Innovate Magazine / Annual Review 2010-2011

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The net generation and digital natives: implications for higher education

Executive Summary "Our students have changed radically. Today�s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach." (Prensky 2001 p1) 1. There is no evidence that there is a single new generation of young students entering Higher Education and the terms Net Generation and Digital Native do not capture the processes of change that are taking place. 2. The complex changes that are taking place in the student body have an age related component that is most obvious with the newest waves of technology. Prominent amongst these are the uses made of social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), uploading and manipulation of multimedia (e.g. YouTube) and the use of handheld devices to access the mobile Internet. 3. Demographic factors interact with age to pattern students� responses to new technologies. The most important of these are gender, mode of study (distance or place-based) and the international or home status of the student. 4. The gap between students and their teachers is not fixed, nor is the gulf so large that it cannot be bridged. In many ways the relationship is determined by the requirements teachers place upon their students to make use of new technologies and the way teachers integrate new technologies in their courses. There is little evidence that students enter university with demands for new technologies that teachers and universities cannot meet. 5. Students persistently report that they prefer moderate use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in their courses. Care should be taken with this finding because the interpretation of what is �moderate� use of ICT may be changing as a range of new technologies take off and become embedded in social life and universities. 6. Universities should be confident in the provision of what might seem to be basic services. Students appreciate and make use of the foundational infrastructure for learning, even where this is often criticised as being an out of date and unimaginative use of new technology. Virtual Learning Environments (Learning or Course Management Systems) are used widely and seem to be well regarded. The provision by university libraries of online services, including the provision of online e-journals and e-books, are also positively received. 7. Students do not naturally make extensive use of many of the most discussed new technologies such as Blogs, Wikis and 3D Virtual Worlds. The use of 3D Virtual Worlds is notably low amongst students. The use of Wikis and Blogs is relatively low overall, but use does vary between different contexts, including national and regional contexts. Students who are required to use these technologies in their courses are unlikely to reject them and low use does not imply that they are inappropriate for educational use. The key point being made is that there is not a natural demand amongst students that teaching staff and universities should feel obliged to satisfy. 8. There is no obvious or consistent demand from students for changes to pedagogy at university (e.g. demands for team and group working). There may be good reasons why teachers and universities wish to revise their approaches to teaching and learning, or may wish to introduce new ways of working. Students will respond positively to changes in teaching and learning strategies that are well conceived, well explained and properly embedded in courses and degree programmes. However there is no evidence of a pent-up demand amongst students for changes in pedagogy or of a demand for greater collaboration. 9. There is no evidence of a consistent demand from students for the provision of highly individualised or personal university services. The development of university infrastructures, such as new kinds of learning environments (for example Personal Learning Environments) should be choices about the kinds of provision that the university wishes to make and not a response to general statements about what a new generation of students are demanding. 10. Advice derived from generational arguments should not be used by government and government agencies to promote changes in university structure designed to accommodate a Net Generation of Digital Natives. The evidence indicates that young students do not form a generational cohort and they do not express consistent or generationally organised demands. A key finding of this review is that political choices should be made explicit and not disguised by arguments about generational change

The University of Nebraska at Omaha\u27s Criss Library Mobile Resources: A Study of User\u27s Preferences

In March of 2010 the University of Nebraska at Omaha Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library launched mCriss, the library mobile website to support the educational objectives of on-campus and distance students as well as the research goals of UNO faculty and staff. The study investigators conducted an online survey of UNO students, faculty, staff, alumni and UNO Library Friends ages 19 and older. The purpose of this study was to collect data on UNO community member use of mobile devices and UNO Criss Library mobile services, to determine if participants: are aware of the different aspects of the Library mobile initiative; use Criss Library mobile resources; are interested in other library mobile services and (if so) identify which resources/services are of interest; and determine participant perceptions of library mobile resources/services. The study found that the modal users of the Criss Library mobile website are Caucasian, female, undergraduate students between the age of 19 to 25 in the social sciences. The results also shows that 66 percent have Internet access on their mobile phone, but only 24 percent have used a mobile device to access UNO Library mobile resources. Library catalog and library hours are the top resources used on a mobile device. Adviser: Stacy Jame

Development of an evidence-based medicine mobile application for the use in medical education

BACKGROUND: Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is a methodology that is being incorporated into more medical school curricula. Boston University School of Medicine was one of early adopters of Evidence Based Medicine in the United States. A growing concern in the medical community was that the complexities of applying EBM might be lost when students enter into their clinical rotations, thus there is a need for development of a tool to help reinforce the EBM principles. METHODS: The research team in collaboration with the designers of the Finding Information Framework, a custom-made EBM finding information tool, worked to develop a mobile application to help reinforce the framework for medical students. The app was designed with both Apple and PC operating systems in mind. Key features that were identified from current literature to provide the most user-friendly mobile application. Thus, the research team specifically utilized iOS and Android platforms as both platforms have a centralized app store, possess the highest volume of medical apps available, and are most widely used in the United States by medical students. RESULTS: The Finding Information Framework was a custom-made tool developed to guide new users of EBM, and help them to apply the principles in practice. The mobile application served an added convenience by allowing easy access and fast utilization of the EBM tools. The app was designed on an Android platform first due to its open-source OS and ease in app development to new programmers. Initially, the user-friendly web-based tool, App Inventor (AI), powered by Massachusetts Institute of Technology was evaluated to program the pilot Android app. Using both the AI Component Designer and the Block Editor, several problems were encountered in AI, such as the simplicity of the program and the lack of freedom in design. This moved the project to create the app natively and with a collaborative effort with the BU's Global App Initiative club. Initially, a wireframe was built using Balsamiq. Subsequently, the Android app was built using Android SDK and the iOS app was built in XCode with Objective C; both platforms had design sections prepared in Sketch, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. The last and final step was to obtain Boston University branding privileges for the app. CONCLUSION: The research team identified necessary features based on research to build a user-friendly, professional mobile application of an information mastery framework that can be used off-line. The app is called FIF as it is the title of the information mastery tool designed by BUSM EBM-VIG. With a clear mobile interface, it will be beneficial to the learning and training of medical students in EBM

A gentle transition from Java programming to Web Services using XML-RPC

Exposing students to leading edge vocational areas of relevance such as Web Services can be difficult. We show a lightweight approach by embedding a key component of Web Services within a Level 3 BSc module in Distributed Computing. We present a ready to use collection of lecture slides and student activities based on XML-RPC. In addition we show that this material addresses the central topics in the context of web services as identified by Draganova (2003)

Emerging trends on the topic of Information Technology in the field of Educational Sciences: a bibliometric exploration

The paper presents a bibliometric analysis on the topic of Information Technology (IT) in the field of Educational Sciences, aimed at envisioning the research emerging trends. The ERIC data base is used as a consultation source; the results were subjected to productivity by authors, journals, and term co-occurrence analysis indicators for the period 2009-2013. The productivity of Computers & Education, and Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology-TOJET, as well as the preceding authors from Canada, have been emphasized. The more used terms are the following: Information technology, foreign countries, educational technology, technology integration, and student attitudes. Researches performed here seem to have a largely qualitative character, highlighting computers and internet as the mostly explored technological objects. The largest subject matter trend refers to the integration of IT in the higher education learning context, and its incidence over the teaching methods