Digitally Enabled Teaching Blog Takeover: Myths and misconceptions: Digitally enabled teaching & students

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 By Briana Chapple

Now we turn to students! Perhaps even more than teaching staff, there are a lot of generally unhelpful myths and assumptions surrounding students and the use of digitally-enhanced strategies or tools for learning and teaching.

Some of the most common misconceptions that arise in UKHE settings might resonate with your experiences and knowledge of students at University. You might partially believe some of these yourself, or you might have heard colleagues or even other students referring to them. There is obviously nuance surrounding these that is beyond the scope of this post, but as a starting point, here are three to think about…

Students use social media so it makes sense to use that
A black and white AI generated image in the style of a newspaper cartoon. It portrays an ageing lecturer stood at the front of his class, speaking directly to his phone. The caption is 'From now on, I will be livestreaming my lectures on Twitch".


There’s a lot we need to consider here, but a few key considerations if you’re tempted to use social media platforms in teaching:

  1. Familiarity with certain types of technologies in one context does not necessarily translate into students using technology effectively in different contexts to support learning (Cohen & Hewitt, 2019). Just because they use TikTok, doesn’t mean they know how to use it effectively for revision or presenting arguments.
  2. Social media tools have been created for particular purposes, not necessarily educational. It might seem like a straight-forward way to engage or connect with students, but are they fit for purpose in terms of what you want to do? The skills you want students to develop?
  3. Social media tools are generally not approved by the University for use because of GDPR and potential security risks of these platforms. Make sure code of practice and acceptable use policies are followed.

Find out more about University supported and unsupported digital learning tools. If you want to use any currently unapproved tools, you can submit an approval request to the University.

If I put teaching content on Blackboard, students won’t turn up for live sessions
A black and white AI generated image in the style of a newspaper cartoon. It portrays a student stood in a empty lecture. The caption reads "the move from students to subscribers was an unexpected outcome of putting his lectures online.".


This one might hit close to home. I’ve no doubt people have experienced low student turnout. It’s important to note though, that the reasons students do not attend are often far more complex than this belief assumes. A recent article (June 2024) by WonkHE explores some of these factors.

There isn’t a straight-forward solution to the challenges of student attendance, however when it comes to digital learning and resources, there are some considerations in learning design which can encourage students to attend in-person classes.

Materials on Blackboard should motivate students to attend by complementing live sessions (not duplicating them), providing opportunities to:

  • Prepare for live sessions
  • Catch up if they’re unable to attend
  • Revise or extend learning

Ideally when some of the content is available to students online, the teacher can devote more time in the live session to active learning experiences, addressing areas of difficulty or extending student learning, and offering more interaction with and between students and yourself as the subject expert.

Young people are ‘digital natives’ and will seamlessly engage with digital content
A black and white AI generated image in the style of a newspaper cartoon. It portrays a group of babies and toddlers, all holding iPads. The caption reads 'The graduating class of 2045"".


Age is not the primary determinant of engagement in digital-enabled learning. There has been extensive and detailed critique of Prensky's ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’ model (Smith et al., 2020), but put simply, a familiarity with certain types of technologies in specific contexts does not necessarily translate into using technology effectively to support learning. We cannot assume students who have grown up with a particular technology can use it successfully across different contexts (Cohen and Hewitt, 2019). Additionally, we cannot make assumptions about which technologies or tools students have had access to or have experience with, because of diverse individual circumstances.

In fact, we need to explicitly teach students digital skills if they are to develop their digital information fluency (Heine and O’Connor, 2013) to use technology effectively for learning, and engage critically with digital resources. As a starting point, ensuring students have access to, and know how to use University systems is imperative. Share the My Digital Induction course with students on your courses to help them with this.

References




Smith, E. E., Kahlke, R., & Judd, T. (2020). Not just digital natives: Integrating technologies in professional education contexts. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 36(3), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.5689


Adapted from Exploring the digital pedagogy toolkit - Jisc 

Image credit: Dave Holloway. AI was used in the creation of these images.

Briana Chapple is an Academic Development Advisor in Education Development Services at the University of Sheffield