"A number of authors have argued that students who are entering the higher education system have grown up in a digital culture that has fundamentally influenced their preferences and skills in a number of key areas related to education. It has also been proposed that today's university staff are ill equipped to educate this new generation of learners -- the Net Generation –- whose sophisticated use of emerging technologies is incompatible with current teaching practice."

Educating the Net Generation: A Handbook of Findings for Practice and Policy (Australian Learning and Teaching Council, 2009, ISBN: 9780734040732) reports on a collaborative project that began in 2006, between staff at the University of Melbourne, the University of Wollongong, and Charles Sturt University. Some of the findings of the study included:

"The rhetoric that university students are Digital Natives and university staff are Digital Immigrants is not supported."

"[E]ven though young people's access to and use of computers and some information and communications technologies is high, they don't necessarily want or expect to use these technologies to support some activities, including learning."

"The use of publishing and information sharing tools, such as wikis, blogs and photo sharing sites, positively impacted on many students' engagement with the subject material, their peers and the general learning community."

"[M]any Web 2.0 technologies enable students to publicly publish and share content in forums hosted outside their university's infrastructure. This raises complex questions about academic integrity including issues of authorship, ownership, attribution and acknowledgement."

The handbook is available at http://www.netgen.unimelb.edu.au/.

The Australian Learning and Teaching Council works with 44 Australian higher education institutions "as a collaborative and supportive partner in change, providing access to a network of knowledge, ideas and people." For more information, contact: Australian Learning and Teaching Council, 4-12 Buckland St., Chippendale, Sydney NSW 2008 Australia; tel: 02 8667 8500; fax: 02 8667 8515; email info@altc.edu.au; Web: http://www.altc.edu.au/.

STUDENT COMPUTER SKILLS: PERCEPTION AND REALITY

"The ubiquitous use of computers in homes and schools has aided the perception that more students are computer literate than past generations. There is a potential 'perfect storm' manifesting between students' perceived proficiency of computer application skills and the actual assessment of those skills."

By administering survey and assessment instruments to over 200 business school students, researchers Donna M. Grant, Alisha D. Malloy, and Marianne C. Murphy compared students' perceived proficiencies in three computer skills areas -- word processing, presentation graphics, and spreadsheets -- with their demonstrated skills. Their research results showed "some differences in the students' perception of their word processing skills and actual performance, no difference in perception and performance for their presentation skills, and a significant difference in perception and performance for their spreadsheet skills. The study led to a redesign of an introductory business school course to remedy students' deficiencies.

The paper, "A Comparison of Student Perceptions of their Computer Skills to their Actual Abilities" (JITE, vol. 8, 2009, pp. 141-60), is available at http://jite.org/documents/Vol8/JITEv8p141-160Grant428.pdf.

The peer-reviewed Journal of Information Technology Education (JITE) [ISSN 1539-3585 (online) 1547-9714 (print)] is published in print by subscription and online free of charge by the Informing Science Institute. For more information contact: Informing Science Institute, 131 Brookhill Court, Santa Rosa, California 95409 USA; tel: 707-531-4925; fax: 480-247-5724; Web: http://informingscience.org/.

NEW ONLINE JOURNAL ON INSTRUCTION

The first issue of the online peer-reviewed Journal of Instructional Pedagogies [ISSN: 1941-3394], published by the Academic and Business Research Institute, is available at http://aabri.com/jip.html.

Papers in this issue that are related to instructional technology and e-learning include:

"Student Perceptions of How Technology Impacts the Quality of Instruction and Learning" by Thomas Davies, et al.

"The Effects of Self-Regulated Learning Strategies and System Satisfaction Regarding Learner's Performance in E-Learning Environment" by Jong-Ki Lee

"Student Performance in Online Quizzes as a Function of Time in Undergraduate Financial Management Courses" by Oliver Schnusenberg

"Student Satisfaction in Web-enhanced Learning Environments" by Charles Hermans, et al.

The Academic and Business Research Institute supports the research and publication needs of business and education faculty. For more information about the journal, contact: Raymond Papp, Editor; email: jip@aabri.com.

A CRITIQUE OF BLACKBOARD'S E-LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

"Just as utopic visions of the Internet predicted an egalitarian online world where information flowed freely and power became irrelevant, so did many proponents of online education, who viewed online classrooms as a way to free students and instructors from traditional power relationships . . ."

In "A Critical Examination of Blackboard's E–Learning Environment" (First Monday, vol. 14, no. 6, June 1, 2009), Stephanie J. Coopman, professor at San Jose State University, identifies the ways that the Blackboard 8.0 and Blackboard CE6 platforms "both constrain and facilitate instructor–student and student–student interaction." She argues that while the systems have improved the instructor's ability to track and measure student activity, this "creates a dangerously decontextualized, essentialized image of a class in which levels of 'participation' stand in for evidence of learning having taken place. Students are treated not as learners, as partners in an educational enterprise, but as users."

The paper is available at http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2434/2202.

First Monday [ISSN 1396-0466] is an online, peer-reviewed journal whose aim is to publish original articles about the Internet and the global information infrastructure. It is published in cooperation with the University Library, University of Illinois at Chicago. For more information, contact: First Monday, c/o Edward Valauskas, Chief Editor, PO Box 87636, Chicago IL 60680-0636 USA; email: ejv@uic.edu; Web: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/.

GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH BIBLIOGRAPHY

Charles W. Bailey, Jr. has just published the 4th version of the "Google Book Search Bibliography." "It primarily focuses on the evolution of Google Book Search and the legal, library, and social issues associated with it. Where possible, links are provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories." The bibliography is available at http://www.digital-scholarship.org/gbsb/gbsb.htm.

Links to Bailey's other extensive publications, including "Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography" and the "Open Access Webliography," are available at http://www.digital-scholarship.org/.

Information Technology Services at UNC-Chapel Hill

Teaching and Learning

TL Infobits -- June 2009

EDUCATING THE NET GENERATION

STUDENT COMPUTER SKILLS: PERCEPTION AND REALITY

NEW ONLINE JOURNAL ON INSTRUCTION

A CRITIQUE OF BLACKBOARD'S E-LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH BIBLIOGRAPHY

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