn be effective TV watchers? or radio listeners? No, we eventually learned that it was important to be discerning in what we watched, what we believed to be true, etc... (OCC2007, 2007a).

The other view was a contrasting one which defended the idea that it would be a huge mistake to think that somehow students are born knowing how to make savvy use of technologies for their personal education. Participants expressed that:

Many adults think that kids just naturally ‘get it’ -- they may naturally muddle through but they don't naturally understand how to do complex tasks such as effectively use a wiki or more important ones like thinking about how to protect their privacy. It is important that students are taught at a young age to use technology effectively AND how to use a keyboard correctly. We cannot expect students to accidentally use technology effectively -- that is irresponsible and inaccurate (OCC2007, 2007a).

Once admitted to an ecology (the space within which networks occur), a learner is able to begin forming connections. Connections of a certain type are needed. In this context we need experts and gurus (selected based on reputation and experience in a network) to guide learners, to assist them in their net-confusion (OCC2007, 2007a).

The discussion around this topic aimed to stress the idea that students might use communication tools differently, where differently means that they learn the impact that their communication can have on others and the possibilities for their use.

Summing up many contributions, we can elaborate that there are three simultaneous ‘literacies’ that learners need to acquire in order to be effective and safe users of the Internet (Pettenati, 2007a, 2007b and 2007c) (Joint, 2005; Martin & Ashworth, 2004; Martin, 2004; Warlick, 2004): Digital Literacy, Information Fluency and Net Savviness.

Digital literacy is concerned with skills related to the use of IT, while Information Fluency is the area where digital literacy, critical thinking, presentation skills, and eventually domain-specific knowledge intersect. Information fluency also encompasses a students ability to analyze data and draw their own conclusions on what that data mean, then support those conclusions with what others have done before them. Students can learn the technological "hows" (digital literacy) very quickly and can even be left to learn the mechanics from their peers (OCC2007, 2007a). Where the subject expert comes in (and hence the educational institutions) is when it is time to teach the students how to think critically.

The third area is the Net Savviness, which is particularly relevant in the current information age where internet is used not only to access information, but also to contribute and to socialize. Net savvy skills deal with information evaluation (quality, relevance, currency, trustworthiness) as well as with ethical issues (privacy, copyright, respect of cultural diversity, etc.). In the current internet society we can be fairly confident that Digital Literacy can be taught or easily self-learned (thanks to the abilities of the Net Generation). Information Fluency must be taught by educational intuitions as part of their teaching program, according to the teaching grade (elementary schools, higher education, etc.). Eventually Net Savviness should be both initially taught as well as acquired and developed as a personal lifelong skill which must be shaped, focused, and re-learnt through the learners activities in the network.

To be an effective and safe participant in the new read/write web, it is necessary to acquire relevant skills in all three domains.

With the benefit of all the contributions from the conference participants, and also taking into account recent literature in the field (Pettenati, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c; Mangione 2007a, 2007b, Cigognini, 2007), we propose a conceptual map to illustrate the specific skills required of Net Generation learners from the above mentioned three domains. These are gathered together as the Learner’s Personal Knowledge Management Skills (Fig. 1) (Pettenati, 2007a, 200b and 2007c).


Learner's Personal Knowledge Management Skills
Learner's Personal Knowledge Management Skills

Digital Literacy is mainly related to the technology. It is the use of hardware and software tools for:

  • multi-modal and multi-channel communication
  • creation of multi-media content
  • content publishing
  • content storage and archiving
  • sharing
  • managing contacts
  • managing technological security (hard security)

Information Fluency is mainly related to communication and cognition. It is the use of technology for:

  • Effective communication
  • Effective writing
  • Integration
  • Synthesis
  • Critical thinking
  • Creativity
  • Taking initiative
  • Organization
  • Management
  • Defining needs
  • Advancing hypotheses and solutions
  • Searching
  • Adaption
  • Collaboration

Net Savviness is related to the social nature of the use of the internet. The specific skills are concerned with:

  • Relating
  • Classification
  • Management of Informative and Cognitive Overload
  • Master knowledge exchange
  • Respect of diversity (cultural, technological divides, etc.)
  • Complicity
  • Evaluation of the accuracy, pertinence, reliability and trustworthiness of information sources
  • Managing the safety of relations (netiquette and socioquette, recognition of cheating, fraude, bullying, evaluation of personal and professional risks)
  • Management of resource security (Privacy, IPR, etc.)
  • Management of digital identities and profiles (real, virtual, honesty, etc.)
  • Complicity with collaboration ethics


Net Generation Teachers

The Net Generation Teachers are at the fore-front of a transitional era in which their students are mainly composed of Digital Natives for whom the use of the Internet for entertainment and socialization is almost second nature. Although students are familiar with the technology, their major use of such tools is not for learning, but for entertainment. Therefore, as the conference participants’ discussed, the first barrier for learners (and by implication, teachers) would be to understand "why use such tools for education?" (OCC2007, 2007a). Some students will be reluctant to have their Faculty or educational material show up in their social networks because that is their territory (OCC2007, 2007a). In that sense, the technology can create a gap between teachers and students instead of allowing a seamless connection between education and Web 2.0 technologies as we may envisage. Students will, therefore, require adequate convincing and support for using Web 2.0 technologies for learning. As it was also highlighted during EDUCASE (2007) conference, using Web 2.0 tools for education is not the same as using such internet tools for entertainment.

Teachers have a crucial role to play in the successful integration of Web 2.0 technologies for learning, alongside a change in the vision of education. However, as the discussions amongst the participants revealed, teachers are but a single element in a complex system that governs the development and proliferation of internet technologies and education. Participants at the OCC 2007 conference also acknowledged that:

We must also realize that perhaps our own teachers are a product of the education system that we are trying to change and that we should start by changing teachers. It is not as easy as changing curriculum because teachers are ultimately the center of all we do (OCC2007, 2007a).

Improving teachers’ capacity and skills to help young children to become effective learners on the net will be a key effective intervention, that will ultimately benefit the learning of net generation children. The challenge for teachers is to become adaptive experts in the Knowledge Society. "As teachers -- we should predict the future by designing it" (OCC2007, 2007a).

Teachers skills in the Knowledge Society

Teachers need to develop new skills in a number of areas (OCC2007, 2007a) (OCC2007, 2007b):

  • Subject matter expertise: professors should not position themselves as experts who can claim to keep pace with the changing face of knowledge - but they should reposition their specialist expertise so as to maximize a students learning journey through guidance, provision of trusted nodes, and establishment of a reliable Net framework.
  • Digital Literacy skills: similar to young learners, teachers must master the use of technology as new hardware and software tools for communication, content production and publication become available. Sometimes teachers may feel uncomfortable with their own expertise in technology, because young students are often far more expert and skilled than them. The point here is to value the pedagogical perspective and stress that teachers (and only teachers) can provide expertise on learning.
  • Information fluency: teachers already have such skills, thanks to their professional development programs. However, acquiring new skills and becoming familiar with new tools available on the internet will be helpful for them to relate to their students in the new technological environment. Moreover, the focus here is also on becoming acquainted with more efficient tools for communicating, relating and creating content.
  • Educational fluency skills: This is the major difference which will make teachers able to successfully project themselves into the new learning era. Policy makers are urged to understand that teachers need to be equipped with knowledge and skills that are much more wide-ranging than those that are usually acquired through a Masters’ degrees in specific content / subject areas. Teachers need to be able to deeply appreciate the values and abilities of understanding how to make connections, learning new concepts, conducting research, communicating with various types of people (cultures, languages, disciplines), which means a more multi-disciplinary approach than a "specialist content" approach which will help the teacher become adaptable and flexible, and more open to the changing technological and learning landscape. Moreover, teachers have to be able to help students to learn through trial and error, working with them to make sense of the world (whatever the discipline is) and being open to new ways of doing things, with clear aims and goals for students’ learning and outcomes.
  • Net Savviness: Teachers' skills - although encompassing specialist knowledge and expertise - should also focus on developing connections and inferential skills. Knowledge has become widely “networked” and domain experts will be those capable of adapting themselves through the dynamic patterns of connections made available through the Net. Teachers need to connect with others as part of their instruction and professional development. Guidance and help in making "the right connections" is an invaluable source of learning. But guidance is different from telling. In a traditional classroom, the teacher has made the connections and simply tells the learners what they are (i.e. “read this text”). Diversity should be injected into the learning experience to extend the classroom, to enlarge the conversation, and let learners roam free for knowledge. With guidance, and a certain level of competence, learners can meet their own needs.


Teachers and the technological overdoing

One of the concerns expressed by the conference participants was the possible temptation for new teachers to try to use all the tools available, and as a result, to feel overwhelmed by the technology (OCC2007, 2007a). Teachers should start with the minimum technology and/or tools essential to start developing the required skills as well as setting the educational context. Sometimes teachers express frustration as they realize how they could have done things better. This experience indicates a hunger to excel. Lesson / program planners should construct a progressive series of lists of elements or tools needed in an online class. Beginner teachers can start with the first list, and as they progress, they can add elements and technological tools from term to term. If teachers know that they are not expected to use all the ‘bells and whistles’ from the beginning, they are less likely to feel overwhelmed.

The biggest mistake is for a new user to tackle too much at once. A useful recommendation is that new users start with the tools that will save them time and effort (e.g. syllabus, email, assignment tools). Once they are comfortable using those basic tools, they can add further elements later.

Net Generation parents

The socio-technological revolution introduced by the Read/Write Web requires new ways of educating and learning. These new ways are complex and critical both for teachers and for parents. Parents’ involvement in the education of their children was a much debated topic amongst the conference participants, following Diana's speech (Oblinger, 2007a). Those who were in favor of parents’ involvement in children’s education supported parents’ perception of themselves as being primarily responsible for the development of their children - including their education at school and their education on the Net. More and more parents therefore feel the need to be involved in their kids social-networks.

Introducing parents to social networking is considered to be an interesting idea because of the possible benefits it could bring. However, the issue of the visibility of student's works by parents can also be controversial, as pointed out by the conference participants: "I don't want a kid being berated on-line for what the parent perceives as unsatisfactory work. Or a kid freezing up on his speech because mom is watching. Just as we create a culture in our classroom, we need to create expectations in the way we communicate on the Read/Write Web. If we are going to communicate in new ways - there will be a learning curve!" (OCC2007, 2007a). Therefore, as the participants suggested, the parents need to surmount this new learning curve.

In such a new technology context, expectations and roles also have to be managed: "Imagine a blog where a parent continually influences the direction of the posts, or he/she comments on every post... or imagine a student asking a question and a parent answering/commenting with a bias that you wouldn't accept in your class." (OCC2007, 2007a).

It is crucial to develop a synergy between teachers and parents with regard to the child for whom they both bear responsibility. However, some conference participants pointed out that children should not feel that their lives are always being under the scrutiny of critical, anxious or doting parents. Participants provided examples of how, in some real life situations, parents’ influence in their children’s activities is unhelpful: "My elder son used to play county level chess, and parents had to be banned from the competition area due to the inhibiting influence of the coughs, derisive snorts, gasps of dismay and various other sound effects. Sometimes even the best parents' ambitions for their children get in the way of good sense!" (OCC2007, 2007a). The concerns raised by the conference participants was that some parents might display behaviours such as the above in an online environment. Therefore, parents also need guidelines as to how to be a constructive participant in their children’s online environment, someone like a ‘Sage on the Stage’ (Chung, 2005). Similar to their role in a real life playground, parents can help their children explore, enjoy and learn in a safe internet environment.

Some teachers expressed concern about the possible intrusion of parents in their teaching activities: "It could be like a basketball game where one of the parents encourages his son to ignore the coach's instructions" (OCC2007, 2007a). However, the other side of the coin is that technology can be effectively used to DISCUSS with parents, instead of just COMMUNICATING to them what will happen. It is much easier to support a teacher in grading, discipline, or teaching a student when a parent can understand what the teachers are trying to achieve and can give them insight into what is happening with their child.

Technology can help in providing greater transparency in what teachers are doing and to significantly change the way teachers and parents interact so that they become partners rather than adversaries. However, as it has been remarked by many contributors, teacher-parent interaction in a connected world presents some peculiarities which are brought about by the new available channels and communication formats. For instance, it is easy for students to record lessons into podcasts (or even recording a lesson unobtrusively on a cell phone) (OCC2007, 2007a); real time video interaction can easily be established; blogs can be used by parents to give responses on many issues. Web 2.0 technologies and tools have the potential to involve parents as contributors of their children’s learning activities in the classroom - much more than was possible with previous technologies. Examples of such positive interactions and contributions are fairly new and therefore they need proper investigation, modeling and mapping out.

Some contributors, based on previous experiences, advocated that involving parents in the education of their children is beneficial to foster exceptional work. Indeed, students’ awareness of a ‘global audience’ for the work they produce pushed students to perform better than usual. Parents, in such experiences, act as the best friend of a good teacher not as the worst enemy (OCC2007, 2007a).

Implications on learning

A new perspective on learning must be developed: learning is not a place it is a journey; we have to move from knowing predefined knowledge to knowing where and how to make sense of information, to make connections between sources of information and to continue to learn. The power of the read/write web, the social networking available, and filtering, tagging, and social bookmarking tools will help us connect and increase the pace of our sense making.

When rethinking learning in such a way, we also need to rethink all its phases, including evaluation and assessment: relying on pen and paper exams as a final and overriding measure of student performance and knowledge can be less meaningful for the modern age. We should therefore move to a more authentic assessment model. Developing 'scenarios' that students must build can play such a role, in assessing the application of knowledge.

Reasoning on the implications for learning, the concept of distributed learning has emerged as being the learning pattern supported by the current network. Diana, in her speech, identified the following dimensions of distributed learning (Oblinger, 2007b):

  • individual vs group learning
  • formal vs informal learning
  • place
  • time
  • device
  • media

Discussions amongst the participants contributed to extend the above to other dimensions[2] (Guitè, 2007) which appear to be relevant for further developments:

  • cognition: freeing from the load of memorizing information, technologies leave space for a deeper engagement in reflections and actions;
  • contemporaneity: synchronicity in this sense is not meant with technologies but with the actuality of collective thinking; gaining collective awareness of the social environment happens both timely and globally
  • immediacy: information is accessible just in time; reflection time is shortened but more supported by connections
  • quality: information quality is increased by personal searching skills as well as community support
  • diversity: connectivity brings different and diverse viewpoints
  • disorder: unique classification models left the place to socially-shared folksonomies
  • neutrality: the virtual space can decrease the establishment of prejudices related to race, religion, appearance, etc.

Conclusions

Reflections and comments around this topic, provided new incentives to consider learning in the Connectivist setting. Web 2.0 technologies provide tremendous opportunities and capabilities for learning from remote sites, collaborating in groups, not using the teacher as the only expert, and being able to touch and feel knowledge in a context. From one perspective, OCC2007 presentations and conferencing activities allowed enlightenment on some of the affordances of learning in such a shared, chaotic, questioned, reshared, dynamic world, in which knowledge is a networked process. However, this event also convinced us that the Connectivist learning journey can be troubling, chaotic, and fraught with cognitive dilemmas. In such a situation we need to acquire new skills both as students and as professors. The Net Generation of students, and the growth of retired people seeking continuing education will put great pressure on institutions to change their programme offerings and delivery systems. Universities will survive - but will have to embrace change. Greater openness is a principal requirement. Networks of learning will exist, and some may be accredited by universities while others remain outside the realm of institutions. Mentors, experts, content, delivery styles/learning styles will all play a role. The crucial difference is that the learner will be in greater control - however this will take some time to occur because few learners have already learned to be in charge their own learning journey. The next generation of learners will come to university with expectations and skills most professors will not recognize. These young adults will have had years of pattern recognition, network formation and evaluation, have exercised critical/creative thinking (collaborate, create and recreate) and learned to accept the uncertainty or ambiguity of holistic learning. They will recognize that contextually, there is no right answer, their is only the formulation of new ways of thinking.


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