Computers & Education 54 (2010) 1202–1211

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Digital divides? Student and staff perceptions of information and communication technologies Jenny Waycott a,*, Sue Bennett b, Gregor Kennedy a, Barney Dalgarno c, Kathleen Gray a a

Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Vic. 3010, Australia Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia c Faculty of Education, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2678, Australia b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 26 June 2009 Received in revised form 12 November 2009 Accepted 16 November 2009

Keywords: Post-secondary education Computer-mediated communication Media in education Digital natives Digital immigrants

a b s t r a c t This paper reports qualitative findings from a study that investigated Australian university staff and students’ perceptions and use of current and emerging technologies both in their daily lives and in teaching and learning contexts. Forty-six first-year students and 31 teaching and support staff from three Australian universities took part in interviews and focus groups. This paper examines how students and staff reported on their use of new technologies in their daily lives, their stated reasons for using those technologies, and their beliefs about the benefits and limitations of using technologies as teaching and learning tools. The findings question assumptions that have been made about a ‘‘digital divide” between ‘‘digital native” students and their ‘‘digital immigrant” teachers in higher education today, suggesting we need to develop a more sophisticated understanding about the role technologies play in the lives of both students and staff. A better understanding of student and staff perspectives will allow for more informed decisions about the implementation of educational technologies in today’s higher education institutions. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction 1.1. A digital divide between natives and immigrants The term ‘‘digital divide” has traditionally been used to describe discrepancies between nations or socio-economic groups and their corresponding access to technologies (e.g., Norris, 2001) or, more subtly, access to the social and organisational resources needed to use technologies effectively (Warschauer, 2004). Commentators such as Prensky (2001), however, have suggested that there are age-related differences in technology use and skills, creating a digital divide between generations. Young people who have grown up with computers and the Internet (‘‘digital natives”) are said to have a natural affinity with technology and, seemingly, are able to effortlessly adopt and adapt to changes in the digital landscape. Older people, who have encountered digital technologies later in life (‘‘digital immigrants”), are thought to be more challenged by technology, showing less technological affinity and literacy than their younger counterparts. In education such a digital divide would equate to a distinct gap between students and their teachers (Underwood, 2007), a gap which Prensky (2001) described as the ‘‘biggest single problem facing education today” (p. 2). While Prensky has recently begun moving away from the digital native/immigrant distinction (see Prensky, 2009), it has gained a foothold in academic commentary (e.g., Toledo, 2007) and the press (e.g., Ferrari, 2007; Head, 2007; Leech, 2006). Some commentators have suggested that students’ familiarity with digital technologies has affected their preferences and skills in key areas related to education, noting that digital natives, or ‘‘Net Generation” students, demand instant access to information, have a low tolerance for lectures and ‘‘passive” forms of learning, and expect technology to be an integral part of their education (e.g., Barnes, Marateo, & Ferris, 2007; Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005; Philip, 2007). Many of the arguments about the technological skills and educational preferences of Net Generation students, however, have been based on conjecture and anecdotal accounts (for a review see Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008). Until recently there has been little empirical research into the technology skills and experiences of university students. Much of what is known about young people’s use of technologies

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 3 8344 3929; fax: +61 3 8344 4998. E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Waycott). 0360-1315/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.11.006

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comes from the United States, particularly the large-scale annual surveys conducted by the Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR). The latest ECAR study (Salaway, Caruso, & Nelson, 2008) showed that most participants used and had unlimited access to established technologies, such as computers, the Internet, email, and mobile phones, but fewer students made use of emerging technologies such as blogs, wikis, and social software tools (with the exception of social networking and instant messaging). The evidence from Australia is similar, with students reporting high levels of access to traditional technologies and more limited use of new and emerging technologies (Kennedy, Krause, Judd, Churchward, & Gray, 2006; Kennedy et al., 2007; Oliver & Goerke, 2007). Despite widespread interest in the idea of a digital native/immigrant dichotomy, there have been few empirical comparisons of students’ and teachers’ use of technology. In one of the only quantitative investigations in the area, Kennedy and colleagues compared students and teachers on 41 technology-based activities in eight categories and found only limited evidence of a divide between staff and students (Kennedy et al., 2008). There were four categories of technology usage where significant age related staff-student differences were found (standard mobile use, advanced mobile use, standard web and music, and computer games) but in each case the differences were relatively small. These findings challenge assumptions about broad generational differences in the technological skills and experiences of university students and their teachers. Given the widespread acceptance of Prensky’s argument, further research is needed to add to the limited empirical evidence available about the digital native/immigrant divide. 1.2. A divide between living and learning technologies Given the supposed divide between digital natives and immigrants, Prensky (2001) suggested that educators should adjust their pedagogical practices to accommodate students’ new learning preferences. His argument was based on the assumption that young people expect the technologies they use in their social lives to be central to their learning. This assumption warrants closer investigation. There is some evidence to suggest that individuals, both students and staff, may make a clear distinction between what they feel constitutes appropriate ‘‘living” and ‘‘learning” technologies. Some studies, for example, have suggested that the ways in which students use technologies in their everyday interactions with family and friends may often be different from their preferences for technology use in formal learning settings. The 2007 ECAR study reported that many students said they preferred that ‘‘IM [instant messaging] and social networking remain within the scope of their private lives” and did not want ‘‘technology to eclipse valuable face-to-face interaction with instructors” (Salaway, Caruso, & Nelson, 2007, p. 13). Similarly, Lohnes and Kinzer (2007) found that while all the students in their study reported using particular technologies in dorm settings, they were often resistant to the use of such technologies in the classroom. One student’s use of a laptop in class was seen by others as antisocial – ‘‘a barrier to creating and maintaining the classroom community” (p. 3). The empirical evidence does not appear to support the assumption that digital native students prefer constant access to technologies in both social and learning settings. Furthermore, there does not appear to be a clear link between university teachers’ digital immigrant status and their preferences for the use of technologies in higher education. Recent research has suggested that staff have generally favourable attitudes towards integrating technologies into teaching (e.g., Newton, 2003; Panda & Mishra, 2007). Other research, however, has shown limited use of educational technologies in university teaching (e.g., Schoonenboom, Roozen, Sligte, & Klein, 2004; Selwyn, 2007). Explanations advanced for this disparity have identified a range of contributing factors, including limitations in national and institutional policies and management practices (Selwyn, 2007; Valcke, 2004) and the nature of academics’ beliefs about what constitutes good teaching (e.g., Foley & Ojeda, 2008; Steel, 2006). This suggests that, rather than being restricted by their lack of technological knowledge, university teaching staff choose to integrate technologies into their teaching if and when they see educational value in doing so. Similarly, students also appear to be discerning users of new technologies in education, wanting to see clear educational or social value in using technologies, and resistant to attempts to integrate technology for technology’s sake (e.g., Ipsos MORI, 2007; Weaver, Spratt, & Nair, 2008). 1.3. Research aims The qualitative investigation presented in this paper aimed to gain a better understanding of student and staff perspectives on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) both as everyday technologies and as learning and teaching tools in higher education. By examining the perspectives of students and staff in parallel, we were able to evaluate the evidence of a digital native/immigrant divide. Moreover, by examining student and staff perceptions about the role technologies play in both their everyday lives and their study/work lives, we were able to examine whether there may be a divide between ‘‘living” and ‘‘learning” technologies. We aimed to gain a better understanding of the role technologies play in supporting learning and teaching activities, and insight into what students and staff perceive to be the benefits and limitations of using technologies in higher education. 2. Method 2.1. Context of study The study reported in this paper was part of a large collaborative project (see Kennedy et al., 2009). The project team employed a mixedmethod research approach (Creswell, 2003), conducting an in-depth qualitative investigation alongside a survey of undergraduate students and teaching staff from three Australian universities. The study investigated students’ and staff access to and use of traditional or established technologies (e.g., personal computers, email, mobile phones), as well as new and emerging technologies, such as those typically described as ‘‘Web 2.0” (e.g., blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other social software). The quantitative findings from the student and staff surveys have been reported elsewhere (Kennedy et al., 2007, 2008). This paper reports specifically on the findings from the qualitative investigation, in which staff and students were interviewed about how and why they used technologies and their opinions about those technologies. All interviews and focus groups were semi-structured following a protocol developed by the research team (see Appendices A and B).

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The interviews and focus groups were carried out in late 2006 to early 2007. Volunteer participants were sought from a range of disciplines representing the Arts and Humanities, the Sciences, and the Professions in order to provide a diverse range of perspectives. The investigation was conducted in three universities that reflect the diversity of the Australian higher education system: The University of Melbourne, a large metropolitan university, comprising high-achieving local students as well as a large international student cohort; the University of Wollongong, a regional university spread across three campuses and five education centres; and Charles Sturt University, a multi-campus rural university with a large proportion of distance students and a high intake of students from less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds. 2.2. Participants Twelve individual student interviews and six focus groups were conducted involving a total of 46 first-year students (see Table 1). The participants were drawn from the three discipline areas, with 8 from Arts (e.g., history), 15 from Science (e.g., chemistry), and 23 from subjects representing the Professions (e.g., education, accounting). One staff interview and eight staff focus group sessions were conducted involving a total of 31 staff participants (see Table 2). Participants were not asked their age; however, it was observed that most student interviewees belonged to the Net Generation age group, while staff were typically older than 30. A small number of mature-age students were also included in the interviews and focus group sessions. 2.3. Analysis All the interviews and focus groups were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. A qualitative data analysis tool, NVivo, was used to assist with the coding of the data into themes and subcategories. The analysis was an iterative and collaborative process, a common approach to analysing qualitative data (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996; Miles & Huberman, 1994). The data were initially coded into a large number of categories reflecting both the research questions and the themes that emerged from a close reading of the data. Coding was reviewed by other researchers who had not been involved in data collection, and recoded iteratively until inter-observer agreement was achieved. The student and staff data were analysed separately to ensure sensitivity to supposedly diametric perspectives, and then themed data from both groups were compared for areas of similarity and difference. 3. Results Below we present the main categories that were found to be important to student and staff use of technologies in their everyday lives and in their learning and teaching lives. The digital native/immigrant divide is queried by examining student and staff voices in parallel, particularly in relation to their views on (1) what technologies are used in everyday life, (2) how those technologies are used, (3) how technologies are used in higher education, (4) the benefits of using technologies in higher education, and (5) the limitations of using technologies in higher education. Evidence of a divide between living and learning technologies emerges from this analysis, particularly when addressing student and staff views on how technologies fit into their everyday lives. 3.1. What technologies students and staff use in everyday life – and why they use them In the first part of the interviews and focus group sessions, students and staff were asked about how they used technologies in their everyday lives, not limited to teaching and learning contexts. Both students and staff were asked what technologies they used and how Table 1 Student participants. ID

Discipline

Gender

University

Student01 Student02–18 Student19 Student20 Student21–26 Student27 Student28 Student29 Student30 Student31 Student32 Student33 Student34 Student35 Student36 Student37 Student38 Student39 Student40 Student41 Student42 Student43 Student44 Student45 Student46

Arts Education Chemistry Arts Chemistry Education Marketing Education Psychology Psychology Psychology Psychology Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry Education History History Accounting Accounting Chemistry Chemistry

Male Not recorded Male Female Not recorded Male Female Male Female Female Female Female Female Female Male Female Male Male Female Female Male Male Female Female Male

Wollongong Wollongong Wollongong CSU CSU CSU CSU CSU Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne CSU-DE CSU-DE CSU-DE CSU-DE CSU-DE CSU-DE

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Table 2 Staff participants. ID

Discipline

Gender

University

Staff01 Staff02 Staff03 Staff04 Staff05 Staff06 Staff07 Staff08 Staff09 Staff10 Staff11 Staff12 Staff13 Staff14 Staff15 Staff16 Staff17 Staff18 Staff19 Staff20 Staff21 Staff22 Staff23 Staff24 Staff25 Staff26 Staff27 Staff28 Staff29 Staff30 Staff31

Arts Arts Arts Education Education Education Education Education Chemistry Arts Arts Arts Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry Management/accounting Management/accounting Management/accounting Psychology Psychology Psychology Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry Education Education Education Education Education

Female Male Female Female Female Male Male Female Female Female Female Female Male Male Male Male Female Male Male Male Male Male Male Female Female Male Female Female Female Female Female

Wollongong Wollongong Wollongong Wollongong Wollongong Wollongong Wollongong Wollongong Wollongong CSU CSU CSU CSU CSU CSU CSU CSU CSU CSU CSU CSU CSU Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne

these supported their daily activities, in order to explore the role technologies play in participants’ lives. The technologies identified cannot be read as a definitive list of the technologies used by students and staff nor as an indication of how popular these technologies are, but instead provide a snapshot of the technologies that were at the forefront of participants’ minds at the time. The most common technologies that students identified were mobile phones, email, MP3 players, chat or instant messaging, and the Internet. The main technologies staff spoke of were computers and mobile phones and, to a lesser extent, digital cameras, the Internet, MP3 players, and games. For some staff the use of gaming technologies was attributed to other family members, for example: ‘‘My kids have an Xbox. I use it just to drive DVDs.” (Staff09, Chemistry). Overall, students and staff made few explicit references to Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and social networking sites. This is particularly noteworthy for students as it appears to be in contrast to a common assumption that young people are all big users of Web 2.0 technologies (see for example Barnes & Tynan, 2007; Cairncross, 2007; Lorenzo, Oblinger, & Dziuban, 2007). Responses to why they chose to use technologies to support their everyday activities revealed clear similarities between the two groups. Both identified convenience, portability, cost, communication, speed, and access to information as key benefits of current ICTs. Although neither students nor staff were asked specifically about their general attitudes towards technology, some staff clearly identified themselves as having a dislike of technologies, while others expressed a clear enthusiasm for technologies, for example: They’re fun. Yeah, I love new technology actually. . . I love new toys. (Staff20, Psychology) I don’t really like them very much at all. If I didn’t have to use a computer for work, I never turn the computer on just to turn the computer on to have a play on a game or to play on the Internet. (Staff01, Arts) Fewer students made reference to their general attitudes towards technology. Those who did appeared to deviate from the image of the digital native student: ‘‘Yeah but I am not that keen on [technology]. I don’t really do that much stuff on the Internet.” (Student30, Psychology). Staff identified family and work as major influences on their attitudes towards and use of technologies in their everyday life: ‘‘I’ve been dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age by my kids” (Staff28, Education). Another lecturer suggested that ‘‘outside of [work] if I need to use [technology] then my use will be informed by. . . what my experience at work tells me about what I expect out there.” (Staff09, Chemistry). Similarly, some students suggested that their use of, and access to, technologies was influenced by family members. For instance, one student said she enjoyed playing games on the computer ‘‘because my sister plays it as well, she’s my team.” (Student32, Psychology). Another student said ‘‘I actually originally didn’t want a phone. But I was given one [by my mother] for my birthday. It was so that if I was in trouble. . .” (Student01, Arts). These findings suggest that, although students and staff were often at different ‘‘life stages”, family influenced their everyday technology choices. A range of attitudes towards ICTs in everyday life also emerged from the analysis. It should be noted, however, that as participants were not specifically asked about their general attitudes towards technology it is difficult to draw conclusions about how representative these are of the two groups.

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3.2. How students and staff use technologies in everyday life Students and staff were asked to indicate how they used technologies to support their everyday activities, providing information about the contexts in which both groups utilised technologies. The analysis identified five distinct contexts in which students said they used technologies: personal interest or entertainment, social communication, general everyday use (e.g., data storage, time management, and accessing information such as train timetables), professional/work, and university/study. The context of ‘‘personal interest or entertainment” included activities such as downloading music, watching video, playing games, and accessing information (e.g., ‘‘I check up on. . . this website where people post sewing projects that they’ve done because I’m fairly heavily into sewing.” – Student31, Psychology). In the context of ‘‘social communication”, students said they mainly used technologies to keep in touch with family and friends and to organise social gatherings (e.g., ‘‘When I was organising [an event] for the end of this year, that was really, really good with emailing heaps and heaps of people.” – Student31, Psychology). The location of family members also influenced students’ use of communication technologies: ‘‘My sister’s overseas so I use it to talk to her as well and family. I’m from the country, so family back home” (Student40, Education). Compared to students, staff were more likely to report using technologies for general everyday use, such as using computers at home for family reasons (e.g., children’s research projects), and within a professional or work context. However, social communication and personal interest/entertainment also featured strongly. As with students, for staff these contexts involved keeping in touch with family and friends (e.g., ‘‘We’ve got a little webcam. . . my wife’s brother’s in Hong Kong. So he’s got the same at his end and so it’s free to talk to him over the Internet.” – Staff20, Psychology), and accessing information that was of personal interest (‘‘I’m an online news junkie. I’m online checking news all the time for updates.” – Staff27, Education). In addition, like students, some staff mentioned entertainment activities such as playing games (‘‘Video game, good escape from reality.” – Staff19, Accounting/Management) and listening to music: (‘‘I’ve got music clips on there. So if you’re bored in an airport or something like that.” – Staff15, Chemistry). In describing the different contexts in which they used technology, some participants also commented on the relations between those contexts. Within both groups there were some participants who found technologies useful for integrating personal and work/study contexts: I have a young child and I like to think that I can be flexible around my work hours and technology helps me to do that so I might leave to pick him up from school but then I go on my laptop and I’m connected back here. (Staff27, Education) With something like a podcast, you can put it on your MP3 player and you can listen to it while you’re driving to work. (Student42, History) However, some participants – both students and staff – expressed a preference to separate the contexts in which they used particular technologies. For example, in discussions about receiving text messages from the university, many students suggested that the mobile phone was a wholly personal tool and therefore not an appropriate medium for university-student communication (e.g., ‘‘my phone is like my personal life and my education is separate.” – Student02–18, Education). Others, however, felt that text messaging could be a convenient way to maintain communication with the university while engaging in other activities. Some staff expressed a tension between using technology to manage workloads, and choosing not to use technologies in order to separate work from home: For me getting wireless on at home actually, even though it has extended my work life, it does make it a bit easier to keep up with. . . I still try to separate things. It’s quite hard. I resist being in contact totally all the time. (Staff05, Education) Conversely, one student said he had chosen not to have access to broadband Internet at home because he found his use of social technologies encroached on the time he had available to study. In other words, while some staff were concerned that ICTs meant they spent too much time working, this student was concerned that connectivity disrupted his study time: . . .when I turn on a computer, MSN is automatically on so people start talking to you and you want to surf on the Internet all the time. And I don’t study. . . this year I decided not to have a broadband connection in my room so I have to come to the university all the time. (Student36, Chemistry) This student also said he kept multiple email accounts as a way of separating his personal, work and study communications appropriately: The Hotmail account, I usually use that for you know, for my friends and family, sometimes business people but normally I would use my [university] email account to contact the business or contact my lecturer. I don’t want to use Hotmail to contact some professors. It’s not appropriate to do that. (Student36) In summary, it appears from these findings that there are similarities between how students and staff use technologies in their everyday lives. For both students and staff in the sample, the use of technologies could be divided into separate contexts of use. There were differences within, rather than between, the two groups with respect to how participants felt about separating contexts of use. For some, there was a clear distinction between ‘‘living” and ‘‘learning” or ‘‘working” technologies, while for others, the boundaries between these contexts were more blurred. 3.3. How students and staff use technologies in higher education The second part of the interviews and focus group sessions turned to how participants used technologies in the context of their learning and teaching activities in higher education. Prior to this, staff were asked to provide information about their involvement in teaching firstyear students, and were primed to consider the use of technologies in the context of these teaching activities. For the purposes of this paper, examining student and staff views about technologies in higher education enables us to further look for evidence of a digital divide between students and staff, particularly in how they view technologies as learning and teaching tools.

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The main technologies students spoke of using in the context of their university studies were discussion forums, learning management systems (LMSs), email, PowerPoint, the Internet, and recorded lectures. Similarly the main technologies staff spoke of using were LMSs, discussion forums, lecture recordings, email, and video or DVD players. For students, the main uses of ICTs as learning tools were to communicate with staff, support distance or off-campus education, facilitate research, collaborate with other students, access course materials and lecture notes, and for assessment and revision purposes. For staff, the main uses of ICTs were to provide course resources to students, support communication with students, support distance education, provide examples to illustrate concepts (e.g., ‘‘a program. . . to demonstrate three dimensional, mathematical processes”), support assessment, feedback and assignment submission, improve lecture presentation, support administrative tasks (e.g., maintaining enrolment databases), facilitate experiential learning, and foster collaboration among students. 3.4. Benefits of using technologies in higher education Students identified the following key benefits of using technologies to support their studies: communication benefits, convenience, gaining access to information resources, distance education benefits, and providing opportunities to review and revise learning materials. Communication benefits included being able to ask questions on public discussion forums, which enabled the lecturer and other students to participate in the conversation: It’s good to know that if I have a question then I can put it out there and either my lecturer can answer it or someone else in the class can answer it. (Student20, Arts) If you have 20 students or whatever wanting to ask the same question at the same time, why not just ask someone to put a question on and [the lecturer] can answer it and everyone else can see it. (Student36, Chemistry) Some students suggested that written electronic communication with lecturers was less intimidating than talking to lecturers face-toface or over the phone: ‘‘I guess because with email I can think thoroughly what I want to ask and stuff. But if I’m on the phone I’m put on the spot. I don’t know what I’m saying. I can be more clear with email” (Student39, Chemistry). Students appreciated the convenience of having immediate access to various information resources, often from one location (for instance, a ‘‘student portal”). Internet technologies also reduced the need to travel into the university, for instance enabling students to submit assignments online: ‘‘I can hand it in at the last minute” (Student21–26, Chemistry). Students remarked on how the Internet improved their access to information resources, both those provided by their lecturers (such as lecture notes) and popular informal resources: [Wikipedia] was really good for researching the topics that I did that I wasn’t too aware of, like not citing them, but just background, heaps of background reading. (Student30, Psychology) If I get an assignment for anything I’ll either go straight to Google or Wikipedia. And they both give you a quick intro into whatever you’re looking at. (Student38, Chemistry) Several students commented on the potential benefits of using technologies to support distance education or off-campus. For example, technologies could be used to facilitate interactions among distance students and to enable them to listen to lectures, increasing their sense of ‘‘presence” in the course. On-campus students also saw benefits in listening to recorded lectures, particularly as it gave them an opportunity to review the lecture: I didn’t understand [the lectures] the first time. When I was travelling. . . I would listen to a lecture on the way, so like the time of the lecture was the train trip. So to re-listen to them again was good, taking notes for study, things like that. (Student33, Psychology) For staff, the benefits of using ICTs in higher education were: enhancing communication, presentation or lecturing benefits, flexibility (for students), immediacy of information access, giving students convenient access to resources, fostering student engagement, providing benefits for international students, assisting students to prepare for practical placements and classes, providing benefits for distance students, and enabling students to review lectures. Many of the benefits identified suggest that for staff a key value in using technologies is to improve student learning, often by enhancing familiar teaching activities. For instance, technologies were seen to improve lectures, and to provide an efficient way of disseminating information to students: I think PowerPoint presentations have had a huge influence on my lectures being coherent. (Staff27, Education) We use the Web in order to be able to disseminate notes and things of that sort and that is being successful to the point of being absolutely essential. (Staff26, Chemistry) In summary, both students and staff had similar views about some benefits of using technologies in higher education: they both felt technologies supported communication, provided access to information, and enabled flexible use of resources. Reflecting the different perspectives of staff and students, staff also identified benefits relating to improving student learning, while students highlighted the convenience technologies provided. 3.5. Limitations of using technologies in higher education The key limitations that students identified were: access to technology; poor replacement for non-technology mediated learning; usability issues; difficulties learning to use the technology; and ‘‘missed” communication. Access to technology was a significant concern for many of the students interviewed. Students were not only concerned about their own access to technology, but also about whether using the Internet and other tools enabled equitable access for all students: It’s okay for me because I’ve got Internet access but my auntie started a uni course last year and she doesn’t have the Internet and everything is done through the Internet. So it’s become necessary for university, you need the Internet. But not everyone has that. (Student19, Chemistry)

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Closely related to access issues were the difficulties some students experienced learning to use particular technologies: My computer for some reason will not download iLectures. And I think that most tutors and lecturers presume that students know how to use, how to access those. And I had a lot of trouble trying to find it first and then it’s not working. (Student40, Education) Some students felt that certain tools were a poor replacement for teaching and learning that was not technologically mediated. For instance, although lecture recordings offered some benefits (as identified above), they were also seen by some students to be inferior to attending lectures. In addition, there were instances when students felt they needed to be involved in ‘‘hands-on” face-to-face learning. For instance, when discussing the potential use of technologies to support learning in chemistry, one group suggested that virtual online experiments would be inferior to participating in lab classes because ‘‘You have to get used to the instruments and learn from our mistakes” (Student35, Chemistry). Communication issues featured as both benefits and limitations of using technologies to support students’ learning. The main communication limitation that students identified was that they sometimes missed online communication. For instance, some students suggested they might not receive information about lecture cancellations because they did not check their emails often enough or check the announcements on the LMS site. To a lesser extent, issues to do with ‘‘communication bombardment” (e.g., receiving too many emails and LMS messages) and ‘‘hesitancy with public communication” also emerged as limitations that students identified. Some students appeared to be fearful about asking questions on public forums: ‘‘I know I’m a bit hesitant to ask questions sometimes on the forum because I think what if that sounds stupid, what if that sounds silly” (Student21–26, Chemistry). One interviewee, a mature-age student, suggested that this was a particular problem for young school-leavers: There seems to be a fear of that they are going to look stupid. If they ask a question they don’t want to feel that they don’t know the answer to it. And it’s one of those things, as you get older you think ‘I don’t care if people think I’m stupid.’ (Student29, Education) For staff, the key limitations of using technologies in higher education were: increases to their workloads; usability/technical issues; the loss of face-to-face interaction; students’ inappropriate or inexpert use of communication tools; and the priority given at the institutional level to technology over pedagogy. A major concern for staff was that using technology in their teaching increased their workload and gave students the perception that staff would always be available to answer their questions: I think the university has gone along the way of looking at providing a service to students without worrying particularly about what demands this might place on its staff. And I think this is often done at the expense of staff time. So there’s that sense of being always available for example. (Staff02, Arts) Usability/technical issues included navigation difficulties when using discussion forums (e.g., ‘‘I find it really frustrating to navigate if you’re dealing with a lot of messages.” – Staff04, Arts), interface problems, functional limitations of the technology, and technical breakdowns, which sometimes involved educational programs that were incompatible with the computer systems that their students used at home or work. Staff were also concerned about losing face-to-face interaction when using technologies to communicate with students, for example: ‘‘Students automatically feel, I think, disadvantaged by being beamed into with a lecture somewhere else. . .. And you do lose the face-to-face, you lose the eye contact and the social aspect” (Staff22, Psychology). Despite communication being the main benefit staff identified, they also felt one of the key limitations was students’ inexpert or inappropriate use of communications technologies. Staff gave examples of students making inappropriate comments on discussion forums, using an overly casual tone when emailing lecturers, or failing to include sufficient detail in their communications with staff: . . .coming up to exams people were getting a bit stressed, a few comments, you think ‘well, that’s not on’. You sort of say ‘look, be professional’ and you take that comment off so it’s not there for people to read it. (Staff14, Chemistry) Email etiquette or procedure has not translated into the way [students] use email. . .. They do not understand how to construct an email. They do not understand that it’s not a real-time conversation that you’re having and you cannot keep a hundred and fifty of those going. (Staff04, Education) Staff also raised concerns that decisions about implementing technologies in their universities have been driven by technology rather than pedagogy: I think that the whole drift of e-learning has gone much more to the corporate end of the business and so I think the initiative has been hijacked by those corporate providers whose primary interest is not really in pedagogy I’d say. (Staff03, Arts) In summary, students and staff shared some concerns about the limitations of technology use in teaching and learning. Both groups mentioned usability issues, concerns about replacing face-to-face interactions, and communication issues. The different perspectives of the two groups were, however, apparent in some of the divergent limitations students and staff mentioned. Students were concerned about access to technology and learning to use technology. On the other hand, staff were concerned about increased workloads and a top-down approach to implementing new technologies in higher education. 4. Discussion The findings of this study do not support the claim that there is a substantial gap between more technologically adept younger students and their less savvy teachers caused by differences in exposure to technology during their lives. The differences in the role technology plays in the everyday lives of the participants were not as stark as such a claim predicts. Indeed, students and staff used many of the same technologies in their everyday lives, with mobile phones, the Internet, email, and MP3 players being the most prominent. There was also significant overlap in the purposes and contexts of use, with both groups taking advantage of technology to communicate with friends and family and to pursue personal interests. Commonalities were also evident in how the contexts in which participants’ used technology related to each other. For example, some participants from both groups adopted strategies to separate work/education contexts from their personal lives, while others from both groups used technologies to blur the boundaries between their learning/work and social lives.

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Where differences between students and staff were identified they were often subtle distinctions in the context of technology use. Staff were more likely to comment on the place of technology in family life. For example, several mentioned researching on the Internet to help their child with an assignment. Students, on the other hand, placed a strong emphasis on using technology to organise their social lives. It is possible that these age-related differences result from the different ‘‘life stages” of individuals rather than being due to historical generational differences. In sum, the significant overlap in the everyday technology experiences of students and staff, the subtlety of the differences between them, and the variation within each group, preclude making clear distinctions between them on this basis. These findings suggest that the notion of a staff/student divide is not as simple as Prensky (2001) and others have argued. Some differences did, however, become apparent when we explored technology’s role in the context of higher education. Student and staff responses revealed that they were using many of the same technologies, but that the types of activities they were undertaking and the concerns they had were different. Analysis of their comments suggests that these differences may be due to the different roles that students and staff perform in the academic context. Specifically, for students the key benefits of using ICTs in education were in the support technology provided for communicating with teachers and other students, and the convenience and control it afforded them in managing their studies. These findings echo those of early ECAR studies, which found that students appreciated the convenience, connectivity, and control that ICTs gave them (e.g., Caruso & Kvavik, 2005). The three key limitations identified by students were not having access to technology, not understanding how to use some technologies, and ‘‘missing” messages from staff. These are at odds with the image of digital native students who are ‘‘constantly connected” with technology seamlessly integrated into their lives (e.g., Barnes & Tynan, 2007). It seems likely that high use of some technologies by students in their everyday lives, which could be equated to ‘‘connectedness”, does not necessarily extend to the use of technology in the context of their university studies. The social focus and motivation for most everyday technology used by students would provide a significant incentive to be connected for those particular activities; in contrast there appears to be less incentive to be connected for learning activities. Furthermore, the association between connectivity and social activities may mean that being connected interferes with learning, as one of our participants suggested when he talked about choosing not to have Internet connection at home because it distracted him from his studies. For staff, technologies were seen as a means to enhance student learning and manage teaching activities. This supports previous research suggesting that staff attitudes towards the use of technologies in higher education are substantially influenced by their approach to teaching (Foley & Ojeda, 2008; Steel, 2006). Some staff in our study emphasised their use of more established technologies used to support traditional teaching activities, for example using PowerPoint to improve their lecture presentations or web sites to distribute learning resources. The limitations identified by staff were related to institutional issues and work practices, and in particular the increased workload often associated with providing greater flexibility for students, an issue that has been identified in earlier research (e.g., Bennett & Lockyer, 2004). It is understandable that staff were more focused on institutional issues and pedagogical applications of technologies. These findings suggest that staff and students are likely to experience the same technologies very differently in the university context, given the perspectives afforded by their different roles and goals. Issues related to online communication generated considerable discussion among both students and staff. This discussion again highlighted the different perspectives of teachers and learners, suggesting that while some students showed an awareness of appropriate and effective forms of communication, this is not necessarily common throughout the student body. The aspirations that teachers have for student learning through communication may be thwarted by students’ inappropriate behaviour or lack of confidence to contribute. This may be counter-intuitive to those who have observed young people’s willingness to participate in online communications outside education, but it is likely that in these everyday contexts informality is more acceptable and the stakes for ‘‘getting it wrong” are lower. The study did identify differences between the technologies used in higher education and those used in everyday life among both students and staff; that is, there was some evidence of a difference between living and learning technologies. The different ways in which technologies are put to use may largely be accounted for by the motivations and social rules that different activities encompass for individuals within each context. Everyday activities, such as keeping in touch with friends or family, have particular social norms that call for technologies to be used in particular ways. Activities carried out in higher education have different meanings for individuals, and require different social roles. Given this, differences between educational technology use and everyday technology use become apparent. This difference – between inside education and out – has implications for anyone seeking to successfully integrate social technologies into educational contexts. Overall, these findings suggest that it is simplistic to portray staff as resistant to using new technologies and younger students as more likely to embrace them. Many staff appeared to be both positively oriented towards technology as a means to enhance student learning and highly skilled and knowledgeable about educational technologies. Further, there was no evidence to suggest students had a preference for increased use of technology for teaching. This finding directly contradicts claims that teachers in universities are constrained by their digital immigrant status, while students are crying out for major pedagogical changes incorporating the use of technologies (Prensky, 2001). In line with this, Prensky has recently suggested that as more people become immersed into today’s digital culture, the differences between digital natives and immigrants will become less apparent, and that a concept of ‘‘digital wisdom” could be more useful for describing how effectively people use technologies (Prensky, 2009). This idea is more consistent with Warschauer’s (2004) notion of the digital divide, and may provide a better conceptual basis for understanding differences between the way individuals use and perceive technologies. It is important to acknowledge the limitations of this study. Because the research relied on volunteer participation rather than purposive sampling we could not ensure the sample was representative of the typical age range found in student and staff groups. Moreover, we did not ask participants to identify their age. The purpose of this paper, however, was not to focus solely on age-based differences in technology use, but to assess whether the qualitative data gathered in this project provides evidence of a digital divide between students and staff. Findings from the student and staff surveys we conducted provide more representative data and suggest that while there are some differences between student and staff use of technologies, these are not as extensive as commonly believed (see Kennedy et al., 2008). Furthermore, it is not possible to determine, from the data reported here, whether differences in technology use are attributable to factors such as access to technology and skill in using technologies. Although these issues were raised by students and staff (see Section 3.5), definitive conclusions about their direct impact on participants’ experiences are not possible from the data available.

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5. Conclusion The research reported in this paper is important for university teaching staff, educational designers, and policy-makers. These findings expose potential misconceptions about students’ readiness to use technology to support their learning among those who are influenced by the native/immigrant rhetoric. It is possible that there is a significant gap between staff perceptions of students’ apparent skills, motivations, and prior experience, and the reality of how students can and do use technology to support their learning. This paper has reported the findings from a qualitative study of first-year Australian university students and their teachers across a range of discipline areas and university types. The findings do more to highlight the similarities between students and staff than to reveal significant and profound differences, calling into question the notion of a clear distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants. Differences in the way students and staff perceive and use technologies in higher education might be better understood in terms of their different roles as students or staff, rather than age-related differences. Further, differences between the technologies used in daily life and those used in education might be better explained by the different types of activities conducted in these contexts to which particular technologies are most suited. These findings suggest that a more sophisticated understanding of differences between the way individuals use technologies for particular purposes, and the implications of those uses for higher education, is needed. Acknowledgements Support for this research has been provided by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd., an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. This project was undertaken in collaboration with Rosemary Chang, Terry Judd, Andrea Bishop, Karl Maton, and Kerri-Lee Krause. The authors would particularly like to thank Rosemary Chang for collecting data and for reviewing an earlier draft of this paper. Appendix A. Example focus group questions for students A.1. Everyday What technologies do you like using?  What do you use them for?  Why do you use them? What do you like about these technologies? A.2. Implementation Can you think of how some of these technologies could be useful in your studies at Uni?  What could you use these for?  (What about in this subject particularly?). Example (same for each group) – Think of lecturers and texting:  Scenarios where you would be happy to receive texts from your lecturers. - e.g. Timetable change/class cancelled. . .  Scenarios where you would be unhappy to receive texts from your lecturers. - e.g. Saturday night reminder about Monday’s assignment. . .

Appendix B. Example focus group questions for staff B.1. Everyday What technologies do you like using? What do you like about these technologies? B.2. Educational Context Can you tell us a little about the structure/design of your local teaching environment/course?    

Objectives. Learning design. Expectations of students. Assessment.

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B.3. Implementation

We have found that students like using these technologies [XYZ]. Can you think of ways that you could use these technologies to support students’ learning in your local teaching environments/courses? How do you think you could use these types of technologies/tools in your local teaching environments/courses? What do you think are the major ‘facilitators’ or ‘barriers’ to using the technologies we were talking about earlier [i.e. XYZ]? Other factors in your local environment  Infrastructure.  Skills base/training.  Funding etc.

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