Digital Native Disconnect
Funny the little coincidences. After posting about Digital Natives on Saturday I was catching up on some reading and I encountered an article in last April's Communications of the ACM (yes I know, I really behind on my reading...). Inconsistencies and Disconnects by Jeffrey Stone and Elinor Madigan examines the issue of student information technology skills, and more importantly the disconnect between student perceptions of their skills and reality.
Here's the short version of the results:
"The students who participated in these studies perceived themselves as having excellent technology skills. Based on this perception, it would appear they would be able to navigate the complexities of academic learning."
"The gap between perception and reality creates an atmosphere of frustration for students and faculty alike. The results of the follow-up assignment group indicated that students were not able to perform basic research using technology, evaluate their sources, or distinguish between the research value of a library source and an Internet source. Students also have difficulty communicating electronicallyÑsending email, attaching documents to email messages, and using application programs. Incoming first-year students are confronted by a technologically complex environment for which they are ill-prepared. Their lack of a solid foundation of ICT knowledge and skills may well hinder their success in higher education, as well as in their later performance in the workplace." (Pg79)
As the pull out quote notes:
"Students do not leave high school with an acceptable level of ICT knowledge necessary to function at the university level or to be able to perform in the workplace."
Years ago, some research I was involved in confirmed a common belief, that men overreported self-competence with technology and women underreported self-competence. It appears that the new generation of students are different - they all over-report competence.
However, I don't blame the students. Reporting self-competence requires an awareness of the range of competencies required and some reference point to use when making an assessment. The real issue is the poor communication of technology expectations by institutions and academics - essentially we ambush the students. Repeated application of the eMM both in New Zealand and internationally shows that most institutions provide completely inadequate information on the technology skills and access required in their programmes.
Until we as educators can express consistently and clearly our expectations and the rationale for them, we can hardly complain blame students for any 'inconsistencies' or 'disconnects.'