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Title: Undergraduate Students' Academic Information and Help-Seeking Behaviours using an Anonymous Facebook Confessions Page
Contributor(s): Hayman Richard (author); Smith Erika E. (author); Storrs Hannah (author)
Date issued: 2018
Description: This research examines undergraduate students’ academic help-seeking behaviours by mining anonymous posts from a university Facebook Confessions page. From a dataset of 2,712 public posts, researchers identified 708 Confessions (26.1%) that supported student-student learning exchanges. Using a mixed methods methodology informed by a social constructivist framework, analysis of these social media interactions demonstrates that students use Confessions posts to legitimately inform their undergraduate learning and support their academic experience. Researchers conclude that Facebook Confessions can enable rich academic help-seeking and other information behaviours, and that these sites...
Appears in collection(s): University Library; Teaching and Learning

Title: Walking Backwards in to the Future: Ensuring the Success of Games for Learning
Contributor(s): Becker Katrin (author)
Date issued: 2014
Description: "Most of us prefer to walk backward into the future, a posture that may be uncomfortable but which at least allows us to keep on looking at familiar things as long as we can." ~ Charles Handy Formal education moves at geological speeds, and that's lucky for us, because games for learning really aren't ready for prime time, and it's not for the first time. During the 'Edutainment Era' of the late 1980's and early 1990’s computer games were proclaimed as the modern solution to all our educational ills. In order to take advantage of this great technology, all we needed to do was wrap a game around a lesson, and it would magically become fun. This, of course, is not true, and the resultant...
Appears in collection(s): Health, Community and Education

Title: The Clark-Kozma Debate in the 21-st Century
Contributor(s): Becker Katrin (author)
Date issued: 2010
Description: This paper takes a fresh look at the Clark/Kozma debate from the perspective of 21st century new media technologies in general and serious games in particular. After a brief re-cap of the key elements of the debate, a relatively recent article by R.E.Clark is summarized that brings serious games into the conversation. Clark’s allegations are addressed and the case is made that digital games form a distinct medium that can not easily be lumped in with other educational technologies. The author draws on over a decade of personal experience teaching with games to move the debate to the next level and offer some recommendations for when and how games can be used effectively in formal contexts.
Appears in collection(s): Health, Community and Education

Title: The Invention of Good Games: Understanding Learning Design in Commercial Videogames
Contributor(s): Becker Katrin (author)
Date issued: 2008
Description: This work sought to help inform the design of educational digital games by the studying the design of successful commercial videogames. The main thesis question was: How does a commercially and critically successful modern video game support the learning that players must accomplish in order to succeed in the game (i.e. get to the end or win)? This work takes a two-pronged approach to supporting the main argument, which is that the reason we can learn about designing educational games by studying commercial games is that people already learn from games and the best ones are already quite effective at teaching players what they need to learn in order to succeed in the game. The first part...
Appears in collection(s): Science and Technology

Title: The Digital Native Debate in Higher Education: A Comparative Analysis of Recent Literature
Contributor(s): Smith Erika E. (author)
Date issued: 2012
Description: More than a decade after Prensky’s influential articulation of digital natives and immigrants, disagreement exists around these characterizations of students and the impact of such notions within higher education. Perceptions of today’s undergraduate learners as tech-savvy “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001a), who both want and need the latest emerging technologies in all learning situations, continue to dominate the discourse in educational technology research and practice. Popular yet controversial conceptions of digital natives continue to be embedded within the assumptions of several contemporary research studies on student perceptions of emerging technologies, seemingly without regard...
Appears in collection(s): Teaching and Learning

Title: Exploring Undergraduate Perceptions of Meaning Making and Social Media in their Learning
Contributor(s): Smith Erika E. (author)
Date issued: 2016
Description: Those concerned with teaching and learning in higher education and the Net generation’s perspectives on and uses of technology must address calls to move beyond the digital native debate (Bennett & Maton, 2010; Kennedy, Judd, Dalgarno, & Waycott, 2010) by asking students directly what they see as a meaningful part of their learning. This study aims to move beyond the digital native debate by developing research-informed understandings of the ways in which Net generation students may perceive technologies, specifically social media, to be a meaningful part of their undergraduate learning. The research questions guiding this study include: (RQ1) In what ways do undergraduate learners from...
Appears in collection(s): Teaching and Learning

Title: From Digital Natives to Digital Literacy: Anchoring Digital Practices through Learning Design
Contributor(s): Erika E. Smith (author); Renate Kahlke (author); Terry Judd (author)
Date issued: 2018
Description: While the academic community and the general public often refer to learners today as inherently tech-savvy digital natives, those in the educational technology community have long advocated for a move away from digital native stereotypes in favour of fostering digital literacy. As such, the educational technology community can play a vital role in shifting from popular conceptions of digital natives and toward developing digital literacy for the benefit of all learners. In this paper, we provide a comparative analysis of search data from Google Trends showing continued use of the term digital natives and the rising interest in digital literacy. In order to help educators move away from...
Appears in collection(s): Teaching and Learning

Title: Social media in undergraduate learning: categories and characteristics
Contributor(s): Smith Erika E. (author)
Date issued: 2017
Description: This study investigates the core categories and characteristics of the social media technologies (SMTs) that undergraduate students choose to use in their own learning, outside of the formal curriculum. Within a mixed method research methodology, this inquiry employed 30 semi-structured interviews and an online survey (N = 679) to explore why and how undergraduates across disciplines view SMTs to be a meaningful part of their own university learning. Together, the qualitative and quantitative results demonstrate that several contextual relationships exist, including an important relationship between the particular ways of meaning making students identified and the specific social media...
Appears in collection(s): Teaching and Learning

Title: "A Real Double-Edged Sword:" Undergraduate Perceptions of Social Media in their Learning
Contributor(s): Smith Erika E. (author)
Date issued: 2016
Description: This study investigates undergraduate perceptions of the social media technologies (SMTs) they use in their learning. This mixed methods inquiry employed 30 semi-structured interviews and an online survey (N = 679) to explore why and how undergraduates from across disciplines view SMTs to be a meaningful part of their university learning. Findings shed new insights into student perspectives on and uses of social media, and the variety of ways in which undergraduates intentionally choose (or, choose not) to incorporate social media into their university learning in meaningful ways. Student perceptions formed an overarching theme of social media as a double-edged sword that both informs and...
Appears in collection(s): Teaching and Learning

Title: Gamification: A Different Paradigm of Pedagogy
Contributor(s): Becker Katrin (author)
Date issued: 2014
Description: In a recent online presentation Charles M. Reigeluth, he said that the future of Ed Tech would require a change of paradigm of pedagogy. Gamification is one such new pedagogy that can be implemented without the need for institutional systemic change. ‘Gamification’ is the use of game elements in non-game contexts and since the term’s first appearance in 2006, it has become a trending topic on many education forums. This presentation reports on the gamification of 2 university courses: one a grad-level education course and the other a freshman computer course. While many aspects of gamification are *not* new, some are, and when taken together create a pedagogy that could be one of...
Appears in collection(s): Health, Community and Education

Title: Decision Making and Problems of Evidence for Emerging Educational Technologies
Contributor(s): Smith Erika E. (author); Hayman Richard (author)
Date issued: 2016
Description: With the ever-expanding range of emerging educational technologies that could be introduced to learning environments, making evidence-informed decisions about whether and how to effectively use e-learning tools for pedagogical purposes is a critical yet challenging task. How can educators, learners, and administrators make informed decisions about the use of particular emerging technologies to achieve desired pedagogical transformation when, due to their relative newness, there is often a perceived lack of available and “up-to-the-minute” research on the latest technological trends that may impede evidence-based educational practice? This is a key problem of evidence for technology use in...
Appears in collection(s): Teaching and Learning; University Library

Title: Sustainable decision making for emerging educational technologies in libraries
Contributor(s): Hayman Richard (author); Smith Erika E. (author)
Date issued: 2015
Description: Purpose: The purpose of this article is to discuss approaches to sustainable decision-making for integrating emerging educational technologies in library instruction while supporting evidence-based practice (EBP) Design/methodology/approach: This article highlights recent trends in emerging educational technologies and EBP and details a model for supporting evidence informed decision-making. This viewpoint article draws on an analysis of recent literature, as well as experience from professional practice. Findings: Authors discuss the need for sustainable decision-making that addresses a perceived lack of evidence surrounding emerging technologies, a dilemma that many library educators...
Appears in collection(s): University Library; Teaching and Learning

Title: Information behaviour of undergraduate students using Facebook Confessions for educational purposes
Contributor(s): Hayman Richard (author); Smith Erika E. (author); Storrs Hannah (author)
Date issued: 2019
Description: Introduction -- This research investigates the information behaviour of undergraduate students seeking academic help via anonymous posts to a university Facebook Confessions page. While Confessions pages have gained popularity in post-secondary contexts, their use for educational purposes is largely unexplored. Method -- Researchers employed a mixed methods content analysis to investigate information behaviour and the thematic contents of the 2,712 confessions posted during one academic year. Analysis -- Using generic qualitative strategies informed by constructivist grounded theory, as well as quantitative descriptive statistical procedures, researchers found that 708 (26.1%) of these...
Appears in collection(s): University Library; Teaching and Learning

Title: Are Adult Educators and Learners ‘Digital Immigrants’? Examining the Evidence and Impacts for Continuing Education
Contributor(s): Smith Erika E. (author)
Date issued: 2013
Description: Over the past decade, Prensky’s distinctions between “digital immigrants” and “digital natives” have been oft-referenced. Much has been written about digital native students as a part of the Net generation or as Millennials. However, little work fully considers the impact of digital immigrant discourse within the fields of adult learning and continuing education. It is promising that rather than being digitally challenged immigrants for whom new learning technologies are completely foreign, adults of different ages can bring valuable knowledge and skills to e-learning environments that enable them to achieve academic success. These are important findings, since e-learning is increasingly...
Appears in collection(s): Teaching and Learning