Exploring the Necessity for Students to Exercise Digital Minimalism While Studying Online: Case of 35 Master Students at the Department of English of Abdelhamid Ibn Badis University, Algeria

Abstract

This study aimed at exploring the philosophy of digital minimalism, and put forward its importance for an effective online learning in higher education during the lockdown. The long quarantine that the COVID 19 pandemic imposed on most countries of the world has brought radical changes in the way schools, colleges and universities operate. In Algerian higher education, creating online platforms for students was the only solution to move on. However, ignoring that most Algerian students often go online for self-entertainment may lead to a failure or an incomplete success of online teaching during this critical period. To investigate this issue, a questionnaire with only open-ended questions was designed and distributed to 35 students of Language and Communication master, at the English department of Abdelhamid Ibn Badis University. The 35 participants were the researcher’s students in the classes of e-learning. Results showed that most participants were distracted by social media notifications. Also, it turned out that the 35 students had no idea of what digital minimalism or digital maximalism is. As a matter of fact, it is suggested that before launching online lectures and webinars for our students, it is of paramount importance to guide them during their online
 existence and to show them how to be digital minimalists.

Migrating Vs. Decentralizing MOOC-based e-content to Teaching MA Language and Communication Students

“…It entails a synergy of the educational and the social aspect that offers students a wide pallet of functionalities that ranges from posting, sharing, commenting, video-conferencing, sending text-based and voice-based messages to collaborating and cooperating (Das & Mahapatra, 2018). In a context-driven perspective, many Algerian studies have mined social media in general (Sahraoui & Chaibendraa, 2020;Sarnou, 2021; and Facebook (Blizak et al, 2020;Ghounane, 2020;Ghounane, 2021) in particular for educational purposes, especially in these tumultuous times, but studies that blended MOOC and social media are significantly scarce, and this is the reason that motivated us to undertake this study on a MOOC-based initiative on social outlets.…”

“…As a case in point, the Algerian ministry of higher education imposed Moodle as a common platformthat is neither well-adopted nor well-adapted -to be leveraged by students and teachers (Ghounane, 2020 ;Sarnou & Sarnou, 2021) or alternative ones like Facebook, Zoom, Google classroom and so on (Chelghoum & Chelghoum, 2020 ;Ghobrini, 2020 ;Ghounane, 2021) . They have fallen back to the de-multimediatized asynchronous e-mode of teaching (Lassoued et al, 2020).…”

Using GoGuardian Teacher Technology to Combat Students' Digital Distractions on School-Issued Devices

“…Digital distraction is becoming increasingly prevalent as students spend many hours online daily. According to a study on digital minimalism, Generation Z students spend over 7 hours online daily (Sarnou, 2021). The extended period spent online using tech tools impacts students' learning attention.…”