High Quality
Open the downloaded document, and select print from the file menu (PDF reader required).
Originally published in: Ebner, M. & Nagler, W. (2010). Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?. In
Proceedingsof World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010
(pp. 4001-4010).Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?
Martin Ebner Computing and Information Services / Division of Social LearningGraz University of TechnologyGraz, Austriamartin.ebner@tugraz.at Walther Nagler Computing and Information Services / Division of Social LearningGraz University of TechnologyGraz, Austriawalther.nagler@tugraz.at
Abstract:
On base of a three years study about the Web2.0 competency among freshmen at GrazUniversity of Technology we discuss the question, whether Web2.0 has become common tostudents of today or not. Following the principles of Moore’s Technology Adoption Life Cycleand bearing Gartner’s Hype Cycle in mind we state that the times of early adopters are over.Those Web2.0 applications that still are not established will not gain higher. The trends have beencorroborated but new ones are to come soon. Online mobility will rise with the increasing power of multiple mobile devices as well as the importance of social networking on demand. This paper outlines the progression of several common and uncommon Web2.0 applications in comparisonwith the results of the study as well as postulates future trends on base of it.
Introduction
Since Mark Prensky’s article (2001) about “Digital Natives” and “Digital Immigrants” there is an ongoingdiscussion about how the young generation is dealing with the World Wide Web. Without any doubt technologyinfluences our daily life and changes our behaviors. Since the introduction of Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2004) adramatically increase of user-generated content can be stated as well as the establishment of social networks andsocial communities. It seems to be obvious that these technologies also influence the field of education – primarilycalled e-Learning 2.0 (Downes, 2005) or ubiquitous learning (Zhan & Adipat, 2005).Taking a look at different research studies as well as other popular media channels according to this subject of thegrowing youth a lot of different terms occur: “Net-Generation” (Tapscott, 1997), “Digital Natives” (Prensky, 2001),“Generation @” (Opaschowski, 1999) or “Homo Zapiens” (Pelevin & Bromfield, 2002). More or less they alldescribe the same: There is an upcoming generation that cannot imagine living in a world without digitaltechnologies. Mobile phones, Internet access with high bandwidth or mobile and information about different topicson the fly have already become very common. Oblinger (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005) (Oblinger, 2005) was talkingabout different habits of this generation emerging such as multi-tasking and new ways of communicating with eachother. Similar Green & Hannon stated (2007), “That the use of digital technology has been completely normalized by this generation and it is now fully integrated in their daily life”.On the other hand it can be shown that most of such publications are lacking of solid data. Because of the short timeframe there are just a few extended studies on the behavior or skills of our youth. First studies (Conole, 2006)(Bullen et al, 2008) (Margaryan, 2008) (Nagler & Ebner, 2009) gathered data through evaluations to carry outwhether freshmen and students of today differ from their older colleagues. All these studies agree more or less withthe summary of Schulmeister (2010) who concluded, that there is no significant change detectable as for today’sstudent. Mainly it was shown that the World Wide Web has a great influence on the youth (JIM 2008, JIM 2009)and is observed as a daily-life requisite. But dramatically rising use of Web 2.0 technologies and in consequenceIKT competencies could not have been detected yet.
Originally published in: Ebner, M. & Nagler, W. (2010). Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?. In
Proceedingsof World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010
(pp. 4001-4010).Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Nevertheless, from a university point of view it is of highest interest, to find out the competences of the newgeneration of students. The most interesting question is, whether it can be predicted that there is change in the behavior of today’s students or it is simply a trend.
Figure 1
: Hype cycle for emerging technologies, 2009 by Gartner (2009)
Figure 2
: Technology adoption lifecycle by Moore taking the gap in between into accountTaking a closer look on analyses of trends it can be ascertained that new technologies commonly follow a distinct progression; they are fast rising to an absolute maximum to go down rapidly alike and consolidate afterwards nearlyendlessly in the interest of society. Since 1995 the “Gartner Hype Cycle” (Fig. 1) annually describes the progressionof new technologies and points out the famous five phases – Technology Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations,Through of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment and Plateau of Productivity. Similar the famous “Technologyadoption lifecycle” of Moore (Meade & Rabelo, 2004) (Fig. 2) shows the different kind of users from innovators tolaggards. The notably thing about Moor’s lifecycle is, that he “… suggests that for discontinuous or disruptiveinnovations, there is a gap or chasm between the first two adopter groups (innovators/early adopters), and the earlymajority.” (Moore, 2002).
Originally published in: Ebner, M. & Nagler, W. (2010). Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?. In
Proceedingsof World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010
(pp. 4001-4010).Chesapeake, VA: AACE.Bearing these phenomena in mind it must be seriously asked whether some technologies are simply hype driven bysome very motivated people or have they already turned out to be a mass phenomenon. With other words from auniversity perspective it must be asked, what can be expected from today’s learners, what must be done by theuniversity to meet their needs and what is simply a technical bubble that will never overcome Moore’s chasm (Fig.2). For this purpose Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) is carrying out studies since years (Nagler & Ebner,2009) (Ebner et al, 2008) to investigate different research questions and to prepare TU Graz for the next generationof learners. Therefore we address to the following questions:
•
Which trends can be seen towards technological equipments?
•
Which trends can be seen towards internet access at study home?
•
Which trends can be seen towards communication behavior?
•
Which trends can be seen towards the usage of e-learning platforms at secondary school level?
•
Which trends can be seen towards Web2.0 competence?
The Study
Technology enhanced learning, briefly called e-learning had been exercised through multiple different initiativesand projects at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) for many years since the late eighties. Because of several partly political reasons the time for a change has definitely come in 2006. The Vice Rector for Academics, theOffice for Life Long Learning, the Institute of Information Systems and Computer Media (IICM) as well as theComputer and Information Services (CIS) – all departments from TU Graz – decided to bundle those individualactivities for to become e-learning at TU Graz a centralised service. On the 1
st
of September 2006 the team “SocialLearning” (SL) was set into being as a new part of the CIS. The team quickly established and grew to a new divisionof the CIS. Main focus of SL is to implement network based, communication oriented teaching and learning in ameaningful didactical sustainable way. Especially for a university of technology it is a must to support them studentswith latest technological, pedagogical and didactical teaching and learning possibilities. To meet the requirements of this target it is (amongst others) essential to survey the status quo of today’s students according to their ability tohandle modern ways of communication and education.For this reason SL has undertaken a freshmen survey since three years in series. At the beginning of a new studyyear at the end of September new students had the opportunity to meet the so called “Welcome Days” lasting twodays where they were introduced to main facts and possibilities of their study life at TU Graz. In the course of their university debut the students were asked to go through a paper pencil survey about their Web2.0 competences aswell as their technological equipment regarding computers and mobile devices with a view on their communication behaviours using that equipment. By this year’s evaluation a sample of n=757 questionnaires had been analysed.Together with n=821 collected in 2008 and n=578 from 2007 we can compare a total of 2156 data sets. That is quitea good basis for an analysis of trends. On base of that analysis we can optimize the service and prepare futurelearning in time. The following chapter describes the results of this year’s study and outlines trends and findingsconsidering all three years to answer the questions addressed in the introduction.
Results and Findings
Which Trends Can be Seen Towards Technological Equipments?
The first question covers the interest in the technological equipment to get an overview which devices are used bystudents. Figure 3 displays the results. Multiple answers were possible. Due to a misleading question the resultsaccording to the selections “Mobile + www” and “Mobile no www” cannot be compared within the three years.There are some remarkable notices. First of all the decrease of simple iPods and MP3-players can be for sureexplained by the raise of iPhone, iPod touch and mobile smartphones which are able to play mp3 files as well asvideos. Besides a very constant laptop ownership (about 80% of our students independent of their chosen study)Personal Computers (PC) are decreasing for more than 10%. The trend to mobility can also be seen in the fact thatmobile phones with Internet access are owned by about 40%. Together with iPhones (7%) and other mobile phoneswith Wi-Fi (17%) about 65% (two third) of our students have the possibility to get mobile access to the Internetusing their phones. This is not only to be attributed to the fact that new mobiles technically are Internet compatible
Add a Comment