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Improving skills and competences of VET teachers and trainers in the age of Artificial Intelligence

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The Digital Native Myth: A Story of Evolution

Graham Attwell 55 Views 0 Comments , , , , ,

Remember when people started talking about "digital natives" back in 2001? It was a catchy term for kids growing up surrounded by tech and the internet. The specific terms "digital native" and "digital immigrant" were popularized by education consultant Marc Prensky in his 2001 article entitled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, in which he relates the contemporary decline in American education to educators' failure to understand the needs of modern students. His article posited that "the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decade of the 20th century" had changed the way students think and process information, making it difficult for them to excel academically using the outdated teaching methods of the day. Prensky's article was not scientific and there was no research or evidence to back up his idea. But despite this, the idea caught on fast, influencing how we approached education and technology.

Researchers dug deeper and found no real evidence that an entire generation was thinking differently. You'd think that would be the end of it, right? Surprisingly, the digital native idea is still kicking around in the media and education circles. Yet, the digital natives narrative persists in popular media and the education discourse. A new study set out to investigate the reasons for the persistence of the digital native myth. It analyzed the metadata from 1886 articles related to the term between 2001 and 2022 using bibliometric methods and structural topic modeling. The results show that the concept of “digital native” is still both warmly embraced and fiercely criticized by scholars mostly from western and high income countries, and the volume of research on the topic is growing. However, interestingly the results suggest that what appears as the persistence of the idea is actually evolution and complete reinvention: The way the “digital native” concept is operationalized has shifted over time through a series of (metaphorical) mutations. The concept of digital native is one (albeit a highly successful) mutation of the generational gap discourse dating back to the early 1900s. While the initial digital native literature relied on Prensky's unvalidated claims and waned upon facing empirical challenges, subsequent versions have sought more nuanced interpretations.

The study uncovered 1,886 articles about digital natives, published between 2001 and 2022 with some interesting patterns. The authors say that what we mean by "digital native" has shifted over time. The idea is part of a bigger story and is just one chapter in a long history of talking about generational gaps. Its not going to be long before the idea mutates for those growing up in the age of AI!

Want to find out more? Listen to the podcast above or if you prefer your learning in written form download the paper below.

Mertala, P., López-Pernas, S., Vartiainen, H., Saqr, M., & Tedre, M. (2024). Digital natives in the scientific literature: A topic modelling approach. Computers in Human Behavior, 152, 108076.

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Digital Literacy And AI

Graham Attwell 385 Views , , , , , , , ,
I've been thinking about what the arrival of Generative AI means for digital literacy. And I searched to find some older publications from the UK Jisc on Digital Literacies. Most have been archived but it is possible to access them on a single web page or to use the WayBack Machine to see the original publication format. One of the publications looked at was 'Digital Literacies: Provides ideas and resources to inspire the strategic development of digital literacies - those capabilities which support living, learning and working in a digital society.' It was originally published in 2014 and was written - if my memory serves me well, by Helen Beetham and Rhona Sharp (sadly Jisc don't give the authors). The section which most interested me was about change management. It is interesting to see the kind of issues at the fore in 2014 - for instance should universities be supporting students own machines including mobile phones. It seems that AI is posing much the same questions for change management in universities today: The change management detailed guide looks at culture and approaches to change in detail but here are some key messages from the existing digital literacy initiatives: The change management detailed guide looks at culture and approaches to change in detail but here are some key messages from the existing digital literacy initiatives:
  • Invest in partnership approaches which engage staff, students and other stakeholders across the institution – students as change agents are particularly effective
  • Create opportunities for conversation and development through workshops, events and other development opportunities
  • Work digital literacies into other change agendas is more effective than pursuing a consensus through more isolated initiatives
  • Understand what influences and motivates different groups ie forms of communication, reward and recognition etc
  • Know your audience and always talk about digital literacy in context ie what it means to different subject disciplines, professional roles etc
  • Enable communities of practice or peer networks to develop and encourage links across departments and roles while maintaining a strategic overview
  • Provide seed funding for mini projects
I think this is a good list of key messages for AI for educational institutions and educational management.
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Online Recruitment and the Digital Divide

Graham Attwell 697 Views , , , , ,

Job Interview, Woman, Female, JobThere's an interesting article today in WONKHE, the UK online higher education newspaper. Clare Adams in an article entitled "Digital capital is a whole-system issue – building it takes more than hardware", says universities must confront the scale and impact of the digital divide in ways they have not had to do before.

She proposes building on the six key elements of “digital access” including infrastructure, connectivity, expert instruction and a quiet place to study, as well as the requisite hardware and software, identified by the recent Gravity Assist report on digital learning and teaching.

And although hardware and software are onbioulsy important, she says that research and "reflection on the employer response to the opportunities presented by digital recruitment, finds that technology, which ought to be a huge leveller in terms of creating new pathways into employment and connections with employers for graduating students, is not delivering on its promise."

She says that this "research suggests that inclusion is very much a mindset, not a toolkit. We recommend that students be supported to access the technology they need – and while laptops may be in scarce supply in some households, 98 per cent of people aged 16-24 have access to a mobile device, which indicates the importance of mobile-enabled technologies."

The main proposal is recognising "the importance of developing digital capital – competence and confidence in using, not just recruitment tools, but social networking sites, knowing what to say to make a connection with an employer and online interview and assessment centre hygiene and etiquette – an area where careers services can certainly play a useful role."

"But the capitals lens also suggests measures to boost students’ digital access and competence can only ever chip away at entrenched inequalities.| But with this in mind they they recommend that "employers consider a more proactive approach to recruitment using technology to cast their net  connect with possible recruits, and "actively scrutinising whether established recruitment practices are inadvertently excluding potentially great candidates from consideration."

With davancing technology and the Covid 19 pandemic there is a growing trend towards online interviews. But unless active steps are taken this trend might only deepen teh digital divide rather than realising the potential of digital technology to deliver diverse and dynamic graduate recruitment.