International Journal of Transmedia Literacy (IJTL). Vol 3 (2017). Transmedia Skills. Education and Learning in the Age of Emerging Competencies

AA. VV., Dianora Bardi, Matteo Ciastellardi, Giovanna Di Rosario, Dianora Bardi, Matteo Ciastellardi, Giovanna Di Rosario

• Editore: LED Edizioni Universitarie
• Anno: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9788879169042
• Argomento: Lingue e linguistica
• Categoria: Studi sulla comunicazione

The use of collaborative media engages people in a continuous process of learning and exchange, favouring the emergence of new skills and competencies that no longer belong only to the traditional assets of literacy, such as schools and families. Every generation develops blended competences under the influence of new tools and communication frameworks. On the one hand, most people have started to define their own social life-streams using the Internet, social networks, and personal (wearable) devices in different environments: at school, at work, at home, for leisure and spare time. On the other hand, technologies and digitalbased learning represent just one side of the education process. The comfort that (the uses of) technologies offer often creates a false sense of successful education if technologies are not adopted in a transversal way to properly support learning activities and the growth of transdisciplinary competencies. This issue of the IJTL observes, describes, and analyses how education, in both formal and informal learning environments, can rethink, reconsider, and reinvent technologies, social practices, traditional environments and collaborative media, in order to offer transversal learning strategies favouring emerging competences and transmedia skills. Six articles approach education and transmedia skills from different points of view presenting experiences, case studies, and practices in Europe, South America, and Asia.

“Now I Do Academic Fast Food”: Grad Students in the ICT’s Era

Joaquín Linne

CONICET, University of Buenos Aires, University of Lanus, Argentina

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7358/ijtl-2017-001-linn

[email protected]

ABSTRACT – Together with the widespread use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), global changes have taken place in most social environments. This article stands at the intersection of communication and education studies, by investigating the introduction and use of ICTs in students’ learning and everyday life. The aim of our research, indeed, is to explore the transformations in learning and academic information processing habits among students part of the School of Philosophy and Literature and that of Social Sciences at Buenos Aires University. Methodologically, we gathered targeted interviews with students and professors from said faculties (n: 140). Moreover, we undertook on-site observations at university libraries and virtual observations on social network sites and university websites. From the findings a paradox concerning the intensive use of ICTs emerges: greater accessibility, availability and information exchange lead to degrees of ‘distraction’, ‘superficiality’ and ‘speed’ in the fruition and circulation of content. Based on a native category, we have come to call this tendency “academic fast food”.

1.INTRODUCTION

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become globally widespread and are now affecting everyday life in most social contexts (Castells 2009). Also, they are a key asset of today’s communication, particularly among young people, contributing to generate new ways to access, process and manipulate information (Urresti 2008). These new practices have been referred to in different ways within social sciences. One of the most accepted conceptualizations is that of “culture of convergence” (Jenkins 2008), which stresses how cultural concepts increasingly tend to converge around ICTs, since the most dynamic areas of society (services and finance) are interconnected through digital networks (Castells 2009). This phenomenon expands until Internet 2.0 is developed, which refers, among other features, to the use on a mass scale of “social networking sites” (henceforth, SNSs; Boyd and Ellison 2008) and the emergence of collaborative platforms.

Within this context, our research question is how the use of ICTs impacts on the learning and daily practices of university students. To this end, we have developed two axes: 1) communication among fellow college students and between professors and students; and 2) how college students deal with the retrieval and production of academic information, as the writing and delivery of summaries, assignments, term tests, papers, articles, theses and dissertations. Lastly, this article aims to explore the study practices of students, notably those enrolled at the School of Philosophy and Literature and the School of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires.

2.METHODOLOGY

In this qualitative study we carried out a mixed ethnography relying on tools from both “traditional” ethnography (Symon & Cassell 1994) and “virtual ethnography” (Hine 2000). During the first semester of 2012, we conducted some on-campus observations attending for two months, on a weekly basis and at different times, the libraries of the School of Philosophy and Literature and that of the School of Social Sciences. We especially focused on how students used their cell phones, laptops and the desktop computers in the libraries. Furthermore, as young people are increasingly immersed in digital environments (Livingstone 2008; Urresti 2008), we deemed relevant to use ‘cyber ethnographic’ tools (Farquhar 2013) to complement our methodological strategy. Notably, we have conducted some virtual observations on Web forums and SNSs, thus adding a further layer to our investigation of academic students online practices, quest, and processing of information.

Concerning interviews, between 2012 and 2015 we conducted 120 targeted interviews with college students. Firstly, we interviewed acquaintances from these faculties. Then, we approached students directly in the libraries or in the Faculty premises. We also contacted those who voluntarily agreed to be interviewed so that they too could take part in the research. Our corpus comprises of students between the age of 20 and 29. Besides, at both Schools we conducted 20 targeted interviews with professors whose age range goes from thirty to forty years old. The names of all interviewees have been hindered for privacy reasons.

We conducted interviews with 60 students from the School of Social Sciences and 60 from the School of Philosophy and Literature. Even though the corpus was evenly split between males and females, no significant gender-related discrepancies were detected concerning the use of ICTs. The participants were middle-class residents of Buenos Aires. In line with the National Institute of Statistics and Census (2012), we define middle-class young people as those who have parents with a secondary level education or higher, hold medium or high qualification jobs and live in houses with basic public services.

Since this is a non-probabilistic sample, the results of the study cannot be extrapolated to the whole universe of study. However, we claim that this research is useful for outlining emerging tendencies at the intersection of communication and education studies, especially with regard to students’ use of ICTs.

3.STATE OF THE ART

Our participants can be said to be all ‘digital natives’ (Prensky 2001); in this respect they share not only the habit of multitasking but also the condition of ‘prosumers’, that is, of both consuming and producing online content (Urresti 2008; Piscitelli 2009). As Albarello puts it,

The computer has succeeded television as totem, but with the difference that digital natives find in it a different meaning and project onto this device a great number of expectations linked to play, experimenting, learning and sociability, to the point of regarding it as a part of their identity. (Albarello 2011, 38)

Excluding adolescents, those who spend the highest amount of time on the Internet are college students, who still bear the aura of learners and who, because of that, are extended a ‘social moratorium’ beyond the limits of the ‘vital moratorium’ (Margulis, Urresti, Lewin et al. 1998). In other words, their status and condition grant them more time to go online, differently from their working peers and those belonging to previous generations (Urresti 2008). On the Internet, adolescents mostly use SNSs, particularly Facebook and Twitter. Overall, SNSs can be considered as multi-purpose platforms where users share information through their public or semipublic profiles in order to interact with their close contacts as well as with their more latent ties (Haythornwaite 2005; López and Ciuffoli 2012). On these sites, the most popular content posted by young people consists of texts and personal photographs (Linne 2014).

When it comes, more broadly, to address the human-technology relation we witness a certain polarization of the positions at stake. Eco (1968) was the first to posit such polarization as follows: on the one hand, we have ‘apocalyptic’ people, who associate technical advances with the degradation of culture; on the other hand, we find the ‘integrated’ ones, that is, the enthusiasts of technological change imposed by scientific progress in association with companies and public bodies. Albarello (2011) redefines these two positions with the terms ‘technophiles’ and ‘technophobes’, and adds a third position, the neutral one, according to which technology is neither good nor bad, but depends on how it is used. On this same point, Landow (1995, 211) claims that “a technology always confers power on someone; it gives power to those who possess it, to those who use it and to those who have access to it.” Although (or maybe because) ICTs are increasingly widespread worldwide, they still kindle opposing views between those who think of them as beneficial and those who think they may have deleterious effects. We suggest that this dichotomy can be productive in the context of our analysis.

For instance, multitasking, which refers to the practice of doing many tasks simultaneously (for example, chatting and studying), means to some people the positive dismantling of binary mental tools inherited from nineteenth-century culture (Baricco 2009) whereas to others it entails distraction and a decrease in productivity, especially in relation to schools and work environments (Healy 1998). Thus, while Berardi (2007) warns against the risk of homogenization and alienation of bodies, researchers such as Landow (1995) and Shirky (2010) highlight the unprecedented freedom and the potential development of collective intelligence enabled by hypertextual communication and information genres.

More generally, supporters of the Internet stress the fact that users are now free to choose across a wide variety of content, resulting in empowered citizenships and the possibility for minorities to be heard. On the other hand, Internet naysayers mention the false egalitarianism promoted by technology, claiming that the Internet is controlled by the same corporations that control traditional mass media. Also, they stress the addiction produced by video games, pornography and social networks (Carr 2008), compounded by the ease with which child pornography and menacing content of terrorist networks can be disseminated, or also the spreading of cyberbullism such as the publication of intimate, private content without the owner’s consent (Livingstone 2008). In other words, the Internet may turn into a space for liberation as much as domination (Lago Martínez 2012). It could be suggested that, at present, the Web is neither a space of total freedom, nor one of exclusive State or corporate control, but basically the medium by means of which most people express themselves and get informed (Castells 2009).

As most professors and students have their own computers or smartphones in class, the debate about the impact of technologies in school learning is at its peak, and other perspectives come to enrich the polarization described above. Those who emphasize the positive effects of ICTs indicate that each generation is more digital than the one that came before (Negroponte 1995), that more texts are read than ever before and that there are more texts available to be accessed and read (Baricco 2009; Piscitelli 2009). They also value the advent of ICTs in class as tools to promote nonlinear self-directed, interactive, simultaneous learning open to the senses (Negroponte 1995; Reinghold 1996; Cassany and Ayala 2008). By contrasts, other scholars stress the obstacles and new problems that such a phenomenon poses (Berardi 2007; Levis 2009; Palazzo 2010). Specifically, these scholars warn that people do not read any more, that the Internet diminishes the quality of reading and writing, and that it makes us more superficial (Sibilia 2008). Concerning college students, these authors suggest that hypertextual reading impairs their capacity to remember data while the distraction generated by multitasking negatively affects their academic performance.

To sum up, it is possible to witness positions that underline either negative or positive aspects in the use of ICTs especially within learning contexts. Our article unpacks precisely such opposition: as with other technologies, the value and usefulness of ICTs depends on its uses and how it is re-appropriated. Moreover, insofar as there is a notable corpus of studies analysing the genesis and architecture of digital devices, we consider our work as a specific contribution to such corpus from the perspective of young generations’ learning practices.

4.RESULTS

4.1.Frequency

Interviewees spend an average of 7 hours per day online. The most frequent users confess to spending “over 12 hours a day”, “all day”, “all the time”, “all the time I am at home or close to a computer” or “from the time I get up till I go to bed”. On the other hand, a minority of participants claim to stay connected less than one hour per day. Whereas the average for Social Sciences students is 8 hours daily, those of Philosophy and Literature average 6 hours. Partly, this difference may be due to larger course loads, the greater number of mandatory final exams and the lesser use of ICTs in courses of Philosophy and Literature as compared with those of Social Sciences, which usually focus more on the study of communication practices and statistics in the context of media ecology.

The most active students are normally bloggers or frequent SNSs users. They tend to be readers of digital-format news and to consume various audio-visual contents. These users generally have a greater level of presumption in their daily media diet, insofar as they not only stay connected longer, but they eventually produce content of their own at some point, even if this means to simply post on their personal Facebook profiles. Also, immersed as they are in ‘bedroom culture’ (Livingstone 2008), it is the computer (or other devices) to dictate their routines and time schedules. This ‘bedroom culture’ is an apt example of what we understand by digital environments, that is, a galaxy of digital devices which young people build for/around themselves largely consisting of a desktop or laptop computer, an mp3 player, a smartphone and, sometimes, a tablet. ‘media ecology’ (Horst, Herr-Stephenson & Robinson 2010) In fact, the students of our sample normally live in media-rich houses where a variety of technological devices are a...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title
• Invited Editors’ Profiles
• Introduction
• ARTICLES
• EXPERIENCES