Digital Tools Disrupting Tertiary Students’ Notions of Disciplinary Knowledge: Cases in History and Tourism

Abstract

This paper reports on the findings from a two year research project that explored the potential of digital tools in support of teaching-learning across different disciplinary areas at a New Zealand university. Two courses (in History and Tourism) are case studied using data collected through interviews with lecturers, tutors and their students, and an online student survey. Findings from the research revealed that both lecturers and students were challenged in learning about the affordances and use of the lecturer selected digital tools as a mediational means. The tools were not initially transparent to them, nor were they able to be easily deployed to undertake their primary task-teaching for the lecturers, and, learning and demonstrating learning for the students completing assigned tasks. The process of learning and using the tools disrupted participants' prior thinking and led to new understandings of both disciplines and of effective pedagogies for the two disciplines. The findings increase our understanding of the ways digital tools can develop, challenge and expand tertiary students learning and have implications for practice.

eLearning: Exploring Digital Futures in the 21st Century

“…Collectively, the seven journal articles in this Special Issue provide insights into the genesis of eLearning from as far back as 1977 and trends through until 2005 [10], highlights the relationship between research, policy and practice [1,10], proposes that we need to rethink schooling in a networked world [7], and provides guidance into models for building the capabilities and capacity for designing eLearning [6,8,9,11]. As indicated in the introduction to this Editorial, we need to remember that we are in the early, formative stages of the 21st Century.…”

“…Bronwen Cowie and Elaine Khoo report on the findings of a research project, conducted in a New Zealand University, which aimed to increase our understandings of the ways in which digital tools can develop, challenge and expand the learning of tertiary students. In Digital Tools Disrupting Tertiary Students' Notions of Disciplinary Knowledge: Cases in History and Tourism [8], they reported that lecturers and students were challenged in learning about the affordances of the technologies. Their prior thinking became disrupted which led to new understandings of the discipline areas studied, namely, History and Tourism, and of effective pedagogical approaches enabled by the technologies employed.…”

Tourism and ICT. Bibliometric Study on Digital Literacy in Higher Education

“…From the above, it is understood that notable interest exists in academic research on the literacy of university students [1,19,31] characterized by a constant adaptation to the new demands derived from the changes experienced by the social environment, which are caused, to a large extent, by technological development [10,16,19,32]. Another feature that defines research on literacy, and specifically on DL, is its focus or specialization in specific areas or disciplines in response to the different levels of demand that professional sectors require of graduates [9,[33][34][35], including the tourist field [36][37][38][39][40][41].…”

“…In this sense, DL must provide students, in general, with the necessary qualification to face the challenges of the digital information age [15,43,44]. This maxim acquires greater relevance among tourism students [38,40] due to the growing impact that ICTs have had on the sector [45][46][47][48] and because the forecast, based on the pandemic we are experiencing, is that it will keep growing [49][50][51][52][53].…”

“…In this sense, research related to education, study programs, etc., of the tourism area is gaining prominence in the academic and professional fields [69,76,80,81] while those focused on challenges posed by the integration of ICT in this same industry [60]. Thus, the benefit of delving into those that combine both aspects and focus on the consideration of ICT as a fundamental part of the academic training of tourism students [40,69] and, consequently, on their DL is evident.…”