16. ICT in Education and Training
Paper
Digital Distraction Dilemmas: Appeasing the Student-as-Customer
Oliver McGarr
University of Limerick, Ireland
Presenting Author: McGarr, Oliver
This paper explores the issue of digital distraction in higher education and what influences academics’ responses to the challenge. Research by Flanigan and Titsworth (2020) found that digital distraction during lectures negatively impacted on both the quality and quantity of students’ notes. Digital distraction not only impacts negatively on the student that is engaging in the online behavior, but it can also impact on others sitting in the vicinity of the student (Flanigan & Babchuk, 2022). Therefore, despite decades of attention on digital technologies as devices that can enhance teaching and learning, there is growing evidence of their potential to do the exact opposite, i.e., distract the student from engaging in learning.
Because of the distractive nature of digital technologies in learning, there is a growing body of research exploring this phenomenon. Chen et al (2020) identified three streams of research in this area. The first stream focuses on the extent to which individuals use digital technologies for non-study purposes and the types of digital distraction behaviors. The second stream explores the relationship between digital distraction and student performance and the third stream tries to identify the determinants of digital distraction. There is also work exploring how best to assist students in developing strategies to address digital distraction (Aasgaard 2021). However, helping students to avoid digital extraction is a challenging task. Flanigan and Titsworth (2020) comment that digital technologies are unlike previous media technologies in that they are not task limited tools. Instead, they are used extensively for work, leisure and socialization. Therefore, the opportunities to avoid these technologies are limited. In looking at the approaches adopted to address this issue in higher education, Ehrlick (2014) identified that there were various ways in which academics tried to combat this issue. This paper aims to explore these different approaches and, through the lens of student-as-consumer and student-as-customer, aims to show how the increasing commodification of education limits educators’ responses to digital distraction as they are increasingly concerned about student appeasement.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedResponses to digital distraction are influenced by many different factors including an academic’s attitude towards digital technology, their pedagogical practices and the nature of the learning environment. Importantly however, it is also influenced by the power dynamics underpinning their relationship with their students. This is the unique contribution of this paper. It is argued that the academic-student relationship in higher education has changed significantly. Tomlinson (2017) notes that amongst the reasons for this perceived change in relationship is the belief that students now see education through a more rights-based perspective and that they expect ‘value for money’ in terms of their educational experience. This shifting pedagogical relationship is partly due to an increasing commodification of education and a, ‘a dominant ethic of rights and entitlement’ that has entered higher education (Tomlinson, 2017, p. 455). This realignment in higher education is also reflected in the valuing the immediate economic gain of education rather than valuing its contribution to long-term intellectual development (Budd, 2017). Amidst the wider marketisation of higher education, metaphorical representations of the student as ‘consumer’ and ‘customer’ are now commonly used (Molesworth, Scullion & Nixon, 2011). Power is therefore a central part of the customer relationship (Maringe, 2011) and given the power of the customer, this has the potential to distort practices to achieve certain goals, particularly in an educational context where power has been gradually transferred from the academic institution to the students (Van Andel et al, 2012)
Through a review of the existing research literature, this paper examines the changes in the academic-student relationships and the wider digitisation agenda in higher education and explores how this influences higher education’s response to the issue of digital distraction. It therefore aims to identify from the literature the main responses to digital distraction in higher education and aims to explain the different responses identified in the literature through the lens of changing academic-student relationships in higher education.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe paper argues that the three main approaches identified, banning, ignoring and embracing the technology, can be seen in the context of wider market forces that are causing a shift in conceptualisations of educative relationships in higher education. The fundamental altering of the pedagogical relationship in higher education brought about by these wider changes distorts responses to pedagogical challenges such as digital distraction. It results in decisions that are not always made in the best educational interests of the student. The wider positivity surrounding the use of digital technologies in education adds a further level of complexity to the issue of digital distraction. A powerful persuasive discourse in relation to digital technology’s educational potential, largely driven by a powerful global EdTech industry, permeates education at all levels. Questioning of this techno-positivity challenges a digitisation agenda that higher education has invested significantly in and has been accelerated during the covid pandemic. This has resulted in a perception that the benefits of digital technologies far outweigh their distractive potential. The issue of digital distraction is therefore often downplayed or ignored in order to avoid undermining institutions’ wider digital technology plans. For the professional educator, their professional autonomy to deal with the issue is therefore stifled by both changing lecturer-student relationships and the digitization agenda in higher education. Seen through this lens, it highlights how professional pedagogical issues such as the issue of digital distraction are strongly influenced by wider contextual factors that have the potential to erode the academic’s autonomy to exercise their own professional judgement.
ReferencesAagaard, J. (2022). Taming unruly beings: students, discipline and educational technology. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 31(2), 159-170.
Budd, R. (2017). Undergraduate orientations towards higher education in Germany and England: problematizing the notion of ‘student as customer’. Higher Education, 73(1), 23-37.
Chen, L., Nath, R., & Tang, Z. (2020). Understanding the determinants of digital distraction: An automatic thinking behavior perspective. Computers in Human Behavior, 104, 106195.
Ehrlick, S. P. (2014). Managing digital distraction: A pedagogical approach for dealing with wireless devices in the classroom. Journal of Teaching and Education, 3(3), 207-216.
Flanigan, A. E., & Babchuk, W. A. (2022). Digital distraction in the classroom: exploring instructor perceptions and reactions. Teaching in Higher Education, 27(3), 352-370.
Flanigan, A. E., & Titsworth, S. (2020). The impact of digital distraction on lecture note taking and student learning. Instructional Science, 48(5), 495-524.
Maringe, F. (2010) The student as consumer: affordances and constraints in a transforming higher education environment In: Molesworth, M., Scullion, R. & Nixon, E. (Eds) The marketisation of higher education and the student as consumer (pp. 142-155). Routledge, London.
Molesworth, M., Scullion, R., & Nixon, E. (Eds.). (2011). The marketisation of higher education and the student as consumer. London: Routledge.
Tomlinson, M. (2017). Student perceptions of themselves as ‘consumers’ of higher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(4), 450-467.
Van Andel, J., Pimentel Bótas, P. C., & Huisman, J. (2012). Consumption values and empowerment of the student as customer: taking a rational look inside higher education's' Pandora's Box'. Higher Education Review, 45(1), 62-85.
16. ICT in Education and Training
Paper
Social Media Lab. A University Project in Digital Citizenship
José Miguel Gutiérrez Pequeño, Eduardo Fernández Rodríguez, Yasna Patricia Pradena García, Yaimara Batista Fernández, María del Carmen Herguedas Esteban, Laura De la Iglesia Atienza
University of Valladolid, Spain
Presenting Author: Fernández Rodríguez, Eduardo;
Batista Fernández, Yaimara
Social media labs, as spaces for experimentation, have recently become one of the main mechanisms for innovation. The role of universities, with degrees focused on subjects linked to social innovation, can be a fundamental factor in social development. It is essential to transform traditional centres into spaces for dialogue, into creative ecosystems, simultaneously dedicated to reflection and debate, research and production, training, and socialisation. Within this framework, we carried out ethnographic research on the implementation of a social media laboratory developed with social education students during the last two academic years at the Faculty of Education in Palencia. The results provide evidence of the development by university students in some skills related to creativity, reflection and debate, as well as various digital skills. In line with the existing literature, we show how the social media laboratory enables the acquisition of knowledge situated in the social reality of the environment that is of great use to future social educators, as well as some of its limitations in these processes of experimentation and social innovation.
We propose to think of the media lab as a bet, a prototype or lab model that addresses the transformation of knowledge production processes, the reformulation of university institutions and the role of the humanities in influencing social processes from the defence of the commons as a local and situated expression of a capacity for resilience. Following this line, a prototype is a tentative, provisional, incomplete, experimental, open product. Prototyping is not so much about finding solutions as it is about making sure that the problems are well understood or, in other words, that we have been critical enough to explore the consequences of our designs and to make sure that we have taken into account almost all possible points of view.
In this study, we investigated the implementation of a project called "Social Media Laboratory for Young People" as an example of content creation that combines multimedia (images, video, text, audio) with the development of participatory cultures and the acquisition of digital competences. This project was conducted with the aim that the students of the Degree in Social Education go from being mere consumers to co-producers of the narrative, generating new opportunities for social, cultural and professional development. To this end, we propose the following objectives:
1. To examine social media laboratories based on the production, research and dissemination of socio-educational projects that explore new forms of creative experimentation and collaborative learning that arise within university environments in the hyper-connected society.
2. To stimulate social innovation and citizenship projects developed at the university, offering open platforms for collaboration between students and social agents to promote knowledge as a common good.
3. Promote the development of digital competences among university students in an environment of learning ecologies as part of their training in the contexts of expanded education.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe study carried out can be considered an ethnographic research, as the focus of attention is centred on the exploration of the technomedia productions (in their different formats) through which future social educators shape ways of acting and configure meanings in the hyperconnected environment.
The research process was carried out during the first semester of the 2021/22 academic year within the framework of two subjects belonging to the Degree in Social Education at the University of Valladolid: Citizen Participation (basic training) and Social Media (optional), in the third and fourth year respectively, located in the Faculty of Education in Palencia.
Based on research designs and frameworks linked to the relationships between technology, participation and media, the following research questions regarding laboratories and digital competences have been developed for this study:
- What productions have been implemented to develop the skills needed in a hyper-connected society?
- How do classroom practices facilitate the connection between university and society?
- What methodological strategies have been used to develop the different competences selected?
At the same time, and given that our research aimed to analyse the social experience mediated by digital technologies and social media, our enquiry was not only focused on the media ecosystem, but also on the opportunity to use the network as a research tool, so we used digital ethnography as a mechanism that allowed us to examine the relationships between the virtual and face-to-face spheres, also understanding that the emergence of radio, television, computers, smartphones, the Internet, search engines, the web, e-mail, social networks, etc. , have influenced and mediated personal interrelationships. For this reason, the study includes the collection and analysis of aspects linked to the analogue and face-to-face reality of the classroom, as well as the elements of teaching and the virtual/digital reality of the participants.
The research techniques used respond to the complexities of digital ethnography: 1) analysis of the audiovisual productions made by the future social educators in digital format, together with their reflective texts; 2) classroom observations carried out by an external observer who was present in the two classrooms to analyse the work dynamics in the process of making the media laboratories.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsMedia labs add a pragmatic dimension, the capacity to produce collaborative solutions. This capacity involves incorporating people's creativity into policy production, through innovation processes that include and combine diverse knowledge. Chief among these is their extensive capacity for trial and error. This enables agile error analysis, while facilitating rapid learning, which avoids the cost of larger errors and converts it into accumulated knowledge for the institution. It is a model, therefore, that allows for error and transforms it into learning, but also does so as part of its very nature. We always move at the level of experimentation and prototyping of the projects that form part of a labor-atory, of the design of the laboratory itself and of the programme in which it is inserted.
The development of social media labs in the university environment generates new opportunities for innovation, incorporating the hacker spirit within sometimes century old institutions. Digital transformation, openness and social involvement take on a new dimension that is rare in higher education institutions. The innovation that the lab brings is materialised in the materialisation of the principles and forms learned in the digital sphere and the generation of open and shared innovation processes. They are configured as generative platforms oriented towards production as opposed to the idea of a portal that shows closed content to consumer users. They are also a way of exploring the continuity of the physical and digital dimensions, far from false dichotomies between the real and the virtual.
ReferencesBasilotta-Gómez-Pablos, V., Matarranz, M., Casado-Aranda, LA. et al. (2022) Teachers’ digital competencies in higher education: a systematic literature review. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 19, 8.
Findeisen, S., Wild, S. (2022) General digital competences of beginning trainees in commercial vocational education and training. Empirical Res Voc Ed Train 14, 2.
Guillén-Gámez, F.D., Mayorga-Fernández, M.J., Bravo-Agapito, J. (2021). Analysis of Teachers’ Pedagogical Digital Competence: Identification of Factors Predicting Their Acquisition. Tech Know Learn 26, 481–498
Nunes, A.C.B., Mills, J. and Pellanda, E.C. (2022), "Media Labs: Catalyzing Experimental, Structural, Learning, and Process Innovation", Montiel Méndez, O.J. and Alvarado, A.A. (Ed.) The Emerald Handbook of Entrepreneurship in Latin America, Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 87-102.
Pattermann, J., Pammer, M., Schlögl, S. & Gstrein, L. (2022). Perceptions of Digital Device Use and Accompanying Digital Interruptions in Blended Learning. Educ. Sci., 12, 215.
Punie, Y., Redecker, C., (2017) European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators: DigCompEdu. Publications Office of the European Union.
Quan-Haase, A. & Sloan, L. (ed.) (2022) The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods. SAGE Publications
Schmidt, S. & Brinks, V. (2017). Open Creative Labs: Spatial Settings at the Intersection of Communities and Organizations. Creativity and Innovation Management, 26(3), 291-299.
Symon, G., Pritchard, K. & Hine, C. (eds.) (2021). Research Methods for Digital Works & Organization. Oxford.
Tzafilkou, K., Perifanou, M. & Economides, A.A. (2022) Development and validation of students’ digital competence scale (SDiCoS). Int J Educ Technol High Educ 19, 30.
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