Extension Discussion – Week 5 – Overview of Educational Hypermedia Research
In our guided reading, we were asked to think about researchable ideas from the Kuiper et al. (2005) article. In short summary, the article explores the new-in-2005 concerns about K-12 students being able to use the Internet in their learning and whether the Internet requires specific skill of students. In 2023, these questions are still relevant.
In the article, Kuiper et al. (2005) make reference to a research study where students were being taught explicitly that when they click on a hyperlink, they also need to interact with it deeply. In 2023, in the college setting where I teach, the assumption is that kids are going to come into the classroom with a fully formed understanding of how to interact with the Internet. The myth of the digital native, coined by Prensky (2001) persists in higher education to the detriment of learners and teachers. Prenksy’s theory was that those who grew up with technology – digital natives– would have an innate sense of how use technology, unlike digital immigrants, who came to technology later. The assumption carries over to educational spaces where it can be easy to assume that just because students grew up with technology, they will automatically know how to apply that technology to a variety of learning contexts. An innate skill to apply technology to learning does not exist.
Enyon (2020) explored the harm of the persistent nature of the digital native myth. The myth itself presents a generational divide (which Enyon notes, the literature does not support) and leads to a very hands-off approach in adults teaching children to use technology. Now, this may be different as so-called elder millennials, the original digital natives per Prensky’s theory, are taking spaces as educators in classrooms. Millennials were assumed to be native to technology because it was ubiquitous as they grew. As an elder millennial, I know that I had to learn technology and how to apply it on my own. There was no one to teach me because the divide Enyon pointed out was ever-present in my educational experiences. I had no guidance when it came to encountering hypertext for the first time, for example. The closest I ever got to “online training” was in grad school when a research librarian taught us Boolean searches in the time before Google was ubiquitous and natural language searches were a thing.
The research opportunities in this area come from looking at how learner relationship to technology is established, nurtured, and supported. The skills an Internet user needed in 2005 are also vastly different from the skills an Internet user needs in 2023.
The Web has become a different place. In the early days of the Internet, people in general were leery of it. I remember being explicitly told by high school English teachers and college professors that I could not trust everything I found online. But in 2023, “the Internet” has become an all-encompassing resource. “I read it online” becomes the only needed – or maybe even differently in 2023, “I saw it on TikTok.” It seems that the old traditions of authorial authority (from the days of publishing when author work had to be vetted for credibility among other things before it was published) has transplanted online. If it’s published online, it must be credible, right? I see this a lot with Internet users who don’t understand that the vetting process for publishing online is to hit “submit” on a website. There are no more checks and balances. The Internet democratizes access to information, and it also allows anyone with Internet access to become a content creator. Search engine algorithms have also become very siloed. People get return results based on what they like to see, which means they confront ideas less and less that challenge their worldviews (Pariser, 2011) Not to mention the dawn of Chat GPT, which manufactures source information to appear credible and returns results based on user inputs.
Students today need to be trained to be critical of information and resources they encounter online. The Internet is a great repository of information, but not all information is created equal, or should be held as having the same value or veracity. The notion that students need specific skills still holds true and is still an area of valid research. This is an area of research I am personally very interested in.
References
Kuiper, E., Volman, M., & Terwel, J. (2005). The web as an information resource in k–12 education: Strategies for supporting students in searching and processing information. Review of Educational Research, 75(3), 285-328. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543075003285
Eynon, R. (2020). “The myth of the digital native: Why it persists and the harm it inflicts”, in Burns, T. and F. Gottschalk (eds.), Education in the Digital Age: Healthy and Happy Children, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/2dac420b-en.
Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you. penguin UK.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants, part 1. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1108/10748120110424816
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