Abstract
<p>Some authors have stated that university students born after 1982 have been profoundly influenced by digital technologies, showing different characteristics when compared to previous generations. However, it is worth asking if that is a current observable phenomenon. Are those students born after the 80s really more familiar with ICT tools than those born in previous generations? Do they show different study habits and learning paths? Different research lines (Kennedy, et al., 2010; Bennett, Maton, &amp; Kervin, 2008; Gros, García, &amp; Escofet, 2012) highlight that scientific data is rarely used when discussing this generation’s characteristics; however, none of them have proved in statistical terms that college students do not fit in the Net Generation characteristics and that their habits of ICT use in social and professional activities do not differ from older generations. The international research project, Digital Learners in Higher Education, seeks to develop a sophisticated and evidence-based understanding of university learners in different institutional contexts and the perception of cultures in their use of technology in a social and educational context. Data has been collected from four institutions in Canada and Spain: the British Columbia Institute of Technology, the University of Regina, the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), and the University Rovira i Virgili. In order to develop this project, we used a multi-case study embedded design (Yin, 2009). The UOC’s case is deeply analysed in this paper to affirm that the Net Generation is more speculative than real and that includes students’ perception about this phenomenon, and guidelines are proposed in an eLearning context.</p>
Highlights
Nowadays, there is a trend to claim the existence of a new generation that has been brought up surrounded by the mass media and technology (Oblinger & Oblinger 2005; Palfrey & Gasser, 2008; Prensky, 2005; Tapscott, 2009; Bajt, 2011)
Bearing in mind that the case study method needs a unit of analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Rowley, 2002), this paper addresses and analyses a selected group of students of the University of Catalonia (UOC)
Our research supports the necessity to break the generational line between our students: Based on the analysis of the data, we can generally affirm that there is very little difference between the characteristics of Net Generation and non-Net Generation learners at the UOC
Summary
There is a trend to claim the existence of a new generation that has been brought up surrounded by the mass media and technology (Oblinger & Oblinger 2005; Palfrey & Gasser, 2008; Prensky, 2005; Tapscott, 2009; Bajt, 2011). Some authors assure that this generation’s experience with technology gives them a deeper and more intuitive knowledge of ICT This fact is supposed to affect their learning in that they seem to have different thinking paths (Tapscott, 1998; Jukes 2009). The Net Generation is supposed to have been in contact with ICT since their early childhood, being capable of adapting quickly to the changes linked to the technological revolution. Different authors labelled this generation by trying to define their chronological context as well as their characteristics. Not feeling comfortable with the label “Generation”, and according to their belonging to the educational context, we use the term Digital Learners (Bullen et al, 2008; Romero et al, 2011) to refer to them
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