DIGITAL
CULTURE
&
EDUCATION,
7(1)
Copyright
©
2015,
ISSN
1836-‐8301
Digital Culture & Education (DCE)
Publication details, including instructions for
authors http://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/
Educating generation next: Screen
media use, digital competencies and
tertiary education
Toija Cinque
Adam Brown
Deakin University
Online Publication Date: 1st March 2015
To cite this Article: Cinque, T & Brown, A. (2015). Digital ontologies of self: Two African American
adolescents co-construct and negotiate identities through The Sims 2. Digital Culture & Education, 7:1, 1-18.
URL: http://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/sinque.pdf
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Educating
generation
next
1
EDUCATING GENERATION NEXT: SCREEN MEDIA
USE, DIGITAL COMPETENCIES AND TERTIARY
EDUCATION
Toija Cinque & Adam Brown
Abstract: This article investigates the use of screen media and digital competencies of higher
education students in light of the growing focus on new media and e-learning in Australian universities.
The authors argue that there is a need to resist the commonplace utopian and dystopian discourses
surrounding new media technological innovation, and approach the issue of its potential roles and
limitations in higher education settings with due care. The article analyses survey data collected from
first-year university students to consider what screen media they currently make use of, how frequently
these media are interacted with, and in what settings and for what purposes they are used. The article
considers what implications the digital practices and competencies of young adults have for pedagogical
programs that aim to engage them in virtual environments.
Keywords: Screen media, new media, digital competencies, higher education
Introduction
This article responds to the need to interrogate assumptions around, and the realities of,
the perceptions and uses of new media screen culture by students in higher education.
The question of how and to what degree university institutions and teachers need to
alter existing practices in light of ongoing changes in the local and global
communications environments is a major issue in Australia (and elsewhere). While we
do not intend to posit any solutions to such a large and complex issue here, we aim to
contribute to this debate by examining the pivotal issue of how young people are
actually using screen media – an issue that often seems to be overshadowed in the
enthusiastic, if not hasty, conclusion that students and education will ‘never be the same
again.’ With these developments in mind, we examine current first-year university
student competencies, perceptions and interests in terms of contemporary (particularly
online) screen culture and the implications of this for the growing use of new media in
teaching.
The present article’s overarching research question investigating the perceptions and
uses of new media by first-year undergraduate students can be dissected into the
following sub-sets of issues for enquiry: Have Australian students proven to be early
adopters in the active creation and dissemination of digital content on vlogs (video log
or video diary entry via YouTube for example) personal webpages or wikis? What digital
competencies do current higher education students possess in relation to new media?
What does current student engagement with new media innovation reveal about their
interest in, and perceptions of, digital screen culture? And lastly, what implications does
this have for the adoption of new media technologies for use in university settings? In
exploring the debate over how new media innovation should be applied in and outside
the classroom, we hope that this research will accomplish two things: 1) improve
teaching knowledge and practice in the uses of social media and other devices for
educational purposes; and 2) highlight areas of? further research in student use of
Cinque
&
Brown
2
communications technologies and digital competencies. Results from a survey of almost
four hundred first-year university students reveal significant, and often surprising, trends
in how young people understand and use new media in the present day.
Literature review
University students have similar goals to youth through the ages: the desire to
express their ideas and individuality and to shape their identities, to create authentic
cultural forms, to be taken seriously and to entertain themselves, to prepare for and
ultimately engage in interesting post-university work. The ventures and media
through which these goals, and liberal education itself, are pursued have certainly
evolved. (Axelrod 2002, p. 141)
The considerable literature concerned with the role(s) of new media in tertiary education
constitutes an industry in itself. The passage above from Axelrod’s study, Values in
Conflict: The University, the Marketplace, and the Trials of Liberal Education, makes a key
assumption common to numerous other studies in the extensive scholarship of (e-
)teaching, an assumption that provides the impetus for this article. Emphasising the
importance of teachers developing an understanding of the culture, values and
expectations of contemporary students, and pointing to the necessity of new media
having a place in the university environment, Axelrod writes that ‘[r]ather than belittling
the interests of those who occupy their classrooms, professors should aim to know their
students and whence they have come’ (2002, p. 142). While we share the crucial
sentiment that teachers must know their students, Axelrod’s statement already
presupposes what precisely students’ interests and expectations are: that classroom
populations hail from a tech-savvy ‘generation’ more interested in the virtual world and
eager for their years of formal education to be permeated with information derived
from, and produced through, social networks and virtual media. It is this assumption
that we aim to investigate and critique.
Just as there are many (and often opposing) discourses in the mass media about the
increasingly mediated nature of present day society, different ideas about new
communications technologies – from the utopian to the dystopian – can be found in
writings on the tertiary sector. At one end of the spectrum, David Noble (1998)
condemns teaching with and through the Internet, arguing that such activities have
given rise to what he calls ‘digital diploma mills,’ which constitute the latest form of
‘commoditisation’ in his dystopian view of the ‘automation’ of higher education. On the
other hand, Jones and Issroff (2007, pp. 190-91) highlight a considerable literature that
stresses the high motivational value of e-learning technologies in combating problems
with student demotivation. A number of studies prioritise the ‘extraordinary’ or
‘transformational’ changes that technology is perceived to enable (Richardson 2010, p.
2), but do not consider the potential limits of this technology and the limitations of
introducing it into (or out of) the classroom. The recent collection, Cutting-Edge Social
Media Approaches to Business Education: Teaching with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life,
and Blogs (Wankel 2010), comprises one among many studies in which potential
pedagogical obstacles and issues of student access and digital competencies are either
marginalised or omitted entirely.
Noting that the vast majority of popular and academic opinion constructs an
essentially optimistic vision of ‘the life-changing power of digital technology,’ Selwyn
(2011, pp. 21, 31) contends in one of the latest studies in the area that ‘we should not be
seduced by promises of digital technology changing everything for the better. Questions
Educating
generation
next
3
about the future of education are far too important to be left to a blind faith in the
“power” of technology.’ We seek here not to build a case for either perspective on the
place of new media in tertiary education, but to stress the need to understand competing
discourses around new media in order to attend more fully to the key issues revolving
around the perception and use of new media by students. Reflecting on the prevalent
adoption of e-learning through Moodle (‘Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning
Environment’) in Australian high schools over a number of years, the increased
emphasis on social media engagement, and the ‘building’ of entire virtual university
campuses through Second Life, Brown writes of the importance of interrogating what
premises such developments are ‘founded on and what kind of implications this might
have... for student learning’ (2011, pp. 173-74).
Recent research from Canada has addressed the importance of questioning
widespread assumptions about young people and their use of new media. Bulleen et al.
(2011) critique the often uncritical use of the concept of ‘generation,’ which is frequently
employed as a means of explaining and rationalising the use of information and
communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education. Arguing that ‘[t]he idea that
the generation born after 1982 is fundamentally different than [sic] previous generations
has become so firmly entrenched that it is treated as a self-evident truth,’ Bulleen et al.
undertake a review of academic and popular literature and an empirical analysis of the
interests and activities of university students. The study’s results suggest that students
actually used a ‘limited set’ of ICTs, with their use being driven by familiarity, cost, and
immediacy, rather than a process of enthusiastic and active adoption/application.
Significantly, Bulleen et al. point out that the common claims around a substantially
‘different’ population of students, whose needs and desires are drastically different from
all those preceding them, ‘have potentially significant and costly implications for
educational institutions... as they are being urged to make significant changes to how
they ar