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Use of digital technology by staff and students at Ravensboune

Some reflections from Ruth Catlow after surveying students' and practioners' use of and attitudes to social software.

How are digital technologies currently used by staff and students at Rave?

Below is an analysis of the ways in which a range of technologies are currently used by staff and students at Ravensbourne.

Low level use (pretty rare - but not unheard of)

  • never used any of the College web platforms - resistant - no idea - especially common amongst sessional staff (short-contract teaching staff)
  • not confident that they would be able to download a document from a webpage
  • don't know how to use a mouse
  • don't know how to save or retrieve documents on the college network
  • never use email

Standard use (majority)

  • email for core communications, but generally unable to configure an email client
  • VLE as repository for project briefs
  • College wiki for technical troubleshooting if directed to it
  • internet searches and Wikipedia as first (and sometimes only) port of call for research
  • students using Facebook & MySpace as a social tool (staff less so)
  • students and staff use instant messaging (more for social than for learning-related activities)
  • a range of specialist desktop software (eg, Photoshop, iTunes, Maya, Illustrator, Final Cut, etc)

Common additional uses (significant number use at least some of these)

  • The College web-based issue-tracker for reporting IT or estates faults
  • VLE for group work (discussion, sharing research, reflection)
  • aggregating student work submitted for assessment (not including submitting grades to registry)
  • student blogging (most usually as a requirement of a particular brief) (staff blogging rare; either in their capacity as lecturers or in their design/communication practices)
  • student personal wikis
  • Delicious for aggregating research (by staff and students individually and in groups)
  • staff maintain websites as design and communication professionals
  • mobile phones - staff and students, to check attendance and coordinating off site group work

Rare additional uses

  • Flickr for student and course documentation of trips ands and group work
  • professional networking sites (LinkedIn)
  • wiki collaborative course resource building
  • Facebook as a learning environment for group work
  • Staff blogging - particularly with simple extra-institutional platforms (web-forms, or email upload, rather than XML-RPC)
  • YouTube by students (most often as a requirement of coursework)

Very rare uses

  • podcasts (either creating or consuming)
  • RSS feeds and feed aggregators
  • VLE for summative assessment (including submitting grades through registry)
  • Twitter or other microblogging services

Common attitudes from staff

  • I'm too busy, life is too short to be bothering with blogging, facebook etc
  • Getting things to work with each other is a pain
  • It's a drain on my time, learning how to use different systems and maintaining different platforms

Conclusion

Most staff and students use email for core communications, the Moodle VLE as a repository for project briefs, the College wiki for technical troubleshooting when directed to it, and Internet search engines and Wikipedia as first port of call for research. Whilst most students are using Facebook & Myspace as social tools, staff are using it less and as with instant messaging, these are used much more often for social than for learning-related activities. Staff and students use a range of specialist desktop software in the production of their work. They do not substitute these for online SaaS versions.

Due to pressures on their time and institutional priorities, many full-time academic staff engage extremely pragmatically with new technologies. They regard informal engagement with social software as an unwelcome drain on their time, requiring too steep a learning curve and they find the lack of visible, or non-technical, interoperability very off-putting. They are also concerned about the time that it will take to maintain their activities in different platforms. As a result they tend not to be the best advocates within their course teams for proactive engagement.

There are quite a few examples of individual members of the staff and students using a range of social software for innovative and effective learning processes. However there are few formal or informal opportunities or contexts - outside of funded projects! - for staff and students to reflect on new approaches and share good practice; to discuss the benefits and pitfalls.
There is high level of diversity in both staff and student engagement with digital technologies in general and then their particular knowledge and experience of Web2.0 technologies for a range of purposes: learning, production and social.