Abstract
The importance of digital citizenship has been well recognized and integrated in standardized school curriculum. However, there are very few empirical studies that report on the success of these new initiatives. Our teaching experience suggest that students are able to perform well on exams that assess proper online conduct, but they still fail to follow digital citizenship guidelines in practice. In this paper, we present a study to investigate students’ attitudes and opinions on various digital citizenship concepts via a self-reported questionnaire that is designed to gain insights on what the students would actually do in real life. Our results show that among the nine digital citizenship elements, students have the most appreciation for access, communication, literacy, and security. On the other hand, elements such as digital etiquette and health and wellness were trivialized and undervalued. Furthermore, we found some students were unable to come to a consensus on what is right and wrong in certain scenarios pertaining to digital law. As the Internet continues to gain prominence in our daily lives, these findings lead to important questions of how learning modules and how the overall education system need to change so to ensure the growth of good digital citizens in the future generation.
Notes
Google for Education: Training Center. Accessed July 20 2017. Available at: https://edutrainingcenter.withgoogle.com/training
Microsoft Digital Literacy. Accessed July 20 2017. Available at: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/digitalliteracy/overview.aspx
Common Sense Education, Unit assessments. Accessed July 20 2017. Available at: https://assessments.commonsensemedia.org/
References
Almekinder, A., Bryant, E., Caines, A., Lukens, K., Marksbury, N., Narasimhan, A., Richard, S., Siesing, G., & Spohrer, J. (2017). Digital citizenship + liberal arts = students empowered for life. Educause Review. http://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/6/digital-citizenship-liberal-arts-students-empowered-for-life. Accessed 27 Apr 2017.
Boyle, C. J. (2010). The effectiveness of a digital citizenship curriculum in an urban school. Ann Arbor: ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
Covello, S. (2010). A review of digital literacy assessment instruments. Syracuse University School of education/IDD & E, IDE-712: Analysis for Human Performance Technology Decisions. https://www.academia.edu/7935447/A_Review_of_Digital_Literacy_Assessment_Instruments?auto=download. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Herold, B. (2016). K-12 digital citizenship initiative will target state legislators. Education Week, 36(11), 1–13.
Hui, B. (2013) Teaching digital citizenship by fostering digital citizens. In the 18th proceedings of the western Canadian conference on computing education (WCCCE), Vancouver, Canada.
International Society for Technology in Education. (2017). Standards for students. https://www.iste.org/standards/standards/for-students. Accessed 27 May 2017.
Johnes, L., & Mitchell, K. (2016). Defining and measuring youth digital citizenship. New Media & Society, 18(9), 2063-2079
Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Smith, A., Purcell, K., Zickuhr, K., & Rainie, L. (2011). Teens, Kindness and Cruelty on Social Network Sites: How American teens navigate the new world of "digital citizenship". Pew Internet & American Life Project, Report Released on November 9 2011. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED537516.pdf. Accessed 28 May 2017.
Ribble, M., Bailey, G., & Ross, T. (2004). Digital citizenship: addressing appropriate technology behavior. Learning & Leading with Technology, 32(1), 6–9.
Swan, G., & Park, M. (2015). Get your students on the road to digital citizenship with a digital driver’s license. International Society for Technology in Education. ISTE Report. https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?articleid=582. Accessed 22 May 2017.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hui, B., Campbell, R. Discrepancy between Learning and Practicing Digital Citizenship. J Acad Ethics 16, 117–131 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-018-9302-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-018-9302-9