Keywords

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Networked learning naturally focuses on learning, but learning is not thought of as an abstract phenomenon it involves real people and organisations. In this chapter the focus is on the learner but I want the focus to be on real embodied students when I use this term rather than broad generalisations. The learner is not something generic, the learner is always a substantial person, embodied and embedded in an assemblage of social and material relations. The early descriptions of the learner and students in networked learning assumed a person connected to others via a fixed computing device (Harasim et al. 1995). Computer networks had allowed communication since the 1960s and email became available in the 1970s but even into the 1990s communication was still largely by way of typed written texts. Contrast that early setting with the situation in the contemporary period. Students and learners generally frequently have access to networked communication in most locations and at all times via a smartphone. The extent of these networks exceeds that of fixed line networks and mobile networks can be found in rural areas in developing economies as well as in the cities and centres of the advanced industrial countries. Wireless networks and telecommunication via mobile cellular phone networks exceed anything envisaged only 20 years ago. In the conclusion of Harasim et al. (1995), p. 280 there is an epilogue set in 2015 described as an ‘Email from the Future’. The email envisages a future still dominated by fixed networks of limited capacity in which network access still has to be requested rather than a world in which there is easy access to a variety of networks. The main concerns of the ‘Email from the Future’ remained focused on the ways that the increasingly ‘virtual’ world would undermine those institutions based on place and unmediated face-to-face relationships. Some of these concerns remain future-oriented and they are still rehearsed in relation to new developments such as MOOCs (Daniel 2012), however the reality of 2015 is less about the virtual and a binary contrast with the real and more about the pervasive effects that the exposure of young people to networks and digital technologies is likely to have (Thomas 2011). This chapter begins from this changed technological environment for the learner and the ways in which the relationship between the learner, young people and technologies has been theorised. It concludes by locating the learner in the discourse around the student experience.

In the context of networked learning the learner is always considered in relation to the development of digital and networked technologies, however the chapter also discusses the learner relative to the broader idea of the student or learner experience. The student experience is currently affected by the global financial crisis and the consequent austerity policies adopted by many governments. This age of austerity has had, and continues to have, profound consequences for academic life and the position and experience of students in educational systems, especially in the developed economies. Because of this shift the chapter examines the idea of the learner experience in relation to networked and digital technologies and it locates this historic account in the contemporary context of austerity.

Early Work on Students and Technology

At the beginning of the millennium, two research studies were conducted in the United Kingdom which shed some light on the conditions for student learning at the time when digital and network technologies were becoming embedded in universities. Crook conducted research focused on what was then a novel group of students which he described as ‘partially virtualised’ learners located in a traditional residential campus (Crook 2002). At about the same time the networked learning in higher education project was also reporting its findings (Goodyear, et al. 2005; Jones and Bloxham 2001; Jones and Asensio 2001). In that period there was relatively little research that examined undergraduate use and experiences of networked and digital technologies in contexts in which networked technologies were supported by face-to-face contact. The assumption was still common that learning would either be face-to-face or virtual rather than an integration of the two forms of learning. The extensive networking of student residences and campuses was relatively new and much of the rhetoric focused on the virtual campus, and the potential threat that such developments posed to place-based and campus-located education.

Crook reported that the use of computer-based collaboration was modest and the joint activity that took place between students was in their study bedrooms or located around routine social interactions, such as over a meal. He found that the majority of students discussed their work in and around time-tabled sessions such as walking between classes and lectures or in chance encounters. Formal meetings with staff and other students were rare and the formal use of discussion boards, text conferencing and email for debate was limited. The heaviest use of networked technology was of ICQ (an Instant Messenger) to exchange short messages, though Crook suggested that ‘the use of this tool was largely limited to playful purposes’ (2002, p. 302). Crook noted that the focus on the networked computer, and the graphical interface on a screen, which provided a single site for work and social interaction, might lead to greater distraction and that intensive use of a networked computer would not always be focused on the curriculum.

The networked learning in higher education project found that there were no strong links between students’ judgments about their experience of networked learning and either their conceptions of learning or their approach to study. A practical implication of this research was that they argued that it was reasonable to expect all students to have positive experiences on well-designed and well-managed networked learning courses, and positive experiences were not likely to be restricted to those students with more sophisticated conceptions of learning or deep approaches to study (Goodyear et al. 2003). A key finding was that students’ views were generally positive at the start and remained so at the end of each course, though their attitudes became more moderated over time. The structure of students’ reported feelings remained relatively stable and there was no evidence to suggest that male or younger students had more positive thoughts about networked learning. The thoroughness with which new technologies were integrated into a networked learning course appeared to be a significant factor in explaining differences in students’ opinions and a well-integrated course was associated with more positive experiences (Goodyear, et al. 2005). Both studies provided no evidence in England of a generational divide. The most prominent factor affecting the attitudes and experiences of students was the course context, and the degree to which networked learning was embedded in the course. Crook found little evidence that the practices of lecturers were strengthening a participatory approach. He argued that the question as to whether networks were to become a conduit for delivery, or an arena for participation, depended on a deeper pedagogic discussion amongst university management (Crook 2002).

These projects completed over 10 years ago reported on a population of students that would have been born in the early 1980s at the beginning of the age group that are now frequently described as the net generation or digital natives. Broadband network connections were still a novelty and ADSL, broadband connections using copper wire subscriber lines, was only launched commercially in 2000. When Crook reported the provision of wired broadband in student study bedrooms was still unusual and almost certainly unavailable, beyond some workplaces, for distance learners (see also Jones and Healing 2010b). Mobile phones were relatively new and while Vodafone took the first mobile call in 1985 the GSM 2G phone system, enabling SMS text messaging, was only introduced in the 1990s. Mobile broadband internet connections were only introduced with the 3G networks which were deployed after the millennium. This raises a significant question for generational arguments because it is unclear why if young people are affected by their exposure to new technologies students growing up at the start of this period (around 1980) would be similar to those born later (from the mid-1990s) and exposed to mobile technologies.

Even the most mobile students taking advantage of contemporary mobile communications and broadband networks are still located somewhere. Nardi and O’Day (1999) proposed the idea of ‘local habitation’ to describe settings in which individuals have: ‘an active role, a unique and valuable local perspective, and a say in what happens’ (Nardi and O’Day 1999, p. ix). It is in these micro settings that local knowledge and authority allow people to act and to develop different meanings for technologies and services appropriate for divergent local conditions. The way local participants co-construct the identity of technologies resonates with the idea of levels and the way different levels afford different kinds of choices. The capacity to influence the way technologies are appropriated is at its greatest at a microlevel and still quite extensive in the mesolevel, but it becomes very limited when considered in relation to macrolevel factors. Jones and Healing (2010b; Healing and Jones 2011) returned to the work by Crook (2002) and his notion of a ‘learning nest’ and used more current data to explore how students’ use of technologies had altered in subsequent years in relation to the spaces they used. What these two studies showed was that in some ways little had changed with regard to students’ locations and uses of space in the decade since Crook’s original work. Care should be taken at this point because of the continued speed of change in the years following this research. In the research conducted between 2008 and 2010 there was only limited evidence of change, which may have become more widespread in the following years, specifically because of the increasing use of smartphones in teaching spaces and in the use of broadband mobile phone data connections.

The Net Generation and Digital Natives

Networked learning needs to take account of a persistent argument which suggests that the introduction of digital and networked technologies has changed the lives and attitudes of young people in a fundamental way. This argument emerged from the writings of several US-based authors at the end of the last century at roughly the same time as the empirical studies noted in the section above (Tapscott 1997; Prensky 2001a, b; Howe and Strauss 2000). Tapscott introduced and later developed the term net generation (1997, Prensky 2001a, b), the idea of digital natives, and the term millennials was popularised in the work of Howe and Strauss (2000). All three terms have a slightly different emphasis and a variety of additional terms are constantly being coined to capture new technologies (e.g. i-Generation, Rosen 2010) and slightly different orientations towards similar questions (e.g. Google Generation, Rowlands et al. 2008). One of the most persistent alternatives, more commonly found outside education, is Generation Y (Jorgensen 2003; Weiler 2005), which like the term millennials, is firmly located in a generational sequence with the Y generation following Generation X and preceding the Z generation. The generational argument underpins a large part of this literature and its origins can be traced back to earlier work by Howe and Strauss (1991). This chapter largely restricts itself to using the terms net generation and digital natives to refer to this wider literature, although at various points other terms may be introduced for clarity (for a more detailed review of terms see Jones 2013).

The claims made about a new generation of young people are based on the argument that because young people are growing up immersed in a world that is permeated with networked and digital technologies the entire generation thinks differently, learns differently, exhibits different social characteristics and has different expectations for learning. Prensky has gone further than most by claiming that the brains of young people growing up in these conditions are ‘physically different’ (Prensky 2001, 2011) and students exposed to digital technologies develop different brain structures. Prensky’s account relies on largely non-human studies of animals and a limited number of studies focused on brain changes in humans (2001b). Prensky’s argument about the plasticity of the brain is not dealt with in detail in this chapter but for a review of the relevant literature in the field of neuroscience see Bavelier et al. (2010). The new generation of students is portrayed as having a common set of preferences including: wanting to receive information quickly; relying on communication technologies; often multitasking and having a low tolerance for lectures; and preferring active approaches to learning (see for example Tapscott 1999; Oblinger 2003; Oblinger and Oblinger 2005). A characteristic of these approaches is that they suggest a sharp break from previous cohorts of students and Prensky (2001a) argues that there is a ‘singularity’ separating digital native students from their digital immigrant teachers. This binary way of thinking suggesting that young people are a single identifiable group that is distinct from other older people is a characteristic of all these approaches. It is this central idea that flows through this chapter and links the separate parts. Networked learning is interested in the ‘irreducible difference’ (Knox 2014) between students not the flattening of diversity and theories that assume a uniform student mass.

It is claimed that digital natives alter the conditions of teaching and learning because ‘today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors.’ (Prensky 2001, p. 1 emphasis as in original).

Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to ‘serious’ work. (Prensky 2001, p. 2)

A notable feature of this account is the way it describes students in a generic way as ‘They’ and sets out their supposed characteristics with a degree of certainty. The argument that students’ ways of thinking have changed can be found much more widely than Prensky’s writing and Dede (2005), for example, claimed that technology was reshaping the mind-set of students of all ages and creating a ‘neomillennial’ learning style. The net generation and digital native arguments are based on a common set of assumed characteristics which suggest that students of a certain age have a known set of needs which require a change from being ‘teacher-centred’ to becoming ‘learner-centred’. This argument mirrors the assertions identified in the previous chapter making a case for a move ‘from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side’ (Tapscott 1999). These prescriptions for methods of teaching and learning are not novel and they first emerged following the application of the first wave of Internet technologies to education (see for example Harasim 1990; Harasim et al 1995; Hiltz and Turoff 1978). What was new in the net generation and digital native discourse is the central position of the new generation of students as the agents of change in education.

Tapscott argued that the role of the teacher had to change in response to pressures arising from net generation students and they required the teacher to be a facilitator, creating and structuring what happens in the classroom (Tapscott 1999, p. 10). The learning preferences of these students were set out in his work as if they were already known and common to all young students. They included bite size learning, the use of new media and high levels of social interaction including collaboration. It was because of these assumed changes among students that teachers were told that they had to modify their teaching practices to accommodate the learning needs of their technologically sophisticated students. It is remarkable that these pressures were not identified by the empirical studies of students reported above which took place at roughly the same time. The generational nature of the argument about students’ preference and learning ‘style’ leads directly to a deficit model of professional development for teachers (Bennett et al 2008). Teachers because they are older and grew up prior to the deployment of ubiquitous digital and networked technologies are described as strangers to the new world, in Prensky’s terms they are digital immigrants. Prensky argues that teachers have to try and imitate their digital native students, but however hard they try they will always retain a digital immigrant ‘accent’. Other writers are less rigid, for example Tapscott argues that teachers can learn new skills, but notably this is under the guidance of their students.

Needless to say, a whole generation of teachers needs to learn new tools, new approaches, new skills. This will be a challenge… But as we make this inevitable transition, we may best turn to the generation raised on and immersed in new technologies. Give the students the tools and they will be the single most important source of guidance on how to make their schools relevant and effective places to learn. (Tapscott 1999, p. 11)

From this point of view digital native students just grow up that way and their digital immigrant teachers have relatively fixed characteristics that are already established. The digital native and net generation arguments are a form of standardisation which relies on an excessive and overgeneralised description of the positions and characteristics of both the student and the teacher. This argument introduces a rigidity that leads to an unusual version of the deficit model because teachers are required to change, to learn new skills and approaches, even though they can never be fully successful in this endeavour. There is also an inversion of the teacher–student relationship because it is the digital native students who teach their teachers and become their source of guidance.

Despite the rhetoric of transformation and inevitability the idea that a new generation of students would force change has been slow to have an effect:

It is inevitable … that change would finally come to our young peoples’ education as well, and it has. But there is a huge paradox for educators: the place where the biggest educational changes have come is not our schools; it is everywhere else but our schools. (Prensky 2010, p. 1)

Slow change despite revolutionary rhetoric is not the only weakness identified by the originators of these ideas and Prensky (2009, 2011) has also recognised that the original distinction he drew between digital natives and digital immigrants might have become less relevant because, since he wrote the original articles, an increasing proportion of society has grown up exposed to digital and networked technology. To accommodate these changes he proposed an alternative way to describe the transformation using the term ‘digital wisdom’.

Although many have found the terms useful, as we move further into the 21st century when all will have grown up in the era of digital technology, the distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants will become less relevant… I suggest we think in terms of digital wisdom. (Prensky 2009, p. 1)

Prensky defined wisdom as ‘…the ability to find practical, creative, contextually appropriate, and emotionally satisfying solutions to complicated human problems.’ (Prensky 2011, p. 20). He uses this definition of wisdom to argue that it is possible to acquire digital wisdom through interaction with technology. This is a significant change which abandons the generational rigidity of the terms natives and immigrants. However Prensky still retains the radical and largely unsupported claim that the ‘brains of those who interact with technology frequently will be restructured by that interaction’ (2011, p. 18). Prensky has softened his previous position, which he had described in terms of a ‘singularity’ but he retains many of the key features of his original argument. Overall Prensky’s position has moved from a hard form of technological determinism, in which the divide between natives and immigrants is a necessary outcome of their exposure to technology, to a softer form of determinism in which digital enhancement is a necessary development for everyone if they are to succeed.

Palfrey and Gasser (2008) mounted a sustained attempt to reclaim the term digital native as a useful academic term. They suggested that the term generation was an overstatement and preferred to call the new cohort of young people a ‘population’ (2008, p. 14). They have developed this argument further in a more recent publication (Palfrey and Gasser 2011). Digital natives thought of as a population rather than a generation are defined by their access to technology. The digital native is no longer defined by the deployment of technology in society in general, and the condition of being a digital native comes to depend on a variety of factors such as social class (socioeconomic status) and geographical location and access to new technology also depends on a digital literacy, which needs to be acquired through informal or formal learning. Palfrey and Gasser have moved away from the original argument in which a generation of young people are born digital because they grew up in a world infused with new technology. Their reformulation identifies digital natives as a sub-group of young people whose attributes depend on their access to technology. This attempt to reclaim the term has significant weaknesses and it is not clear what benefits are gained by retaining it. The authors agree that the idea of a generational change needs to be abandoned, but in my opinion the continued use of the term digital native in these circumstances becomes misleading.

An alternative binary metaphor has been proposed as a replacement to the terms natives and immigrants by White and Le Cornu (2011) who have recommended substituting them with ‘residents’ and ‘visitors’. The authors contend that the original arguments made by Prensky pre-date social media and they suggest that this shift in the technologies that are available requires a new metaphor. Their proposed replacement for the generational divide between natives and immigrants follows Palfrey and Gasser by introducing an experiential divide between ‘residents’ and ‘visitors’ and like Palfrey and Gasser this is an attempt to salvage some elements from the digital native and net generation debates while acknowledging the strength of some of the opposing evidence and arguments. White and Le Cornu wanted to recognise the usefulness of typologies and retain this potential strength and to acknowledge the importance of the debate and the simple framework that Prensky offered.

We therefore argue that tools, places and spaces are the three key metaphors that most aptly describe the experience of computer users in a world where social media are becoming more and more prevalent. (White and Le Cornu 2011 Online)

Residents are described as those people who spend a (large) proportion of their lives online and for whom online spaces are ‘like a park or a building in which there are clusters of friends and colleagues’. Visitors by contrast are those who use technology as a tool to address their specific needs and inhabit a space ‘akin to an untidy garden tool shed’. The spatial metaphor is an improvement on the original but still retains its highly restrictive binary form. It is also unclear to me why the typology used to describe young people and their use of technology still has to adopt this binary. The empirical evidence would suggest that life is far more complex than any binary account would allow for and the oversimplification that simple typologies and binary distinctions lead to result in bad policy decisions and poor practice.

The persistence of the net generation and digital native discourse is a concern for those interested in networked learning because some of the prescriptions for change are familiar to those engaged in networked learning. However the arguments used by proponents of networked learning to support such changes are of a very different type. Networked learning is interested in cooperation and collaboration as a form of dialogue between teachers and learners because it is an effective and desirable pedagogic approach that develops critical thinking (McConnell et al. 2012). The educational reforms proposed by Tapscott and Prensky have very different roots despite the similarity in some if the vocabulary.

A Generational Divide?

A central claim of the digital native and net generation arguments is that there is a generational divide, a sharp break between young people born into a digital world and those older people who were not. Howe and Strauss wrote the book Millennials Rising (2000) several years after they co-authored a book that argued a general case about generations in the United States (Howe and Strauss 1991). Although it would be unreasonable to argue that those who use the term net generation or digital native endorse the cyclical view of generations found in Howe and Strauss it has had a clear influence both directly through Howe and Strauss’ later work and through Oblinger and Oblinger who built on Howe and Strauss’ work when discussing education (Oblinger and Oblinger 2005). The generational argument can be read as a general case affecting all young people of a certain age, or it can be seen as generalising the experience of the advanced industrial countries and the United States in particular. In other countries different characteristics have been used to define age groups and generations. In China the single child policy and the funnelling of resources from a whole family to one child led to the term ‘Little Emperor’ to describe the characteristics of the young. In South Africa the end of apartheid led to the description of the young as ‘born free’ and there is no reason to suggest that responses to technology in South Africa will mirror those in the United States (Brown and Czerniewicz 2008; Thinyane 2010; Brown and Czerniewicz 2010). The generational divide based on technology alone can be thought of as an extrapolation from a narrow cultural and national base.

Empirical research has also found that there are variations among students within the age group identified with the net generation, and that young people in this cohort can be clustered into different user groups with different interests, preferences and lifestyles (Bullen et al. 2011; Jones et al. 2010a; Jones and Hosein 2010; Kennedy et al. 2010; Schulmeister 2010; Van Beemt, et al. 2010b). There is good evidence, even in the rich industrial states, to show that there is no simple generational divide (Bullen et al. 2011; Kennedy et al. 2008, 2010; McNaught et al 2009; Pedró 2009; Salajan et al. 2010; Waycott et al 2009). Pedró’s (2009) meta-analysis of studies from countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concluded that there were differences in students’ technology adoption and use and a variety of digital divides persist between different kinds of students (Pedró 2009; Schulmeister 2009; Hargittai (2010). Hargittai et al. (2010) showed that socioeconomic factors were related to the complexity and variation in people’s use of the Internet and students’ online skills. Other broad demographic influences affected students’ interaction with technology and these included gender and ethnicity alongside social class (Hargittai 2010; Jones et al. 2010a; Smith and Caruso 2010; Kennedy et al. 2010; Selwyn 2008). Research in China has also found evidence that there are variations in information searching and levels of competence amongst the young (Li and Ranieri 2010; Li and Kirkup 2007). Access to technology is still unevenly spread and access relies on young people having the necessary digital literacies rather than simply the availability of new technology (Schulmeister 2010; Palfrey and Gasser 2008). Jones and Shao (2011) concluded their review of international literature by stating that there was no empirical evidence for a new generation of young students entering higher education and the terms net generation and digital native did not capture the processes of change that were taking place.

There are two implications that can be drawn from this. The first is that the alleged divide between native students and immigrant academic staff has been overdrawn. The second is that the use of a generational metaphor and an exaggerated claim for a ‘singularity’ separating one age defined generation from another obscures the actual age-related changes that are taking place. Jones and Shao (2011) argue that the complex changes identified in extensive empirical work show an age-related component, particularly with regard to newer technologies such as social networking site use (e.g. Facebook), the uploading and manipulation of multimedia (e.g. YouTube) and the use of handheld devices to access the mobile Internet. The relationship to age is itself complex because it is affected by how recently a particular technology has been introduced. Secondly it is influenced by the dynamics of particular age cohorts, for example by the stage of life they are currently passing through. An example of this would be first-year university students at residential universities that take them away from home. Such students show a pattern of social network use that includes contact with home while they are at university and contact with university friends when they return home. Such a pattern is related to the transition from home to university and while it is enabled by the technology of social networks it is not caused by their availability.

A further complicating factor undermining the idea of a generation of digital natives is that demographic factors interact with age to pattern students’ responses to new technologies and that the most important of these are gender, socioeconomic background, academic preference (major) and year of study (grade), mode of study (distance or place-based) and the international or home-based status of the student (Brown and Czerniewicz 2008; Caruso and Kvavik 2005; Dahlstrom and Bichsel 2014; Dahlstrom et al. 2013; Gros et al. 2012; Hosein et al. 2010a; Jones et al. 2010a; Kvavik 2005; Krause 2007; McNaught et al. 2009; Selwyn 2008; Smith et al. 2009; Smith and Caruso 2010; Van den Beemt, et al. 2010a). Jones and Shao (2011) concluded their review by stating that there was no evidence that a generation of students was entering university with demands for new technologies that the universities and their teachers could not meet (see also Salajan et al 2010; Waycott et al 2009).

Relationships Between Technology Use in Society and in Education

While there has been considerable growth in students’ access to computing technologies and online tools the take-up of these technologies has often been for social and entertainment purposes rather than for learning (Oliver and Goerke 2007; Selwyn 2009). Furthermore students’ use of technology for social and leisure purposes has been shown to be different to their use of technologies for academic purposes (Corrin et al 2010; Jones et al. 2010a; Jones and Ramanau 2009; Hosein et al. 2010b). A key distinction needs to be attended to when discussing students’ uses of technology and that is that educational use and use more generally for learning has its own characteristics and simply because technologies are used by young people it does not mean that the familiarity with new technology in one area will transition seamlessly into learning and education. The distinction between social uses and educational uses of technology should not be thought of as a separation in relation to the student’s live experience. Jones and Healing (2010b) report that students often have multiple applications open at one time, some of them for academic work and some for leisure. Jones and Healing described the ways students managed the distraction that occurred in these circumstances, often involving issues of time management. Gourlay (2014) also noted that students’ academic use of the technologies is intertwined with leisure uses and she related this with time issues, the complex relationships between networked devices, digital materials and practices, and the broader questions of course requirements and the curriculum.

Because young people use new technologies and have relatively high general levels of skill using them it should not be assumed that this level of use and skill translates into preferences for an increased use of technology in educational contexts. In contrast to net generation and digital native theories researchers report that a large number of students still hold conventional attitudes towards teaching (Kennedy et al. 2007; Gabriel and Wiebe 2009; Garcia and Qin 2007; Lohnes and Kinzer 2007; Margaryan et al. 2011). There is also a consistent and long-standing finding that students prefer a moderate use of technology in the classroom, although care needs to be taken with this finding because the idea of moderate in 2004 may not correspond with current views about what constitutes moderate use (Jones 2012; Kennedy et al. 2007; Kvavik 2005; Salaway and Caruso 2007; Smith and Caruso 2010). More recently it has been claimed that technology has become ‘omnipresent in the lives of students’ Dahlstrom and Bichsel 2014, p. 34). In relation to the changing technological context early work showed little evidence that students were significant users of either Web 2.0 or the more recent or most advanced technologies (Kennedy et al 2007). There is some evidence that some uses of new technologies in education can be contrary to student wishes (Jones, Blackey et al. 2010). Selwyn (2009) reviewed literature with a particular focus on information sciences, education and media/communication studies and he concluded that young people’s engagements with digital technologies were varied and often unspectacular. He also highlighted the misplaced determinism and concluded that while there is a need to keep in mind the changing lifeworlds of young people it would be helpful to steer clear of the excesses of the digital native debate.

Students have a pragmatic and instrumental way of using technologies and they only use those technologies that are useful to them for communication and information searching (Schulmeister 2010). Nagler and Ebner (2009) found that use varied between common services and Wikipedia, YouTube and social networking sites were commonly used while social bookmarking, photo sharing and microblogging were much less popular at that time. Schulmeister (2009) argued that many of the claims about the effects of technology on cognitive development were overstated or unsupported and noted that studies did not always distinguish between the types, contents or functions of media activities or include anything about the motives of the users. However evidence that students do not exhibit a natural take-up of some technologies does not mean students will not make use of similar technologies if they are requirements for their studies (Dahlstrom and Bichsel 2014; Jones, Ramanau, Cross, and Healing 2010a; Smith and Caruso 2010; Kennedy et al. 2007). Taken together this evidence shows significant changes in the technologies that are available and in their use by learners, but the diversity of that use and the active appropriation of technologies informed by a variety of factors contrasts with net generation and digital native rhetoric which claims that a uniform generation of students become advanced users of new technology and force educational change. There is no real evidence of a significant break between young people and the rest of society and educationalists should approach net generation and digital native literature with extreme caution.

Design and Alternative Accounts of Technology

The net generation and digital native arguments are flawed but they have a remarkable persistence. One of the reasons for this persistence is the simplicity of the argument and the way that the prescriptions translate directly to clear answers and locate with key policy agendas, which suggest that actions must be taken and there is one best way to deal with the changes that are taking place amongst students. A further reason for the persistence of these arguments is that commercial interests have been active in perpetuating the idea of a new net generation (Bayne and Ross 2011). A clear danger that flows from this persistent influence is that universities follow the flawed advice and reasoning found in these discourses and frame their actions according to their simplistic agendas. The arguments of this book have been that learning is part of a complex sociotechnical assemblage in which institutions and infrastructures are key actors. This section examines a small number of key issues and theoretical approaches to the questions raised by the changing engagements of young students with new technologies. The intention is to provide alternative approaches to student engagements with technology which can help readers understand the processes of change that are taking place without resorting to the generational and determinist accounts found in the net generation and digital native literature.

Stoerger (2009) proposed one of the more useful alternative metaphors, ‘the Digital Melting Pot’ with an aim to redirect attention away from ‘assigned’ generational characteristics to the diverse technological capabilities young people have and to focus on the digital skills they might gain through experience. The Melting Pot metaphor emphasised integration rather than the segregation of digital natives and digital immigrants into distinct populations. Stoerger (2009) went on to argue that by gaining technology experience, those with low levels of competency could be transformed. One of the key findings of the early networked learning in higher education studies had been the moderating effect of exposure to networked technologies in education. Students with little expertise or prior knowledge of new technologies would become more positive, increase their capacity and express more confidence while those who were most enthusiastic about the technology would moderate their opinions (Goodyear et al 2003). Educational experience can play a significant role in developing both capacity and a positive attitude towards new technologies by providing guidance concerning the acquisition and enhancement of technological skills.

Educators, as well as their corresponding institutions, could be major players in the digital melting pot assimilation process. Together they could provide all individuals the chance to acquire, refine, and update technology skills. The digital native–digital immigrant metaphor serves to place individuals into separate silos based on over–generalized and oftentimes inaccurate characteristics. (Stoerger 2009 Online).

The approach Stoerger takes is an advance on the original argument by Prensky and it takes into account Prensky’s revision in terms of the idea of digital wisdom. Stoerger rejects the revision because even those new to technologies who show digital wisdom remain segregated from those who are native to digital settings. Stoerger also made an important point about the way the technological environments experienced by digital natives were designed and developed by previous generations.

Someone had to design, build, and upgrade the technologies that have evolved into the electronic spaces that the natives now inhabit. Interestingly, very few educational technology advocates mention that the digital immigrants were the creators of these devices and environments. (Stoerger 2009 Online).

Stoerger position is a clear advance on Prensky because digital technologies are shown to be an outcome of social change and to embody in their design and evolution all age groups and prior social conditions.

Affordance, Agency and Causation

There are potentially two different arguments about the changes that are taking place amongst young people and their relationship to networked and digital technologies (Jones 2011). The first argument and the one, that is most associated with the idea of the Net Generation and Digital Natives, is that:

  1. 1.

    The ubiquitous nature of digital and networked technologies has affected the outlook of an entire generation in advanced economies.

    A second related but distinct argument is that:

  1. 2.

    The new digital and networked technologies emerging in the lifetime of young people have particular characteristics that afford certain types of social engagement.

My argument is that it is the first of these arguments that we need to abandon in the face of the empirical evidence. First we need to abandon the idea that the changes are generational in character and second we need to abandon the determinist argument that technologies, in and of themselves, cause definite effects in the young. The argument based on affordance tries to retain the rational kernel of an argument about changes in young people related to their exposure and experience of new technologies. It draws attention to the affordances of technology as discussed in Chap. 2. One good reason why the net generation and digital native arguments persist is because they draw attention to the ways new technologies are changing the approaches that young people take in ways that are significant and often related to age. The kinds of change that are taking place require careful observation and assessment because technologies do not have effects that can be read off from the features or characteristics of the devices and technologies themselves. Students actively appropriate available technologies and they do so in ways that are related to their understandings of their position as a student and in the world, and their choices are related to the opportunities and constraints that educational institutions and infrastructures place on them. To borrow an idea from Marx—students make their own technological conditions but they do so in circumstances that are not of their own making.

Students’ relationships to networked and digital technologies can be understood in terms of agency (Czerniewicz et al. 2009; Jones and Healing 2010a). Czerniewicz et al (2009), p. 86 showed how ‘students are influenced by, but not determined by, the barriers they face’. Their research showed how in some circumstances students can make exceptional efforts to overcome their disadvantages with regard to technology. Students’ roles in relation to their use of technology can be enforced by sanctions operating at an organisational level which are physical, economic and moral. In my research students provided accounts about the ways that their judgement about the reliability of sources for academic work rested on what they were told by academic staff and what was enforced by assessment regimes and sanctions which enacted a view of what was and was not acceptable academic practice (Jones and Healing 2010a). Czerniewicz et al. (2009) described the relationship with technology as part of a process involving an interplay between social situations and the personal projects of agents. My own view is that it is better understood from a less individualised standpoint, as part of an emergent activity system within which subjects try to achieve their objectives and goals, but in which the activity system cannot be reduced to individuals, their social situation and goal directed actions. The structural conditions that students interact with are to a significant degree the outcomes of the kinds of collective agencies that we have described in Chaps. 5 and 6 using the concepts institution and infrastructure. The implications of this are that I argue for an expansion of the notion of agency to include persons acting not on their own behalf, but enacting roles in collective bodies such as courses, departments, schools and universities. Academic work undertaken by students takes place using available technologies and the availability of these technologies and infrastructures is an outcome of decisions and actions taken elsewhere, either in the wider world or in the university. I argue that aspects of structure and agency are at play at all levels of scale (macro-meso-micro) and that agency needs to be thought of as an emergent property. When considering student academic work the inclusion and exploration of mesolevels are especially important if we are to fully understand the ways students engage with new technologies at university.

Spaces and Places

The importance of location has been understood since the earliest writing about networked learning because learning networks allowed groups of people to use computer-mediated communication ‘to learn together, at the time, place, and pace that best suits them and is appropriate to the task.’ (Harasim et al. 1995, p. 4). The increasing availability and use of digital and networked technologies since that time has led to an increasing variety of spaces in which students can learn and to a pressure on universities to increase the flexibility of their provision, in terms of both the digital infrastructure and the physical estate of the institution (Ellis and Goodyear 2010). From the early provision of cable-connected computer laboratories and library provision of computers, universities have moved to the establishment of extensive wireless networks, remote access via broadband connections to the Web and more recently making provision for students to bring their own devices (BYOD). In his original conception of indirect design (Goodyear 2001, 2005, see Chap. 3 this volume) space and place were two factors considered in relation to learning, alongside task and activity, and organisation and community. Goodyear argued spaces could be designed but it was the activity of people (students and teachers) in those spaces that enacted the places in which learning took place. I have previously argued for a distinction to be made:

between space, which is understood as a relatively stable and potentially designed environment, and place, understood as contingent and locally inhabited… fostering a sense of place in networked learning environments is necessary in order to develop a social and emotional context to sustain social interactions and collaboration, whether these interactions are composed of either strong or weak ties. (Jones and Dirckinck-Holmfeld 2009, p. 22)

As the spaces in which learning takes place increase so does the design complexity due to the variety of ways that students can actively appropriate the possibilities and circumvent the constraints that the designed spaces afford them. Carvalho and Goodyear (2014) have analysed the key components of learning networks and illustrated the ways that learning networks have allowed learning to move out into networks and areas of everyday life including both leisure activities and work.

The mobilities paradigm has questioned traditional approaches to society and examined mobility in ways that are important in terms of an understanding of geographical location, space and place (Urry 2007. In particular mobilities research points to the ‘fixtures’ that allow movement, and the firm, material and located infrastructures that underpin the apparent ease of movement. Think for example of the airports that allow mobility by air and the motorway networks that enable auto-mobility. In educational contexts the mobility of students via digital networks also needs to be located in the infrastructural and material locations through which mobility takes place. On the one hand students have increasing access to various devices, smartphones, tablet computers, e-book readers and a number of hybrid devices that are WiFi enabled and often linked via mobile broadband to the Internet. On the other their use of these devices often hinges on university infrastructures that have already integrated wired communications, and a variety of Internet-based services, but which now face a new range of challenges as staff and students access university networks using their own devices and universal service infrastructures impinge on the institutional setting. The emergent ecology of mobile devices in higher education that results from these changes is complex and poorly understood, even though there has been considerable effort to theorise mobile or m-learning (Kukulska-Hulme and Traxler 2013; Pachler et al. 2010; Sharples et al. 2007; Sharples et al 2009; Roschelle 2003).

Jones and Healing (2010b) found that the common locations for students were still their dedicated work spaces in their term time homes. These were usually either within the student’s permanent residence or in a student study bedroom. In some cases these spaces were dedicated to study but in others the spaces were multifunctional, with a study area set aside from the other activities that took place in the larger area. The university library, multimedia centres, lecture theatres and computer labs all remained common spaces in which students did their academic work. Students were well connected and most were connected to their networks all the time, often sleeping next to their phone in order to keep in touch with other students and friends from home. One university involved in the research had equipped an area that was open 24 h a day 7 days a week with access to wireless networking, loan laptop computers and a comfortable and informal working area. This change in the physical campus infrastructure had begun to alter some students’ use of mobile technologies on campus. In the period 2008–2010 students already seemed permanently connected to their networks and there was a blurring of activities from their student working life and their social life and leisure.

The settings that students reported are local habitations in the sense that students have a degree of control in make use of available resources by negotiating the meaning and relevance of a technology within their own life space and the flow of their lives. They are active agents because each student has their own study practices, subject area and network of relationships and they don’t act uniformly in relation to the technologies and services they are presented with. (Jones and Healing 2010b, p. 382)

I am convinced that the increasing mobile technologies and the drive to increase the mobility of learning requires a continued strong focus on location, on the spaces that are provided in which learning can take place. This will require a degree of methodological innovation to track and trace learning activity in a wide variety of locations. One possible way of accomplishing this is to adopt the ANT approach and ‘follow the actor’ via the traces they leave in digital networks and by developing innovative ways for actors to record their own activity. It is also important to recognise that calls for a complete overthrow of traditional forms of place-based learning in the face of ‘disruptive’ technologies ignore the ways that disruption at one point of time is only one part of a continuing sequence. Campus universities and city-based locations may become reinvigorated as nodes in the wider network which are valued because there are substantial intrinsic attractions to them, even as they are interpenetrated with networked and digital technologies.

Learners at the Interface

The learner is located in physical space but they also stretch outward across digital networks which are re-presented to them at the interface. This process preceded the development of mobile technologies but it is amplified by it.

In this society, work and leisure activities not only increasingly involve computer use, but they converge around the same interfaces. Both work applications (word processors, spreadsheet programs, database programs) and ‘leisure’ applications (computer games, informational DVD) use the same tools and metaphors of GUI. The best example of this is a Web browser employee both in the office and at home, both for work and play. (Manovich 2001, p. 65)

Much of the locus of learner interaction is now at the interface and their interaction is often with services supplied via the network. The interface and the device are acting as portals to a network of resources, service and people that reside ‘elsewhere’. As Manovich puts it ‘we are no longer interfacing with a computer but to culture encoded in digital form’ (Manovich 2001 pp. 69–70). Galloway expands on this understanding of the interface in a way that resonates with ANT in the way that it sees ‘effects’:

Interfaces are not simply objects or boundary points. They are autonomous zones of activity. Interfaces are not things but rather processes that effect a result of whatever kind. (Galloway 2012 vii)

This interpretation of the interface means that less attention is placed on objects such as screens and keyboards and more on the effects of interfaces both in terms of the way that interfaces change material states and in the way that they are themselves the effects of larger forces that generate them.

The learner appropriates the networked services and the technological devices that are available to them in active way and it has been repeatedly noted that this active interaction with technologies separates out uses for social life and leisure and educational use (Corrin et al. 2010; Kennedy and Judd 2011; Bennett and Maton 2011). Kennedy and Judd (2011) argue that students use of information seeking and communication technologies is driven by a shallow ‘satisficing’ strategy and that while they use such technologies routinely they are challenged by scholarly uses. The term satisficing is used to suggest a strategy that provides satisfactory results but the results do not have to be the best available. Kennedy and Judd also draw attention to the way ‘satisficing’ can be linked to the idea of deep and surface learning. Students do not develop sophisticated approaches to information seeking or learning in their interactions with technology ‘in the wild’, academic and scholarly uses are learned and require educational processes, if not always formal education. The research on students’ relationships with digital and networked technologies illustrates a contradictory process in which students are working with technologies relevant to their social life and leisure via the same interfaces that they use for academic and scholarly work. However students actively manage this common interface and discriminate between uses that are for academic purposes and those that are not. The evidence suggests that students do not naturally adopt the most useful approaches to technologies appropriate for academic work, such as information seeking, but that they will take-up new technologies and engage with them if there are good pedagogical reasons to do so. The interface is a critical site as important as the spaces and places for learning because it is at the interface that students navigate their networks and there is a need for researchers to understand the increasingly complex interactions between the embodied location of students and the interfaces that they use to:

  1. a)

    bring the network connections and resources to them and

  2. b)

    extend their learning network outwards into the world.

Student Experience and Design

Networked learning has emphasised the way that design attention has moved from direct design of learning to indirect design (Carvalho and Goodyear 2014) and focused on those points indirectly related to learning (often at the mesolevel) where choices can be made between the variety of tools, services and resources because both digital and material forms become available as alternatives (Goodyear 2005). In previous chapters in this volume I have noted how networked learning takes place in learning infrastructures (Chap. 6), which are assemblages of humans, digital and material forms (Chap. 4). I have previously argued that this leads to an increasing complexity of design (Jones and Dirckinck-Holmfeld 2009; Jones and Healing 2010b). The apparently simple choices between online and (offline) face-to-face, or between distance and local, become increasingly complex as educational designs blend a variety of components in what I have described as a variable geometry and others as an ecology (Dillenbourg 2008; Ellis and Goodyear 2010). Ellis and Goodyear argue that the binary distinctions found in the contrast between digital natives and immigrants and between transmission (acquisition) and student-centred (participation) approaches to teaching and learning are not found in practice. Rather the say the reality ‘is that beliefs represent a melange of the teacher-centred and the student-centred’ (Ellis and Goodyear 2010, p. 187). They propose that an ecology of learning should be informed by a sense of ‘good learning’ which they define as:

…a set of tensely adjusted beliefs and constructs emerging from the experiences and values of students, teachers, employers, community groups, experts in pedagogy and researchers in the learning sciences. (Ellis and Goodyear 2010, p. 187)

The sense of good learning Ellis and Goodyear speak about is rooted in change and the periods of calm in which universities can share a sense of purpose are described in terms of provisional stabilities. This dynamic and complex picture is more in tune with the early twenty-first century findings about student experiences with technology than the standard simple binaries of digital natives and immigrants. By being located in design processes, and the possibility of managing the risks that come with change and uncertainty, this approach offers a better way of thinking about the relationships between students, their experiences and digital and networked technologies. Within this ecological perspective the student experience is one part of a complex and changing set of relations at all levels. At the macrolevel university leaders are dealing with large infrastructural questions. At the mesolevel the development of design-like practices in departments and educational programmes can help provide iterative adjustments and coordinate a cyclical process of improvement. Finally at the microlevel of day-to-day interaction it is good (successful and effective) learning and the experiences of students in their routine interactions that holds this ecology together and gives it purpose.

The Student/Learner Experience

The early work in networked learning reported earlier in this chapter was connected with the need to include the lived experience of students in the discussion that surrounded the incorporation of network and digital technologies in education. One of the sources for thinking about networked learning arose from a series of EU and UK-funded projects (Goodyear 2014; McConnell et al. 2012). These projects and in particular the 2-year JISC-funded project concerning students’ experiences of networked learning (1999–2000) had a key role in formalising and stabilising the developing field of networked learning in continental Europe and the United Kingdom (Carvalho and Goodyear 2014). That project had as its main aim:

To help the UK HE sector come to a better understanding of the potential and problems of networked learning, particularly by attending to the student experience and to learning and teaching issues (Goodyear 2000, p. 3)

At this stage there was a clear link between networked learning and the student experience and that understanding was informed by a clear approach based on a relational view of learning and the phenomenographic tradition in particular (see Jones and Asensio 2001).

The phenomenographic tradition (see Chap. 3) has provided something of a bridge between academic research investigating students’ experience and more recent policy initiatives. Key individuals have been involved in both academic research and the policy developments in terms of the student experience (e.g. Paul RamsdenFootnote 1 and Mike ProsserFootnote 2). The quantitative branch of phenomenographic research had independently developed a number of instruments such as the approaches to study inventory (ASI) and later variants such as the approaches and study skills inventory for students (ASSIST) which provided a starting point for some of the work developing survey instruments with a direct link to national policy (e.g. Entwistle and Ramsden 1983). The fundamental understanding of phenomenography was that there are a limited number of qualitatively different ways to experience a phenomena and that these could be related to each other (often in a hierarchical manner) (Marton and Säljö 1976a, b; Marton 1981, 1994; Marton et al 1993; Marton and Booth 1997). Marton defined the approach as:

…the empirical study of the differing ways in which people experience, perceive, apprehend, understand, or conceptualize various phenomena in, and aspects of, the world around them. (Marton 1994, p. 4424)

A second key aspect of this approach, which has informed research and policy concerning the student experience, has been the idea that the qualitatively different experiences of learning could be related to different learning outcomes (Prosser and Trigwell 1999). An additional step was also made which argued that some ways of teaching and of experiencing learning led to surface approaches to learning, whereas others led to a deep approach:

The relation between teachers’ experiences and their students’ experiences is such that university teachers who adopt a conceptual change/ student-focused approach to teaching are more likely to teach students who adopt a deep approach to their learning, while teachers who adopt an information transmission/teacher-focused approach to their teaching are more likely to teach students who adopt surface approaches to their study.’ (Prosser and Trigwell 1999, p. 162)

As these methods developed, further distinctions were identified and in particular a strategic or achieving approach to learning has been widely adopted as a potential third approach to learning (Biggs 1979; Kember 1996). There has also been extensive discussion on this tradition about students from a ‘Confucian’ heritage, who it is claimed may appear to have a surface approach to learning, but who may be engaged in deeper processes of learning (Biggs 1998)

In recent years the idea of the student experience has become a mainstream concern with numerous funded projects and a place in policy documentation at both an institutional and governmental level. In a number of countries, national student surveys have become establishedFootnote 3 (see for example BIS 2011) and institutions regularly survey students at a module and course level. In some cases such as the University Experience Survey (UES) in Australia the student experience is linked to performance and funding (Radloff et al. 2012). These surveys generalise across diverse contexts and suggest that it is possible to design for a universalised ‘student experience’. From a niche academic area of research, and more or less peripheral concern in the late 1990s, the student experience has moved to centre stage especially in those educational systems most influenced by the introduction of the market into higher education (PA Consulting Group 2014). The concern with students’ experiences has moved from an academic interest concerned with giving voice to students, in ways that are varied and nuanced, to a market-driven and consumption-oriented snapshot of generic indicators of satisfaction.

It is in this context that students constitute their relationships with technology. Students experience technology in relation to educational requirements that are mediated by a drive towards achieving positions in international league tables which measure universities and nation states against each other (Jöns and Hoyler 2013). Jöns and Hoyler note that:

First the production of world university rankings in the early 21st century has been shaped by a new era of globalization and neoliberalization in higher education…, Second the highly uneven geographies of higher education that emerge from the analysis mark particular nodes in the global circulation of knowledge and expertise, namely those that conform best to Anglo-American publication cultures… (Jöns and Hoyler 2013, p. 56)

In the competition for league position and status, universities worldwide are drawn into the measurement of the student experience in generic and market-oriented ways. This international competition has been sharpened by the financial crisis of 2008 and the austerity politics that followed in many developed economies.

The student experience is important to a networked learning perspective but it has a very different character because it focuses on the complex empirical makeup of actual student experiences rather than generic notions of ‘the’ student experience (See Ellis and Goodyear 2010). From a networked learning perspective researchers are interested in the ways that students engage in learning, through their connections with people, enabled by a variety of media and in relation to material artefacts and the resources they use for learning. One of the ways that technology has changed the kinds of environments in which learning takes place is in the way variety has been increased in both the kinds of devices that students use and in the kinds of networks they have access to. Not only has the technological environment diversified but students engage with universities in different ways, for example on full- or part-time programmes, and with varying provision in terms of distance and online methods of teaching and learning. The idea that there is a clearly defined, singular ‘student experience’ is clearly nonsense, but it has powerful political and institutional support.

Students and Their Experiences of Technology

Networked learning is defined in terms of connections and while these connections are enabled by networked and digital technologies it is the activity across the network that defines both the learning and the learner. Learning is understood as an emergent process that can be designed for but learning itself cannot be designed. The learner in networked learning develops in an emergent way from interactions with other humans, mediated by language and technology and connected indirectly with earlier activity through the learning resources that others have contributed. Learning can often be mundane but it is deeply connected to civilisation and it is the root of human development, it is at the heart of the process of historical change and progress. Such a view contrasts sharply with the reduction of learning to performance in league tables and a bland and homogenised student experience.

The chapter began by locating student experience with networked technologies and discussing the pervasive and persistent idea that new technologies have led to a generational step change in student attitudes and behaviours. This way of thinking about students and the learning process using technology leads to a flattening of the learner’s experience with technology to a simple formula which can be applied to all young people in all settings. Even when the digital native thesis is amended to reduce digital natives to a ‘population’ described as a subset of a generation the implications are still reductionist and technologically driven (Palfrey and Gasser 2011). Other binary divisions such as residents and visitors (White and Le Cornu 2011) are equally narrow and do not allow for a full expression of the full diversity found in students’ and learners’ engagements with technology. A key reason for the persistence of these crude binary divisions is the way that they simplify decisions for policy makers and politicians but it is possible to provide more sophisticated alternatives that recognise that technologies while there is diversity and the features of technology afford a limited variety of social engagements. Technologies have their limits and constrain learners from some kinds of connections and engagements and the phenomenographic notion of student experience is helpful here in the discussion of experiences having a limited number of variations. In a similar way technologies afford a wide but ultimately limited range of engagements with them.

This chapter concludes with an attempt to locate the way students engage with technology in relation to research in networked learning and to consider the relationships between students’ experiences of technology and students’ experiences of networked learning in the relation to the world beyond the academy. This chapter has argued that there are at least four areas that require greater understanding:

  1. 1.

    The experiences of students (not the student experience) including the experiences learners and students have with digital and networked technologies.

  2. 2.

    The affordances and constraints of specific technologies and the kinds of social and scholarly engagements that can be enabled by the features of new technologies.

  3. 3.

    The spaces and places in which students work, whether these are campus based, online or at a distance. The more mobile students become the more important it is to understand the kinds of locations they use for learning.

  4. 4.

    The interface has become the mobile threshold for network connections and resources. Wherever students are located, whatever device they are using they will be gathering and distributing their social lives and scholarly and academic work through activity at the interface.

The idea that links the consideration in this chapter of the student and learner’s experience with their experiences of digital and networked technologies is that they cannot be reduced to a universalised student ‘experience’ nor to simplistic binaries such as digital natives and immigrants or residents and visitors. In this I think the notion of ‘irreducible difference’ used by Knox (2014) proves to be especially important. If networked learning has a view about students and learners and their engagements with technologies it is that they cannot be reduced to simple formulas or dichotomies and their diversity has to be acknowledged. This requires consistent empirical research to examine and analyse the lived experience of students and learners not the creation of new generational myths.