Study questions the digital native discourse

Two British researchers have completed a study that casts doubt on the prevailing view of the "digital native" as a sophisticated user of technology who has a fundamentally different approach to learning. Anoush Margaryan and Allison Littlejohn studied the extent and nature of the use of digital technologies by undergraduate students in Social Work and Engineering at Glasgow Caledonian and Strathclyde Universities.

The key findings:

1) "students use a limited range of technologies for both learning and socialisation. For learning, mainly established ICTs are used- institutional VLE, Google and Wikipedia and mobile phones. Students make limited, recreational use of social technologies such as media sharing tools and social networking sites. "

2) "a low level of use of and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies. "

3) "the study did not find evidence to support the claims regarding students adopting radically different patterns of knowledge creation and sharing suggested by some previous studies. The study shows that students’ attitudes to learning appear to be influenced by the teaching approaches adopted by their lecturers. Far from demanding lecturers change their practice, students appear to conform to fairly traditional pedagogies, albeit with minor uses of technology tools that deliver content.

The study involved a questionnaire survey of students (n=160) followed by in-depth interviews with students (n=8) and lecturers and support staff (n=8) in both institutions."

Read the full draft of the paper that summarizes the results.