How Students Are 'Evolving' With Technology

Scott Jaschik writes "A new study explores how "digital natives" (today's college students) have changing technology habits — and how those habits have infiltrated the classroom. What does that mean for professors and their teaching methods?"

Note taking

[Arrow_Raider]

Maybe it's just me, but I've tried taking notes on my laptop before and I just didn't retain the information as well as when I physically write notes with paper and pencil.

AntiSocial society

[packetmon]

You know, I love technology and all that it has done and is continuing to do, but I'm also starting to feel that technology is making a large portion of society very antisocial. When I was younger I used to enjoy going to the library, playing in the park etc., nowadays I see a huge portion of younger people skipping the libraries in favor of wikipedia or finding it online. Same goes for interaction, say dating... Why should someone head to a bar, coffeeshop, the laundrymat to meet someone when they could find it online. Alot of interaction has gone down the tubes and while it may be nice to think of an "e-classroom" of the future, I'd be pretty pissed if I couldn't clown around in person as opposed to faking smiles behind a screen. Screw that give me some dirty smelly kids, jokes, teachers throwing chalk at me versus a "digital classroom"

Sure... digital is cool but...

[TheEdge757]

I consider myself an early adopter and a person who's generally always interested in finding a competetive advantage, but one thing is for sure: when it comes to studying, I like to have something tactile in my hands. It's almost as though interacting with a paper medium is easier to deal with then a digital medium, and through that interaction I tend to learn more. It's why I've printed out all the Powerepoint slides to class and write on the slides in longhand rather then add notes on the actual slides themselves. I'm not sure if that's something that will eventuially change as people start becoming more exposed to computers at an early age, but I do believe that in my generation (college) people still generally prefer to have a non-digital medium for actual learning. I've rarely run into anyone who would rather read a digital textbook then have some sort of physical document/book in their hands.

Re:AntiSocial society

[MBCook]

I agree, which is something I find rather amusing considering the huge number of people using "social" networking sites, making "friends" on MySpace, etc.

There is a lot to be said about a digital classroom at a certain point. It can be great in many college classes. I am highly against the "shove computers into higg/middle/elementary schools" movement. I've been in those schools, I know just how poorly they get used. Instead of something good the kids get "How to use Word" (not how to use a word processor). "How to type". "How to make a PowerPoint presentation". Some bits of this are useful (especially typing) but these are being taught not as means to an end, but the end its self.

Re:Note taking

[Dr. Eggman]

I use a Tablet PC/Notebook hybrid =D

All benefits of handwritten note plus ultimate storeage, organization, and the ability to copy/paste large swaths of repeated information and to resize/reshape/duplicate graphs and tables. Built-in microphone is starting to get use, too. Its nice to be able to hear a lecture over again encase I missed important info during note taking.

Similar to...

[kebes]

Note that this story is somewhat similar to a previous Slashdot item [slashdot.org] on "When 'Digital Natives' Go to the Library [insidehighered.com]" (complete with the 'Digital Native' buzz-word that I have not seen used on other sites).

This quote included in TFA is, I think, the best way to look at integrating new technologies with teaching:

Good teachers are good with or without IT and students learn a great deal from them. Poor teachers are poor with or without IT and students learn little from them.

It's a truism that's pretty obvious, but bears repeating. In my opinion, technology can only enhance the teaching/learning experience, since good teachers will have the wisdom to deploy it carefully. Less skilled teachers will deploy it poorly (e.g. using it as a gimmick instead of an useful tool), but then again those are precisely the teachers that would be wasting student's time with other tools (chalkboards, textbooks, etc.).

This is not to say that there have not been "growing pains" with integrating technology into teaching. Certainly I've seen otherwise competent professors make mistakes with over-zealously deploying an immature teaching tool. But, overall, I think the unsurprising conclusion is that all these new technologies provide advantages to those who are smart enough to exploit them properly.

My general view is that rather than try to integrate specific technologies (which then become gimmick-like), it's best to simply make generic resources available to students and teachers (e.g. computer labs, Wi-Fi, laptop loaner programs, site-wide software licenses, etc.). When resources are available, students will inherently gravitate towards using them in the most useful ways. For example, rather than explicitly integrating a particular piece of tech into a course (a particular software package, forcing students to use an online message board, etc.), my inclination would be to make a bunch of avenues for learning available, and see which ones the students inherently use.

Looks more like entertainment

[Overzeetop]

I was in the first class of engineers which my school required to have a computer. That was 20 years ago. I now live in that college town, and have occasional interaction with the engineering department and its students. (No, that's not what I meant - get your mind out of the gutter). They use computers for the same things I did - CAD, spreadsheets, term papers. They get more out of them through the internet as many professors put assignments, notes and samples on line. We didn't play too many games because there weren't many immersive ones, and we didn't surf because the internet did not exist then as it exists now. The web had not yet been created (by web, I mean HTML and browsers). We didn't chat, unless you count BBSs - which I don't. We didn't download music or videos - most PCs didn't have sound cards, video wasn't really possible on an 8086, and p0rn, even if it existed was not really a hot item at 320x240 (in a stunning 256 colors).

It seems that most of the progress has been in added functionality (as in more built-in functions - 3D solid cad, more rows/cols) and speed of processing. Everything else seems to be more about entertainment, whether its games, connectivity, or casual information (surfing). Students can amass more crap via downloads, but if you never print it out or look at it on the screen page-by-page it's just as bad as a Kinkos-printed set of notes where you watch the comb spine slowly yellow over the years. Actually, I suppose its worse - without that yellow spine in the bookcase to remind you that you have it, you don't even remember that lecture note set exists, buried in some sub-folder in you document directory.

IMHO very little has changed in 20 years on the teaching front. The critical component to education in the interactive ability of the teacher and student to work together. Web-enabled learning still tens to fall short, imho, and expanding class attendance through distance learning just reduces the opportunity to get everyone involved in the learning process.

Wait...I take part of that back - email does make a difference. Quick questions can be answered efficiently in an asynchronous manner that wasn't possible in my day (yes, we had voicemail, but couldn't copy the whole class). Still, it doesn't really scream "new teaching methods are necessary," unless new teaching methods involves putting web blocking software in the routers to keep the kids from surfing in a boring lecture.

Yeah

[everphilski]

The only subject I have trouble seeing easily transferable to an electronic form without some form of tablet would be math and engineering subjects which require extensive equations. There is no good standard equation editor that can create and manipulate formulas nearly as fast as can be done by hand afaik. (Although LaTeX equations do look a whole lot better than by hand once you get all the symbols in the right place.)

As an engineer I stuck to desktop computers, took notes on paper, until this year. I have a Ph.D., and my comittee consists of a colleague at work, my advisor at school, and me doing work at both work and school and home. So I broke down and I use it for research, but I still take paper notes. You just can't effectively do a free body diagram on a notebook...

Re:AntiSocial society

[The One and Only]

On the same token, I'm glad for all this technology because I'm no longer forced to interact with other people unless I particularly want to. (And, incidentally, isn't it a little creepy, trying to meet people at the landromat?)

Technology & history

[carandol]

I'm a mature student doing an undergraduate history degree at a UK university, and the lecturers say that historical research has been completely revolutionised in the last five years by the internet. As an example, take Early English Books Online (EEBO), which has scans and transcriptions of every book published in English between the invention of the printing press 1750. Instead of having to travel to obscure academic libraries to find rare books (or manage without them), I can read all the source material I need for my dissertation from home via a VPN connection to my university. With a tool like Zotero for Firefox I can download the books to my laptop and make notes all over them -- try doing that with a 17th century manuscript :-)

Re:Note taking

[Volante3192]

Whenever I had a class where I'd worry I'd miss something important while taking notes, I'd bring along my microcassette recorder. Then I could go over my notes re-listening to the lecture and fill in gaps (and also make more effort to make the chicken scratches legible.)

Course, some profs don't like cassette recorders, but I'd wager if they had to take either those or laptops, they'd go for recorders.

Re:why so few "mass media" professors?

[Overzeetop]

Of course this won't happen. You mentioned that teaching is an interactive process, but you forgot to add that the TIAA would require a payment of nearly the cost of a typical teacher to replay the recordings. Technology is about opportunity to increase revenue through efficiency, not about increasing efficiency for its own sake.

Re:Note taking

[zen_sky]

That's because your first learning experiences were with "pencil and paper". Most of our brains get hardwired with the initial learning context. I know it is almost impossible for me to learn without holding something in my hands. This applies to most college students as well. The real digital generation grew up with the *internet*, not random gadgets. I have a nephew that memorized and was typing in his (long, ugly) game url's since he was 4, before he could write. He is now 11 and at school he was having trouble learning the traditional way, even though he is very smart. His parents got him an account with online tutors from India, and his grades went to straight A's in a month. He is sucking everything in effortlessly as long as he is in front of a computer.

I am a helluva long time student

[heresyoftruth]

I am quite a bit older than most four year college students, but that's due to paying my own way, and stopping and starting related to money issues.

I remember being one of the first in my classes to have a laptop to take notes on. I simply type faster, without thinking about it, than I can write notes. At first, it was seen as an anomaly. Now, it's almost normal. In the last quarter I went to, a year ago, a good third of the folks I went in with had laptops. There is also internet access. The best classes integrated online content, like access to notes and material with the lecture. It is amazing to get a PDF, or .doc that you can modify with your own notes.

The worst had no online presence at all. I started with a computer science degree, and took the online presence for granted. Since I switched down to my "do you want fries with that" psych degree it's very hit and miss. I remember being in a 200 level psych class where the prof had no online presence, and stated he did not use email. A collective groan went up from the 200+ students.

My husband, graduating this quarter with an accounting degree, and ready to take his CPA testing, actually had a professor last quarter outlaw laptops in the classroom. There was a quarter long argument between most of the class and the prof about it. The younger, normal aged, students were most frustrated with that. My husband, being an old fart, just switched over to paper notes, but said he really missed his laptop, and had forgotten how tedious paper could be.

It is a testimony to my laptop use, in school, that my penmanship is not doctor grade illegible.

Re:The real advantage IMO

[jollyreaper]

I suspect that that sort of personalized schooling is possible for the wealthy.

For the rest, we'll just have to wait for true Artificial Intelligence. It might be a while.

Imagine that, a professor who literally IS a walking encyclopedia. /orbit

I was always blown away when reading about the biographies of the smarty smarts from history. You didn't typically get contributions to philosophy and the sciences from the poor because they didn't have the free time for any kind of productive recreational pursuits. They were lucky to have an hour for some beer before passing out before the next 12 hour workday. But these kids of the wealthy, they had the best minds of the day hired as tutors. You look at their accomplishments and think "Holy shit, they were geniuses beyond compare!" And then you look at the modern education system and think "hold on there, they were bright but just look at how inefficient our own education system is. Imagine if the kinds of resources thrown at the rich kids were thrown at one of the bright poor kids in class. Just imagine where he could be!"

I wouldn't necessarily say that AI would have to be involved, we'd just have to seriously reconsider the way we structure learning in our society. The farmer's son learns at his side in the field. The cobbler's son learns at his side in the workshop. But with the industrial revolution, there was no time for taking kids to work along with dad -- maybe set them to work changing bobbins and losing fingers but that's it. For middle class jobs, junior isn't going to be working with his dad at the bank. But imagine if he were. I was taught math and reading at home before we ever encountered it in school. My dad was a mechanic by trade and it would have been quite interesting if I were able to work alongside him for part of the year, see how things are done. I have no aptitude for mechanics but it would have still been an interesting experience. Imagine if a very bright kid could be paired with a suitable mentor and take half his lessons that way. Yes, I know there were some drawbacks to apprenticeships historically but you can say the same thing about our compulsory education system, a mixed bag.

Re:Note taking

[mackyrae]

That bit about "where you are guaranteed to have a writing implement" is an issue for me. My laptop leaves my side only at mealtime and when traveling to work (where I also have a computer), and even at those times it is often with me. Finding a pen or pencil is a problem though. Today the teacher handed out a quiz, and I didn't have a pen or pencil because I do not expect to *ever* need a pen or pencil except for midterms and finals. Analog writing implements are not something I use on a regular basis, so I never carry them with me. My laptop is in constant use, though.