Theoretical background&Research Rationales

RELEVANCE OF THE TOPIC

In the last decade a huge literature has been produced in order to understand how people learn in the knowledge society – also known as society of information and communication, because of the widespread diffusion of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in whatever aspect of daily life, not excluded learning.

Mostly coming from the United States, the dominant theory path is built around the two label-concepts of “digital natives” and “generation Y” (or “net generation”); the “Y” persons have the main characteristic to have grown up with ICTs and to have developed a “different” way to think and learn, just because the new technologies permeated their lives; in average scholars consider “digital natives” people born after 1980.

“GENERATION Y” LABELS

A lot of labels have been invented and all of them refer (explicitly or implicitly) to the idea of a digitalized/technologized generation: Digital Natives (Prensky, 2001), Generation Y (Howe&Strauss 1991), Net generation (Junco & Mastrodicasa 2007), Millennials (Howe&Strauss 2000), New Millennium Learners (Pedrò, 2006), Screen Generation (Rivoltella, 2006), Digital Learner (Pletka, 2007), Echo Boomers (from US newspapers), Net-agers (from the internet). One of the main purpose of the proposed research is to suggest an overcoming of this labeling-system because it has two main weaknesses

MAIN CRITICS

Recently this idea has been criticized (Schulmeister, 2008; Bennett et alii, 2008), for the following main reasons:

- The characteristic of “digital” fits well for objects, but it seems to be inaccurate if referring to human beings. Furthermore, it has became a fashion concept because it is very charming and – nowadays – everything risks to be called “digital”.

- The concept of “generation” must be reconducted to its proper meaning, while “a bunch of people” it is not a generation, even if they use all the same technologies.

- This perspective seems to be quite deterministic, because pretend to describe persons (and their behaviors, habits and beliefs) and it tries to forecast how they will learn and behave, simply moving from the evidence that they grew up in a world permeated by technologies.

- However, we must remember that the most part of books and articles come from the United States and it could be a dangerous assumption to extend their analyses to other countries.

- Moreover, this perspective is deeply influencing instructional designers all-over-the-world, because a lot of books have been published claiming “how to teach people in the digital era” which again, has to be proved effective and sound in very different contexts.

Then, moving from the need to go beyond this vision of ICTs in learning experiences because it is US-centred and inadequate to express the complexity of the reality it tries to interpret, at NewMinE Lab a new perspective is being explored, proposing a situated approach, context related, based on local/peculiar observations which combine quantitative and qualitative research methods (Rapetti & Cantoni, 2009).

Actually, the present research proposal is developed within the framework of a wider study aiming to overcome the Gen Y dominant perspective (see: “e-ethnography project” at http://www.newmine.org/?page_id=97); in that research, learning experiences of “digital natives” facing ICTs have been studied both in the University context and in six Swiss companies.

DIGITAL NATIVES AND DIGITAL DIVIDE

A crucial point of the proposed work concerns the “ICT4D” research path and the attention devoted in considering the so-called “digital divide” issue (Kinuthia, Marshall, Taylor 2009); that topic is considered in two directions, transversally, the digital divide between generations (observed with an anthropological-pedagogical perspective) and the one between countries (observed with the ICT4D perspective). On this purpose, even recent studies underline that «The ‘digital divide’ continues to perpetuate itself despite the increasing spread of technology among the socially weaker classes and educationally deprived families. ‘The web is the medium of the better educated’» (Schulmeister, 2008).

WHY THE UWIOC?

The last rationale behind this proposal implies to explain why the UWIOC condition is considered strategic for the research itself: being a reality in which 15 countries-islands are served by one open campus (that, in 12 cases, is the only chance to access university), it is considered a context in which the eLearning way to teach and learn is really and structurally needed and it is not provided vaguely because “digital natives must be taught digitally”.

It must be considered that among the different Caribbean islands there is a remarkable difference of conditions, referring to economic, population density, history, as well as concerning the technological development. So, it is important to consider and relevant to observe this disparity for the research aims. In the following table is shown, as sample about this issue, the different ranking about “Digital Opportunity”, provided by the World Information Society.

Table: Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) 2005/2006 (in yellow, the countries will be observed in the research)

(from: World Information Society Report 2007

http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/publications/worldinformationsociety/2007/WISR07-DOIworld.pdf)