Teachers as Learners, Learners as Teachers: Reflecting on the Digital Disconnect

Jeffrey S. Nugent, Associate Director, Center for Teaching Excellence, R. Martin Reardon, Asst Prof and Joan Rhodes, Asst Prof, School of Education, Virginia Commonwealth University.

Study conducted by these people exploring research on how ...

http://www.educause.edu/ELIStudent%2FFacultyQuestionnaire/10538

"In the midst of other priorities, scholls can choose to view this emerging pressure for change from their student body in either a positive or negative light.  On the positive side, through the growing use of the Internet outside of school, educators have the opportunity to expand their reach and to engage students in new and thoughtful ways.  On the negat.....

Quote from Pew study, called The Digital Disconnect.

Key Findings:

• disconnect between how students use the internet for school and how they use it during school, under teacher supervision

...too fast for me to type

Key Questions:

• How do students and faculty prefer to learn new tech?
• What tech are they using? In waht contexts?
• Is there a disconnect between how students and faculty use these tools?

Used an ELI Discovery Tool Survey to collect data on how students and faculty use tech.  5 Questions about preferred modality, responses made on a Likert scale.  Students were analyzed by gender, faculty analyzed by rank

Scale:

1. Least preferred way to learn
2. Not preferred
3. CAn learn this way if needed
4. Preferred
5. Most prefferred way to learn 

Not much difference between male and femail students.  Similarly, not much difference between different ranks of profs.

How does the student preferences compare to faculty preferences: very, very similar.  Graphs are stunningly similar.

Personal v. Academic Use of IT

nine Pairs of Questions, respondents asked to respond to both "Educational use" and "personal use" on: created/contributed to blogs, web pages, podcasts, IM, wiki, etc

Male and Femail students similar in responses.  Big difference in Ss use of technology in the academic environment vs. personal use.  Ss use tech much, much more in personal life than in their academi lives.

Faculty report that they are not really using a lot of tech in their academic lives, and almost the same amount in their personal lives.

Another perspective of Digital Technology, added all tech uses together into one scale of 18.

(paper handouts apparently available somewhere...)

 Group work/discussion on reactions to research.