Generation is often used to explain and rationalize the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education. However, a comprehensive review of the research and popular literature on the topic and an empirical study at one postsecondary institution in Canada suggest there are no meaningful generational differences in how learners say they use ICTs or their perceived behavioural characteristics. The study also concluded that the post-secondary students at the institution in question use a limited set of ICTs and their use is driven by three key issues: familiarity, cost, and immediacy. The findings are based on focus group interviews with 69 students and survey responses from a random sample of 438 second year students in 14 different programs in five schools in the institution. The results of this investigation add to a growing body of research that questions the popular view that generation can be used to explain the use of ICTs in higher education.
This paper reports on a literature review of the concept of "Digital Natives" and related terms.More specifically, it reports on the idea of a homogeneous generation of prolific and skilled users of digital technology born between 1980 and 1994. In all, 127 articles published between 1991 and 2014 were reviewed. On the basis of the findings, there appears to be no commonly-accepted definition of a "Digital Native". The concept varies among individuals, societies, regions and nations, and also over time. Moreover, there are a number of variables other than age that may help us understand the nature of students' use of digital technologies. The so-called "Digital Native" literature demonstrates that despite students' high digital confidence and digital skills, their digital competence may be much lower than those of their "digital teachers". Given the confusion surrounding "Digital Native" and its affiliates, we propose to unify them under the concept "digital learners".
This article presents the results of an in-depth interview of twenty Education students at a public face-to-face university in Catalonia on how they use digital technologies in their social and academic lives. The results show that while students have a certain level of competence in digital technology, the way they use the technologies varies according to their purpose. The results also show that social networks and WhatsApp are the most important applications for students, because they enable them to contact others, communicate with each other over long distances, and contact people with shared interests. Keywords
Some authors have stated that university students born after 1982 have been profoundly influenced by digital technologies, showing different characteristics when compared to previous generations. However, it is worth asking if that is a current observable phenomenon. Are those students born after the 80s really more familiar with ICT tools than those born in previous generations? Do they show different study habits and learning paths? Different research lines (Kennedy, et al., 2010;Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008; Gros, García, & Escofet, 2012) highlight that scientific data is rarely used when discussing this generation's characteristics; however, none of them have proved in statistical terms that college students do not fit in the Net Generation characteristics and that their habits of ICT use in social and professional activities do not differ from older generations. The international research project, Digital Learners in Higher Education, seeks to develop a sophisticated and evidence-based understanding of university learners in different institutional contexts and the perception of cultures in their use of technology in a social and educational context. Data has been collected from four institutions in Canada and Spain: the British Columbia Institute of Technology, the University of Regina, the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), and the University Rovira i Virgili. In order to develop this project, we used a multi-case study embedded design (Yin, 2009). The UOC's case is deeply analysed in this paper to affirm that the Net Generation is more speculative than real and that includes students' perception about this phenomenon, and guidelines are proposed in an eLearning context.
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