How to Motivate Digital Natives to Learn?

78
DC
X World Conference on Computers in Education
July 2-5, 2013; Toruń, Poland
How to Motivate Digital Natives to Learn?
Lech Własak, [email protected]
Marcin Jaczewski, [email protected]
Tomasz Dubilis, [email protected]
Tomasz Warda, [email protected]
Warsaw University of Technology, Armii Ludowej 16, 00-637 Warszawa, Poland
Abstract
The paper presents preliminary results of ongoing research focused on one of the
crucial questions of education – how to motivate digital natives to learn? Five recommendations are presented: becoming inspiring and motivating as a teacher, giving perfect presentations, sharing new knowledge and skills, giving knowledge and
skills useful in other subjects and also reverting students’ activities.
Keywords
digital natives, questionnaires, multimedia, reverted studies
SOME REMARKS ABOUT ONGOING RESEARCH
Research which results will be presented below has been started two years ago
from rather technical issues. Till that time multimedia in the form of two kinds of
podcasts (personal on demand broadcasts) – slidecast and screencast - were used
for the provision of two subjects: Applied Computer Sciences and Computing in Civil
Engineering. The two mentioned above kinds of podcasts have one common drawback – they do not allow two way communication. Webcast (a media file distributed
mainly live over the Internet using streaming media technology to many simultaneous listeners/viewers) enables two way communication and can be used for many
purposes in engineering education. It is a new instructional technology enabling
learners to participate in live event via personal computer. Three web-conferencing
platforms, based on open source licenses were tested: DimDim, OpenMeetings and
BigBlueButton. After months of test BigBlueButton was chosen and installed in production version. Starting from October 2012 it is fully integrated with faculty educational platform Moodle.
Data collected from questionnaires performed in academic year 2011/12 shows
that having full range of podcasts did not satisfy all students. On the other hand
teachers were also not fully pleased by the learning outcomes. This ended up with
fundamental question – how to motivate students to learn? This is still a very important and significant problem even there were many books written on that subject
(Brophy, 2010). The answer to this question is difficult when we consider digital natives who don’t care and who also think that they know everything (Mendler, 2000)
in the field of subjects like Applied Computer Sciences and Computing in Civil Engineering. Mendler presents one of the existing solutions – five key processes that
motivate: emphasizing effort, creating hope, respecting power, building relationships
and expressing enthusiasm (Mendler, 2000). But digital natives being real partners
for learning (Prensky, 2010) are difficult and demanding partners.
DC
79
Preliminary ideas how to motivate digital natives to learn can be summarized in
four following points. First of all teachers should be more motivating and inspiring
(Freeman & Scheidecker, 2012) especially in the fields digital natives think they
know excellent. Secondly teachers should provide students only with knowledge and
skills new for them. Repeating same things makes students more reluctant to gain
new knowledge. This could be easily achieved by questionnaires summarizing students’ knowledge in the very beginning of the course. Third point - giving knowledge
and skills useful while studying another subjects is not always easy and possible to
achieve. Last but not least, there is a very big chance to change the situation by
reverting students’ activities. Usually in traditional pedagogy students according to
Bloom’s inverted taxonomy use at the university lower order thinking skills like remembering, understanding and applying. On the other hand at home they are supposed to use higher order thinking skills like analyzing, creating and evaluating
which is in many cases too difficult for them. Reverting this situation means that students should work at home with podcasts which are passive from their nature and
solve at universities problems supervised by teachers playing roles of tutors.
First results from this academic year are positive and promising. Average result
from tests increased by approximately 5% and the number of students who failed
decreased. General students’ opinion about subjects using this concept is better
than before. As it could be supposed not all students were satisfied by this change.
There is still quite big group reluctant to work at home and prepare to classes by
watching podcasts. The only upsetting thing is the fact, that the idea of reverting
class and home activities is not absolute new. It is known as flipped classroom and
was already discovered (Bergmann & Sams, 2012). But the raised question how to
motivate digital natives to learn is still open.
References
Bergmann, J., & Sams, A. (2012). Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in
Every Class Every Day. International Society for Technology in Education.
Brophy, J. E. (2010). Motivating Students to Learn. Routledge.
Freeman, W., & Scheidecker, D. (2012). Becoming a Legendary Teacher: A Guide
to Inspiring and Excellence in the Classroom. Skyhorse Publishing.
Mendler, A. (2000). Motivating Students Who Don’t Care: Successful Techniques for
Educators. National Educational Service.
Prensky, M. R. (2010). Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning. Corwin
Biographies
Lech Własak, Marcin Jaczewski, Tomasz Dubilis
and Tomasz Warda are young researchers employed
by Faculty of Civil Engineering. Their scientific interests
cover not only Technology Enhanced Learning but also
such areas as: Building Information Modeling, Computational Mechanics, Network Security and High Performance Computing. They also teach such subjects as
Applied Computer Sciences and Computing in Civil
Engineering.
Copyright
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/