Educating digital natives to educate digital immigrants

2Inspire |2Imagine|2Integrate
Dr ChyeKok Ho | Faculty of Business & Design
Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak campus
Another initiative by Human Resource Interest Group
27 February 2013| 1430-1630 hrs | Room B005
EDUCATING DIGITAL NATIVES
[TO EDUCATE DIGITAL IMMIGRANTS]

ChyeKok HO
• Ever since I was little, I doubt how things
work.
• I went to England to qualify as a computer-
controlled systems engineer.
• Subsequently, I returned to England to
convert dumb machines into artificially
intelligent systems: became rather
“robotic” even with machine intelligence.
• Thereafter, I explore how people work at
organisation settings in South Asia. Lived
in the swamp for more than a decade.
• Went back to college in Melbourne
Australia to make sense of practice
• (Re)search on aspects of knowing and
learning to inquire into how people think,
work and how organisations live.

THIS AFTERNOON’S
DISCUSSION …
Transmitting & Constructing Knowledge
Working definitions of the four generations
Digital-Natives
Are we wired differently?
• What is the human brain?
• How we use our brain changes our brain
Teaching Machines
• Surrender learning to machines
• Machines to learn with, and not from
Constructivist as an education pedagogy
Pedagogy-led eEducation Framework
The Dark Side - Panoptic Learning
Ethics and Social Responsibility
What I have learnt …
Trophy kids, helicopter parents, and apron
strings
Panel Discussion

TRANSMITTING & CONSTRUCTING
KNOWLEDGE (@EDUCATION SETTINGS)
• In a transmission mode, learning as a means to an end
– Filling of empty vessel from domain expert to the learner
– Instructive and/or prescriptive
• In a construction mode, learning as an end
– Inquire into a priori knowledge acquired through personal
experience
– Personal interpretation of experiences in context, and can
never be fully transmitted
– Knowledge is constructed cognitively if and when in doubt
– Knowledge may also construct on the basis of what had
been told by others, as in social constructivism.
– Generates more questions than answers

WORKING DEFINITIONS
• Four Generations
– The Baby Boomers (Jan 1946 to Dec 1964) | Television
– Generation X (Jan 1965 to Dec 1976) | Computer
– Generation Y (Jan 1977 to Dec 1997) | Internet
– Generation Next (Jan 1998 to Present) | Apps
• People that are conversant with digital technology,
information and communication strategies and its
innovations are characterised as digital natives, and
those who are not are labelled as digital immigrants
(Prensky, 2001; Tapscott,1997; 2009).

Education
Pedagogy
Digital
Natives
eEducation
Framework
Teaching
Machines
Learning
Styles
Heuristics
Distance
Education

DIGITAL NATIVES (PRENSKY, 2001)
• Demand immediate and parallel processing of
information;
• Multi-tasking of activities;
• Visuals as the mode of communication;
• Hyperlinks and random access to textual information;
• Instant recognition and reward; and
• Education perceived as fun rather than as work.

DIGITAL NATIVES (TAPSCOTT, 2009)
• They want freedom in everything they do, from
freedom of choice to freedom of expression
• They love to customise, personalise, and are the new
scrutinisers
• They want entertainment and play in their work,
education, and social life
• They are the collaboration and relationship generation
• They have a need for speed, not only in video games

DIGITAL-NATIVE LEARNERS
• Our students are born digital (Palfrey & Gasser, 2008)
and have “grown up digital” (Tapscott, 2009)
• They are the first generation of digital natives that live
much of their lives on-line
• They learn differently from the way their parents (or
grandparents) did when they were growing up
• Research is more likely to be a Google (Scholar) search
and/or a Wikipedia exploration than a trip to the brick
and mortar library (Palfrey and Gasser, 2008:5)

DIGITAL NATIVE STUDENTS AND
DIGITAL IMMIGRANT LECTURER
• Is there a significant misalignment of personalities
between the students and the lecturer?
• The research question:
“Does education need to cater fully to the
learning styles of digital natives, or should the
digital natives learn the habits of formal
structures and culture of education that has been
successfully constructed by digital immigrants”

DO WE REALLY NEED TO BRIDGE THE
CULTURE DIVIDE BETWEEN NATIVES &
IMMIGRANTS?
Regardless of whether they are digital natives or
otherwise,
Can we design learning environments
which will engage learners that construct
knowledge, learn in communities and
make sense of the reality?

HOW WE USE OUR BRAIN CHANGES OUR
BRAIN (DOIGDE, 2007)
• What is the human brain?
• Mind-as-container?
• A computer hardwired with certain
fixed properties and abilities?
• A network, like the internet, always
changing and highly interactive?
• A Samsung Galaxy 3 (or an iPhone),
with certain basic communication
functions bundled with it, and has
apps for just about everything?
• Are we wired differently?
• Complicated neural circuitry stirring
in between our ears
• Neural shaping and shearing

TEACHING MACHINES AS SURROGATES
• Teaching machines pre-programmed with heuristic rules may ask
questions to determine if students understand and remember the
information that were embedded in the technology.
• The role of students is to learn pre-programmed information stored on
the artificially-intelligent delivery and assessment technology, just as
they would have otherwise learnt by physically attending the lectures.
• Teaching machines relieve teachers from repetitive work by reinforcing
student learning behaviours.
• The effectiveness and efficiency of teaching machines as learning tools
such that students can learn from by rote and/or the replication of
information from presentations into pre-programmed packages are
questionable (Jonassen, Peck and Wilson, 1999).

SURRENDER LEARNING TO TEACHING MACHINES
• Digital technology alters the things people think about; the
things people think with; and the domain in which thoughts
develop (Postman, 1993).
• Information and Communications Technology (ICT) are:
– Transforming teaching and learning pedagogy (Newman,
Couturier & Scurry, 2004), and
– Impacting on the entire education delivery and support
processes (Marek, Sibbald, and Bagher, 2006)
• On-line learning is marked by a “juxtaposition of new
technology and old pedagogy” (Levy, 2005)

MACHINES TO LEARN WITH, NOT FROM
• Students learn when they exploit technology as cognitive tools
while leveraging on artificially-intelligent machines for
information access and data storage, and computation and
retrieval purposes.
• New media platforms, such as Wikipedia, Blackboard, Sakai,
YouTube, Facebook; the mind tools of Microsoft Office, Prezi,
and the virtual world of Second Life are additional scaffolds that
stimulate human cognition to make sense of reality.
• Thinking with teaching machines brings about a qualitative
shift in the mental activity of students because it provides a
dynamic scaffold for influencing and activating the thought
processes (Jonassen and Carr, 2000).

MACHINE-LED eEDUCATION

BLENDED LEARNING?
• “The thoughtful fusion of face-to-face and on-line learning …
optimally integrated such that the strength of each are
blended into unique learning experience congruence with the
context and intended educational purpose” (Garrison and
Vaughan, 2008:5)
• It may have lost its way because of its “one size fits all” mentality
(Mason and Rennie, 2006:xxxii)
• Traditional campus-based institutions see the potential of on-
line learning in terms of access and serving more students
instead of serving current students better (Garrison and
Vaughan, 2008:7)

CONSTRUCTIVIST PEDAGOGY
Independent and reflective learners with the confidence and skills to
apply appropriate teaching and learning strategies to construct
knowledge, shared meanings, and understanding
– Socratic method of teaching and learning … accurate definitions, clear
thinking, and exact analysis
– Learning by doing … actively engaged in the process of inquiry (Dewey) to
make sense of experience
• Inquiry ensures core concepts are constructed and assimilated in a deep
and meaningful manner
• Teach less, learn more …
– Problem-based learning (PBL) … learning to learn through case studies,
scenarios, and simulations
– Social interaction to construct shared meanings and understanding involving
learners in communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991)

PEDAGOGY-LED eEDUCATION

DISCIPLINARY GROUPINGS
(ADAPTED FROM CULLEN ET AL., 1994)

THE DARK SIDE - PANOPTIC LEARNING
• Idea originates from a seventeen century architectural
innovation of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, known as seeing
without being seen (Jacobs and Heracleous, 2001)
– Based on the principle of central inspection, an architecturally and managerially
innovative model prison was designed, and its uses extended to institutions built
under the same principles and with a similar purpose.
• Fear is an uneasiness of the mind (John Locke)
– Indiscriminate digital tracking and cyber stalking of students
invoke social and ethical dilemma, especially when initiating
and creating educational spaces within a virtual environment
(Sheehy, Ferguson, and Clough, 2008).
• Machine learning is essentially panoptic in nature.
• The school is a prison (Foucault, 1977)

ETHICS & SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
• Ensure an appropriate level of confidentiality and security for
on-line resources and communications
– Learning materials in on-line learning environments are
published and therefore more widely disseminated
– Rights regarding learning materials will be eroded or
infringed
– It is persistent, so that it may be read and referred long after
the event to which it relates (Littlejohn and Pegler, 2007:215)
• Privacy, Information and Property Rights
– Moral right of individuals to be left alone, free from
surveillance or interference from others

WHAT I HAVE LEARNT …
• Ubiquitous teaching and learning
– Managing time and resources
– Learning about and learning to be
• Knowing that, knowing how, and knowing why
– Rote learning, critical thinking, and contrary thinking
• Absorption capacity between the learner and the learned
– Attention blindness and distraction
– One size fits one
• The passion in learning is embedded in assignments
• Facilitate on-line learning persistently
– If we keeping pouring “water” on the students, they will eventually get “wet”
– Engage students in new media platforms

TROPHY KIDS, HELICOPTER PARENTS AND
APRON STRINGS (ALSOP, 2008:73)
• Today’s parents remain intimately involved with
their digital-native trophy kids from the cradle to the
workplace …
• Helicopter parents most frequently intervene during
the school years, lobbying teachers for higher grades
and helping trophy kids apply for college, and
deciding on their professional discipline.
• Some trophy kids desire more independence but find
it difficult to wean themselves from their parents

Some Ideas on Total
Engagement of
Digital Natives
 Games and virtual worlds as
part of curriculum enhancement
strategies
 Teaching & learning styles to
embrace new media platforms
 Passion learning embedded in
assignments
 Revisit students’ assessments
 Exploit tablets as an enabler in
teaching and learning
 Cognition & learning-by-doing

INSPIRE2LEAD | IMAGINE2CREATE | INTEGRATE2GLOBALISE

Educating digital natives to educate digital immigrants

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