Bloom's Digital Taxonomy

Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives is well-known to educators. It was developed in the 1950s and while it has undergone some changes since then, it has remained essentially the same. But is is still appropriate given the emergence of digital, networked technologies that allow us to access and use information in ways that were not possible previously?

Andrew Churches had tried to address this by creating a version of the taxonomy that tries to take into account the affordances of these new technologies and their impact on learning.

The 44 page resource, Bloom's Digital Taxonomy is available online.

More discussion on Bloom's Taxonomy can be found at Open Education.

Digitizing Books: Two different approaches

Since 2004, Google has scanned over 7 million books as part of the Google Library Project. Understandably, they were sued, and the outcome of two lawsuits is The Google Settlement. A good analysis is here in the Globe and Mail.
As part of the settlement, public libraries in the US will be allowed to have one terminal able to freely access the database. However, non-US libraries are not covered. Google has been busily scanning books which were produced outside of the US and are authored by non-US authors, yet non-US libraries will currently face barriers in accessing the digitized versions.
What is startling is the audacity of project. Rather than consult and evaluate, they just went ahead and started work and are only dealing with whatever fallout after the fact.
Goole's approach is very much unlike the very modest project here in BC, The Best of Books Online, where, with lots of ongoing consultation between BC publishers and libraries, there will be a pilot of making digitized versions of BC non-fiction books available only through public libraries. As part of a consortium that is running the project, BC libraries are taking the lead.

Net Generation Research at BCIT

Results from the BCIT Digital Learner research project cast doubt on many of the Net Generation claims.

We surveyed a random sample of over 400 students to determine the extent to which the students in the net generation category exhibited the characteristics that have been attributed to this generation by people like Don Taspscott, Marc Prensky, and Neil Howe & William Strauss, and others. These characteristics include:

1. Digitally literate
2. Preference for structure and experiential learning
3. Social
4. Goal oriented
5. Community minded
6. Connected
7. Multitaskers
8. Preference for group work
9. Aversion to reading and text

The results show that at BCIT there is no statistical difference between net gen and non-net gen students on items 1-5. But even for items 6-9, where there were statistically significant differences, the effect sizes were very small, representing only between 1.4% and 2.9% of the variance.

Communication Preferences

We also examined our students' communication preferences. We wanted to find out how they were using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to communicate with their peers and with their instructors. We were also interested in finding out if there were any differences in ICT use and age.

Our survey of a random sample of over 400 BCIT students did find some statistically significant differences but overall, we found that net generation and non-net gen students were not using ICTs more than face to face communication to interact with their peers.

We found that net gen students were more likely to use instant messaging, text messaging, Facebook/MySpace and phone to communicate with peers than non-net gen students.

However, when communicating with instructors, the only significant difference in use of ICTs between net gen and non net gen was with WebCT. Non-net gen students were more likely to use WebCT than net gen students.

By far the most common mode for communicating with instructors for both net gen and non net gen sudents is talking in person.

The Digital Learner research project will be the subject of a PD Day presentation at 2:45 pm, SE 6, 205

The research project is being led by Adnan Qayyum from Concordia University with assistance from Tannis Morgan and Mark Bullen.

New Issue of Journal of Distance Education

A new issue of the Journal of Distance Education has been published. It can be accessed at http://www.jofde.ca

Table of Contents

Articles
--------
La socialisation des enseignants au sein des communautés virtuelles : contribution à une compréhension du rapport à la communauté
Jacques Audran, Amaury Daele

Learning in Communities of Inquiry: A Review of the Literature
Liam Rourke

The Impact of ‘Virtualization’ on Independent Study Course Completion Rates: The British Columbia Open University Experiment
Louis Giguère

Attitudes Affecting Online learning Implementation in Higher Education
Betty Mitchell, Iris Geva-May

Prioritizing the implementation of e-learning tools to enhance the learning environment
Jennifer Catherine Percival, Bill Muirhead

Compétences orales et outils de communication web dans un projet de télécollaboration pour l’apprentissage du français langue étrangère
Mario Tomé

Book Reviews
--------
Assessing Learners Online: A Review
Lorraine Mary Carter

BCIT Librarians Use Facebook to Reach Students

BCIT librarians are using Social networking tools such as Facebook in an effort to reach into students' social space. Facebook pages in three programme areas (Health, Business and Construction) were created to be used as a "recall tool" for the students. At the end of the instructional session, the librarian displays the page, and invites the students to become 'fans.' In this way students will have a permanent quick customized link to relevant electronic resources that were demonstrated during the instruction session.

The Health Sciences librarian used Netvibes to develop a "startpage" (like iGoogle) to serve as a portal to access the library's electronic resources in Occupational Health and Safety. Students, especially those at a distance, will find the resources they need all on one page. The instructors can share the URL with them.

Even though all the electronic resources have always been available on the Library's web page, with both these tools individual librarians find there is a lot of flexibility as to content and look. Also, these tools provide a handy and efficient way for the students to access the library resources, either from their laptops or mobile devices.

Facebook:
School of Business page.
School of Construction & the Environment page.
School of Health Sciences page.

Netvibes:
School of Health Sciences page for the OH&S program

Getting Beyond the Hype about Generational Differences

The idea that the "Net Generation" has distinct characteristics that affect the way they learn has been accepted as fact by many in the educational community. However, once you scratch below the surface of the punditry and hype, it is becoming increasingly evident that there is little solid research to support these claims.

Two recent reviews of research and one research study suggest we need need to be much more cautious about these claims, particularly when it comes to making changes to the way we teach and use technology.

According to Thomas Reeves and Eujong Oh (2007),

"There is relatively little consensus of opinion an scholarship about whether generational differences exist that are worth taking into consideration in the workplace, colleges, and universities, and other contexts."

"It is definitely unjustified to make assumptions about any one individual based on that person's membership in a chronological generational cohort."

"Most of the popular literature on the subject...appears to rest on limited data, almost always conducted by survey methods characterized by a lack of reliability and validity data."

Read the full chapter from the Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology (2007), edited by J. Michael Spector, M. David Merrill, Jeroen van Merrienboer, Marcy P. Driscoll.

A more recent study by Anoush Margaryan and Allison Littlejohn at Glasgow Caledonian and Strathclyde Universities in the UK found supports the need for caution. It found little evidence that "Net Generation" students wanted different approaches to teaching:

"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."

Other key findings:

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

Margaryan and Littlejohn conclude:

"The outcomes suggest that although the calls for radical transformations in educational approaches may be legitimate it would be misleading to ground the arguments for such change solely in students’ shifting expectations and patterns of learning and technology use.

Read the full paper

Another review of research also supports the need for skepticism of the grand claims made about the "net generation". According to Sue Bennett, Karl Maton and Lisa Kervin, the claims that this generation of learners is so different from previous generations that a fundamental change to our educational systems is needed "have been subjected to little critical scrutiny, are undertheorised, and lack a sound empirical basis"(p. 776).

In their article in the British Journal of Educational Technology (Vol. 39, No. 5, 775-786). The three researchers from the University of Wollongong and the University of Sydney review the evidence and analyze the debate. They conclude that "...rather than being empirically and theoretically informed, the debate can be likened to an academic form of a 'moral panic'" (p. 775).

The full article is accessible online through library e-journal databases.

For more reading on this issue, check out Net Generation Nonsense.