Digital divides? Student and staff perceptions of information and communication technologies

This paper reports qualitative findings from a study that investigated Australian university staff and students’ perceptions and use of current and emerging technologies both in their daily lives and in teaching and learning contexts. Forty-six first-year students and 31 teaching and support staff from three Australian universities took part in interviews and focus groups. This paper examines how students and staff reported on their use of new technologies in their daily lives, their stated reasons for using those technologies, and their beliefs about the benefits and limitations of using technologies as teaching and learning tools. The findings question assumptions that have been made about a “digital divide” between “digital native” students and their “digital immigrant” teachers in higher education today, suggesting we need to develop a more sophisticated understanding about the role technologies play in the lives of both students and staff. A better understanding of student and staff perspectives will allow for more informed decisions about the implementation of educational technologies in today’s higher education institutions.     

Exploration of problematic Internet use and social interaction anxiety among Turkish pre-service teachers

The current study investigated the relationship between problematic Internet use and social interaction anxiety among pre-service teachers. Participants were 1235 students attending teacher training programs at a Turkish state university. The “Problematic Internet Use Scale” and “Social Interaction Anxiety Scale” were used to collect the data. Independent-samples t-test and one-way ANOVA were conducted to examine the differences; and correlation and regression analyses were used to examine the relationships between variables. Findings revealed that male students’ use of the Internet was more problematic compared to female students’. As the time spent on the Internet increased, so did the problematic Internet use levels. In addition, the problematic Internet use levels of students varied with regard to departments. A significant relationship was found between the level of problematic Internet use and social interaction anxiety, and social interaction anxiety was found to be among the predictors of problematic Internet use. Implications and suggestions for further research are provided.     

Why Teachers Must Learn: Student Innovation as a Driving Factor in the Future of the Web

User innovation is the key to the development and vitality of technology. As Huatong Sun wrote, “expanding the scope of localization practices and linking user localization efforts” to design cycles—including pedagogical design—will help bridge the gap between what teachers/designers create and what skills users/students need and want. This article theorizes the role of modern composition students and teachers as co-constructors of productive spaces for learning critical inquiry based on students’ statuses as digital natives. It focuses on a class of first-year composition students who reshaped an assignment to fit their own needs within the physical classroom and also enacted a shift to a virtual classroom. While doing so, they provided ways for each class member to individualize space within that digital environment, and they focused their project on examining the ways in which social networking forums colonize their daily lives. This article argues that by letting student innovation drive pedagogical practice—just as social media creators let user innovation drive the digital structures they produce—composition teachers can be assured of having a text for critique that blurs the lines between “private” student underlife and “public” classroom practice and legitimizes the creation of student-produced learning spaces. Using critical and cyberfeminist theories as lenses, this article draws conclusions about the future of computer usage in composition pedagogy based on students’ abilities to re-appropriate physical and digital classroom space.     

An exploration of social networking site use,multitasking, and academic performance among United States and European university students

Studies have shown that multitasking with technology, specifically using Social Networking Sites (SNSs), decreases both efficiency and productivity in an academic setting. This study investigates multitasking’s impact on the relationship between SNS use and Grade Point Average (GPA) in United States (US; n = 451) and European (n = 406) university students using quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Moderated Multiple Regression analysis results showed that the negative relationship between SNS use and GPA was moderated by multitasking only in the US sample. This may be due to European students being less prone to “disruptive” multitasking. The results provide valuable cautionary information about the impact of multitasking and using SNSs in a learning environment on university students’ GPAs.     

A distributed system for learning programming on-line

Several Web-based on-line judges or on-line programming trainers have been developed in order to allow students to train their programming skills. However, their pedagogical functionalities in the learning of programming have not been clearly defined. EduJudge is a project which aims to integrate the “UVA On-line Judge”, an existing on-line programming trainer with an important number of problems and users, into an effective educational environment consisting of the e-learning platform Moodle and the competitive learning tool QUESTOURnament. The result is the EduJudge system which allows teachers to apply different pedagogical approaches using a proven e-learning platform, makes problems easy to search through an effective search engine, and provides an automated evaluation of the solutions submitted to these problems. The final objective is to provide new learning strategies to motivate students and present programming as an easy and attractive challenge. EduJudge has been tried and tested in three algorithms and programming courses in three different Engineering degrees. The students’ motivation and satisfaction levels were analysed alongside the effects of the EduJudge system on students’ academic outcomes. Results indicate that both students and teachers found that among other multiple benefits the EduJudge system facilitates the learning process. Furthermore, the experiment also showed an improvement in students’ academic outcomes. It must be noted that the students’ level of satisfaction did not depend on their computer skills or their gender.     

“Wanted: Some Black Long Distance [Writers]”: Blackboard Flava-Flavin and other AfroDigital experiences in the classroom

This essay examines how students of African descent at a predominantly black college on the East Coast digitally perform their ethnic identities and rhetorics in a freshman composition course. The essay begins by showing how multiple uses of signifying frame students’ Blackboard discussions where they use a type of trickster motif to enact their agreements, disagreements, challenges, and questions, very much akin to Flava Flav's initial cultural role as part of the Rap/activist group, Public Enemy. Students’ online writing groups are then examined by focusing on one particular group, the “Black Long Distance Writers,” whose title signifies and signals the work of the African American writer and activist, John Oliver Killens, most notably, his seminal 1973 essay, “Wanted: Some Black Long Distance Runners.” The understandings of these “Black Long Distance Writers” bear the most powerful definition of literacy and computer-based writing instruction because their framework is not contingent upon making digitally divided minorities more technologically advanced and better at one type of English, its culture of power, or its academic discourses. Instead, these students experience rhetoric and writing as a way to alter the ways that knowledge is constructed for them and about them, “revocabularizing” the academy and its technologies. Such freshman writers are re-envisioned in this kind of cyberspace as constructors of and co-participants in black intellectual and rhetorical traditions … now AfroDigitized.     

The effect of an information ethics course on the information ethics values of students - A Chinese guanxi culture perspective

The development of information technology has a significant influence on social structure and norms, and also impacts upon human behavior. In order to achieve stability and social harmony, people need to respect various norms, and have their rights protected. Students’ information ethics values are of critical and radical importance in achieving this goal. Using qualitative approach, the present study utilizes Kohlberg’s CMD model to measure improvement in students’ “information ethics values” through “technology mediated learning (TML)” models, and to assess the extent to which it is influenced by gender and Chinese guanxi culture. We find that while e-learning improves female students’ “respect rules,” “privacy,” “accessibility” and “intellectual property” values more than male students, the percentages relating to “intellectual property” for females in the higher stages remain lower than for males. Moreover, these results are interpreted from a Chinese guanxi culture perspective. In light of these results, educators should take account of such improvements when designing effective teaching methods and incentives.     

Blended learning in higher education: Students’ perceptions and their relation to outcomes

New information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide educators and learners with an innovative learning environment to stimulate and enhance the teaching and learning process. In this context, novel educational concepts such as blended learning are being developed. In the present paper, we present the results obtained from a blended learning experience carried out at the University of Granada. A total of 17 groups took part, with 1431 students registered for the 2009–2010 academic year. In this study, we use objective outcomes and the students’ perceptions regarding the blended learning activities performed. The study shows that the use of blended learning has a positive effect in reducing dropout rates and in improving exam marks. Moreover, the students’ perceptions on blended learning are interrelated, with their final marks depending on the blended learning activities, and on the students’ age, background and class attendance rate.     

Students’ perceptions of teaching technologies, application of technologies, and academic performance

This study examined business students’ perceptions of four objectives (i.e., Enjoyment, Learning, Motivation, and Career Application) across five teaching technologies (i.e., Projector, PowerPoint, Video, the Internet, and Lecture), business professors’ effective application of technologies, and students’ academic performance. We collected data from 215 students at a regional state university in the USA. We developed Students’ Perceptions of Technology Scale, SPOTS, specifically for the present study, used the most rigorous criteria, and investigated reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and measurement invariance of this scale. Mean scores revealed that Video conveyed the highest amount of Enjoyment. PowerPoint provided the highest amount of Learning and Motivation. The Internet provided the highest Career Application for future jobs. Younger students preferred Video, whereas older students favored Lecture. Regression results showed that the use of Video for Learning, Projector and Lecture for Enjoyment, PowerPoint for career and Motivation, and the Internet for Learning contributed to professors’ teaching effectiveness. Students’ high ratings for professors’ effective use of the Lecture method and low expectation for the use of a Projector predicted their self-reported GPA (academic performance). Professors may use a different mix of technologies in the classroom and use them creatively in order to promote the most Learning for students and satisfy students’ Learning needs and objectives.     

Using digital technologies to redress inequities for English language learners in the English speaking mathematics classroom

This study examined the question, ‘What is the impact of a digital math intervention on secondary ELL students’ mathematical capabilities and perceptions of their future possibilities?’ The hypothesis was that through its direct effect on increasing students’ math ability and its indirect effect on increasing students’ perceived math self-efficacy, the digital intervention affects students’ perceptions of their functionings and future possibilities. A path analysis, with qualitative data nested into the design, was used to analyze the conceptualized relationships. The study was conducted with 50 ninth-and-10th-grade Hispanic students in a Colorado high school, over 6 months. The primary finding was that through its direct effect on increasing students’ math ability and its indirect effect on increasing students’ perceived math self-efficacy, the digital intervention improved students’ perceptions of their functionings and future possibilities. What this study specifically underscores is the importance of taking a coherent and purposeful approach toward the design of digital student-directed educational technology, especially for ELL students who may have specific learning needs.     

The effects of problem-based learning on the classroom community perceptions and achievement of web-based education students

Web-based education as an alternative to face-to-face teaching is now being extended as an application to higher education. Much effort is undertaken to provide multimedia rich, attractive content to learners. While the use of multimedia technologies has a noticeable effect on students’ learning, so does the selected teaching methodology. Underpinned by the Constructivist approach, problem-based learning is one of the methods that could be applied in web-based learning environments. The current study investigates the effects of problem-based learning on students’ classroom community perceptions and their achievement. It focuses on the tertiary level course “Introduction to Computers” offered by the Department of Business Administration of the Distance Education Program at a higher education institution in Turkey. The results indicated that students who worked on problem-based projects felt much more ‘connected’ to other class members when compared to the control group. They achieved higher scores in the post-tests although their online midterm and final examination scores did not indicate any difference between the groups.     

Using blogging to enhance the initiation of students into academic research

For the net-generation students learning in a Web 2.0 world, research is often equated with Googling and approached with a mindset accustomed to cut-and-paste practices. Recognizing educators’ concern over such students’ learning dispositions on the one hand, and the educational affordances of blogging on the other, this study examines the use of blogging to initiate students into academic research at the tertiary level. It focuses on the experiences of three students from a third-year music class working on their research paper with blog-based supervision provided by the teacher. The course, in a hybrid fashion, combined face-to-face lectures and tutorials with blog sharing and discussion. The students’ individually-owned blogs were specifically used as their research diaries in which they logged in their work in progress, they then received input from both the teacher and fellow students. Based on the researcher’s self-evaluation of the teaching-supervising process, an analysis of the students’ blog discourse, and students’ survey feedback, this article offers useful insights and suggestions for educators interested in either using or researching on blogging as a means to develop students’ research skills and understanding.     

Beyond basic study skills: The use of technology for success in college

Technology has become a fundamental component of both education and work. Yet regardless of perceived benefits, in many cases students do not use technology effectively. One challenge educators confront is how to motivate students to effectively use the technological mediums provided in their classes. The goal of the current study is twofold: to use the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to examine two motivators of behavior, ease of use and perceived need, and to assess how they affect students’ likelihood of effectively using technology. Second, we evaluate how the match between expectations of the use of technology and the actual student use affect actual classroom performance. To test our hypotheses, college students (N = 384) in introductory psychology classes completed a survey. We also obtained the instructor’s perceptions of the need for technology in their class and students’ final class grades. Results showed that ease of use and perceived need of technology were related to the frequency of computer use and intentions to use technology. Additionally, findings suggested that technology use, specifically technology deemed important by the instructor, was related to academic success (i.e., final grade in class).     

Interactive processes and learning attitudes in a web-based problem-based learning (PBL) platform

This paper discusses the steps taken to set up a digital logic course problem through a problem-based learning (PBL) constructivist approach. PBL is the learning which results from the process of working toward the understanding and resolution of a problem. The purpose of this study was to develop and implement problem-based learning in a digital logic course in a senior vocational industrial high school. Data collection included content analysis and a questionnaire survey. Content analysis was used to evaluate the students’ discussion messages, quality of dialogue, and the level of problem-solving activities. A survey was then administered to examine the students’ learning attitudes and perceptions toward this platform as a possible tool for PBL learning. Researchers found “Peer-responses” category is the most messages; the contents of messages focus on “General explanation” and “Reaction”; the level results of all groups’ problem-solving are similar; the index of the “Interaction” satisfaction level is the highest in PBL activity. Finally, some research suggestions were also proposed.     

Students’ views on technology and writing: The power of personal history

As scholars, writers, and teachers, I believe that we should try harder to understand students’ perspectives on the use of computers in their academic work. This article begins to provide a sense of students’ perspectives on questions of technology, thus presenting a fuller picture of the context within which we teach. Drawing on a variety of methods, including a survey and the writings of a small group of students enrolled in a Writing and Technology course, this article expresses some of these stories generally hidden from an instructor's perspective and reveals that, despite what the media might tell us, students are not as prepared to utilize technology as we might assume. Furthermore, the student narratives suggest that English departments and writing programs can play an important role in assisting students who are unfamiliar with computer technologies, helping them to gain the computer literacy they need to succeed at the university.     

Are Computer Science and Information Technology still masculine fields? High school students’ perceptions and career choices

This study investigated Greek high school students’ intentions and motivation towards and against pursuing academic studies in Computer Science (CS), the influence of the family and the scholastic environment on students’ career choices, students’ perceptions of CS and the Information Technology (IT) profession as well as students’ attendance at CS courses at school, computer use in the home and self-efficacy beliefs regarding computers. Gender differences were examined with a view to identifying factors that may affect boys’ and girls’ career choices. The participants were 358 students of both sexes who completed an anonymous questionnaire. The data analysis showed that girls are less likely than boys to pursue a CS degree, and when they do so, it is mainly because of extrinsic reasons rather than personal interest in CS. Lack of opportunities for early familiarization with computing in the home and the scholastic environment is the factor that mainly differentiates boys’ and girls’ motivation against studying CS, having a greater impact on girls. Misconceptions of CS were detected in students of both genders. Girls view CS as a self-referencing, machine- and programming-oriented discipline to a greater extent than boys do, and hold less positive views of the IT profession. Boys view CS as more human- and application-oriented than girls do. They also have greater computer self-efficacy and more sex-stereotypical views of CS and IT as male domains. Appropriate actions to increase girls’ interest and participation in CS studies are proposed according to the findings.     

Design and development of a technology enhanced hybrid instruction based on MOLTA model: Its effectiveness in comparison to traditional instruction

Using the model for learning and teaching activities (MOLTA), a new technology enhanced hybrid instruction was designed, developed and implemented. The effectiveness of the hybrid instruction in regard to students’ achievement, knowledge retention, attitudes towards the subject, and course satisfaction was evaluated in comparison to traditional classroom instruction. Experimental study with pre-test, post-test control group design was carried out. The sample of the study consisted of 50 university students enrolled in “Computer Networks and Communication” course. The control and experimental groups composed of 24 and 26 students respectively, and the experiment lasted 14 weeks. The findings of the study indicated no significant difference between the hybrid course and the traditional course in students’ achievement, knowledge retention, satisfaction, and attitude.     

Understanding adolescents’ problematic Internet use from a social/cognitive and addiction research framework

As Internet usage has become more prevalent among youth, so too has problematic Internet use. Despite the critical role of emotion regulation in the development of adolescents’ behaviors and the role of parenting interactions on their children’s behaviors, little research has examined these links with reference to problematic and addictive Internet use for adolescents. The main goal of this study was to examine these links, based on a sample of 525 high school students (368 males; M = 15.33 years, SD = 0.47) from a predominantly middle and lower-middle socioeconomic community in Seoul, Korea. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that students’ difficulties in emotion regulation was a mediating variable between students’ perceptions of their parents’ parenting behaviors and the students’ Internet use. The findings substantiate the importance of conceptualizing addiction from a social/cognitive theoretical framework and the notion that adolescence is the onset period for many addictive behaviors and so more proactive attention needs to be given to reducing these early negative behaviors. Based on these results, interventions designed to enhance adolescents’ emotion regulatory abilities have the likelihood to mitigate problematic and even addictive Internet use among youth.