What Technologies Are They Using?

Another TLT session I wanted to mention briefly was one presented by Karen Smith-Gratto, Barbra Mosley, and Alecia Jones of North Carolina A & T. They were reporting on a study that asked students about what technologies (hardware and Web-based applications) they actually use. They were interested in finding out whether A&T students' technology use is similar to that described in national studies of college students' technology use or whether there are significant differences. (Unfortunately, I came in just late enough to miss the citation for the national study.) Among their findings were these:

• About 40% of A&T students (as opposed to 20% in the national study) use instant messaging.


• Whereas Boomers almost never use text messaging, the current generation uses it daily in overwhelming numbers. (Gen X also uses it.) You can tell I'm a Boomer--I'm sitting here wondering whether text messaging and IMing are the same thing!


• Students didn't report much use of social networking sites, but the investigators suspect that they didn't understand what the question was asking about.


• Overall, students may be less advanced and use fewer technologies than we think--but it is also possible that they are using some technolgies socially and do not want us invading their space! This reminded me of the looks of alarm I see on my students' faces when I mention that I have a Facebook page.

This struck me as a study it would be very interesting to replicate here. It would be particularly useful to know whether our students are really as technologically sophisticated as we sometimes think they are, and it would also be useful to have a clearer idea of how much their knowledge of technology varies. I suspect it varies a great deal--even some of the young students seem unfamiliar with word processing, while every class seems to include (thank goodness) at least one student who can help us get our technological tools to work.

Online Course Delivery Enhancement

In March 2008, I had the pleasure of attending The University of North Carolina Teaching and Learning with Technology Conference. Currently, I teach online courses in psychology and am always interested in learning of new ways to infuse technology in the learning process. Recently I have become interested in course redesign which is a method for modifying courses using technology to increase student success. Course redesign was developed by the National Center for Academic Transformation. At the UNC TLT conference, I was a panelist in a session for course redesign. I wanted to take the opportunity to learn about the latest in educational technology and to consider how I could incorporate it into a redesign proposal.

One session that I found particularly interesting was on engaging students with social software applications such as: blogs, wikis and podcasts. As I further attempt to further infuse technological tools in my online classes and the online component of my face-to-face courses, I was intrigued by the possibilities social applications can offer. For example, blogs would be an easy way to include journaling on a course related topic throughout a semester. Based on the subject matter I could allow other students read and comment on each others entries or only view and comment on a student's entry myself. I also think wikis would be an excellent tool for facilitating exam reviews. Students could be assigned to groups and determine how they would contribute information for the review. Finally for the visual learners, podcasting would be an excellent way for them to view demonstrations of concepts.

There was some discussion about how to infuse social networking sites such as: MySpace and Facebook in courses. I am a little wary of incorporating those tools yet. Inclusion of such sites would have to be considered on a course by course basis. After informally asking a few of my students whether they would want a professor to join Facebook and contact them about school, there was hesitation and responses of 'no'. There are some social environments, I think, where students would not prefer to be contacted by professors for pedagogical purposes.

Finally, I was very impressed with the notion of using virtual worlds for instruction. Based on the demonstration I could see many application centered disciplines, such as health care fields, benefiting from this technology. I also think it would be a useful tool to train counseling psychologists. Meeting different types of clients in a virtual world could teach them about how to handle clients with various psychological issues. I believe that there are many new and exciting ways to use new technological advances to enhance student learning. However, I think we should always proceed with caution in what types of tools we use for the learning environment.