Researching students voices:

Just been reading the “Technology not isolating us” press release about the latest findings from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. They say "It turns out that those who use the Internet and mobile phones have notable social advantages”. 

For me the  jury is still out on this one. Research we’ve done as part of our access and use project has been conflicting in this area. Certainly technology helps people stay in touch and as we have explored in a presentation on how ICTs are blurring and reconstituting boundaries> Iit does facilitate a certain affective aspect to students learning experiences providing emotional support and encouragement. Yet students also talk about how technology is invading their privacy and proving a distraction from "real life". We explore some of these complexities in a new book chapter thats coming out soon in a book on Rethinking students learning in the digital age

The PEW study seems to be assuming that an increase in people's online social networks  means they’re not socially isolated. But just because someone has a large online social network  eg lots of facebook  friends etc it  doesn’t mean that this is necessarily a good thing for their social interaction does it? (see Dangers of the Social Web)

Although as I observed in a previous blog posting, I think without ICTs as a doorway into the outside world, some students living in residences in rural universities would go mad. For them ICTs connect them with others, and offer entertainment and stress relief that they can’t find in a face to face physical environment.

So personally I think we just need to be cautious on making value judgements about whether the social impact of ICTs is a good or bad thing. We have a lot more to understand and with the territory being so new. As  Elaine Helsper put it in a paper about youths use of ICTs, we don’t really know what the unexpected consequences might be. 

References

Hampton, K, Sessions, Ja Her, E & Rainie, L. (2009) Social isolation and new technology. Pew Internet and the American life project.  

Helsper, E. (2008). "Digital natives and ostrich tactis: The possible implications of labelling young people." Beyond Current Horizons

Sigman, A. (2009) Interview With Online Educa Berlin on Dangers of the Social Web

Czerniewicz, L & Brown, C. (2009) Blurring and reconstituting boundaries: ICT-mediated learning in a developing country context. Presented at the 3rd WLE Mobile Learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, London School of Education.

Czerniewicz, L & Brown, C. (in press) Strengthening and weakening boundaries: students negotiating technology mediated learning. In Sharpe, R,  Beetham, H and de Freitas, S. (Eds) Rethinking learning for a digital age: how learners are shaping their own experiences. Routledge.

Can research be classified as an ethnography if it employs only an aspect of the ethnographic approach? For example immersion in a group but by multiple people, or observation of day to day experiences (but by subjects and not researchers), or virtual observation of day to day expereince rather than face to face observation?

I have recently been delving into ethnography as we are busy conceptualising the next phase of our research project and are keen to dig deeper into students psyche to find out more about the how and why of their technology use. What has interested me is how people have "expropriated" the term ethnography and adapted it. Strictly speaking ethnography is a description and interpretation of a cultural or social group or system. It involves prolonged observation of a group in which a researcher is immersed in the day to day lives of the people (Creswell 1998).

One fabulous example utilising a cultural anthropology approach to ethnography  to investigate cultural difference in the use of mobile technology comes from Genevieve Bell.   She’s a social anthropologist who works for Intel to inform the design of their products through better understanding of how people from different parts of the world actually use technology.

Also in a very traditionally ethnographic mould are Julie Angers and Krisanna Machtmes who report on an Ethnographic Case Study where they examined the beliefs and practices of 3 teachers integrating technology in their classrooms. The authors chose a case study method as they wanted to deliberately cover contextual conditions  and include not just observation but exploration of actions and events.

However the approach (and project) which has most captured my interest in all this reading is  Ethnographic Action Research which has been utilised in development projects by Jo Tacchi , Marcus Foth and Greg Hearn.  It aims to combine participatory techniques and ethnographic approach into an action research framework.  What they did was train a EAR researcher in each Centre (usually local people with no research background) . These researchers kept in contact with the main team through various social networking and communication tools and then used  ethnographic  techniques including self documentation mechanisms, interviews, observations to undertake the research.  What has also impressed me with these authors is the transparency of their research. Their Ethnographic Action Research training Handbook is online http://ear.findingavoice.org/ 

And then there is Digital Ethnography which I first came across when a colleague of ours Chris Jones from the Open University started using something called the Day Experience method to scaffold other quantitative and qualitative research he was doing on students access to and use of ICTs. It was originally adapted by Matthew Riddle who has also usefully released a resources kit  about the method. Interestingly neither Jones nor Riddle describe this has a ethnographic approach but a design anthropologist Tim Plowman and Davis Masten have proposed using the digital and wireless communication revolutions as platforms for rethinking ethnographic principles, methodologies, and analysis. Which brings me back to my original question. When is ethnography not an ethnography.  

References

Angers, J & Machtmes, K. (2005). An ethnographic case study of beliefs, context factors and practices of teachers integrating technology. The qualitative report 10:4 pp 771-794

Bell, G. (2006). The age of the thumb: A cultural reading of mobile technologies from Asia. Knowledge, technology and Policy 19: 2 pp 41-57

Masten, D & Plowman, T, (2003). Digital ethnography: The next wave in understanding the consumer experience. Design management Journal 14:2 pp 75-81

Riddle, M and Arnold, M (2007). The day experience method: A resource kit.  http://www.matthewriddle.com/ict-study/

Tacchi, J, Foth, M and Hearn, G. (2009). Action research practices and media for development. IJEDICT 5:2  http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=560&layout=html 

My most recent trip was to Polokwane and the University of the Limpopo.  

It turned out I arrived during peak campaigning for students council. The campus was buzzing as different groups were holding rallying throughout the campus. Singing echoed out form the cafeterias so John (one of our respondents and my very helpful on the ground organiser) and I decided we ought to meet in a back up venue. As John is a e-learning facilitator he had organised us one of the computer labs to meet as well. Not quite right for a focus group but we moved things around and created a space to talk f2f.  Just as our participants were gathering there was a power cut and the lab was plunged into darkness. We waited 10 min but there was no sign of any solution and the labs didn’t have a backup generator. A couple of students trickled into the dark but this wasn’t going to work for a venue. I suggested we just meet outside as it was a lovely evening and there and the walk way lights were powered up. But then we discovered that the General Secretary of the Limpopo ANC was addressing the students in the hall across the way (not a quiet occasion). Resourcefully the students knew exactly which buildings had backup power and we found an unlocked mini lecture theatre in a nice peaceful and quiet location to use. 

Whilst student don’t say fundamentally different things in the focus groups (compared to phone interviews) what is different is how they feed off each others stories and comments noticing whats similar or different about their experiences. Once one student admits to feeling completely daunted when first confronted by computers the other s will all smile and nod and tell you how they felt when they first had to use a pc at university. Whats different is not the story but the way they tell it when in a face to face group. The feeling that comes out when they say they cant imagine not using or needing to use a computer everyday of their lives. How now their families in the villages might have a computer at home and how they have become their teachers.

Aside from the research my one other highlight in Polokwane was friendly genuinely helpful people. Campus security  who asked a student to hop in the car with me to  show me where to going on campus and opened locked gates at 8pm for me when I found myself at the wrong exit. Nandos (where I ordered a platter for the focus group)  who phoned ME to confirm order and pick up 3 times, and hotel staff that were efficient and very friendly . Polokwane are seriously gearing up for the World Cup Soccer and given their demonstration of efficiency and  service I’m sure they will pull it off well. I’s starting to think Telkom should relocate their head office there J

Technology got the better of me twice last week and saved me once. Very embarrassingly I arrived In Grahamstown marginally late for my seminar (plane delay) to turn up the wrong hill (in trying to get to Rhodes University) and managed to get stuck because I couldn’t get the hire car into reverse. I pushed, I pulled, I twisted, I tweaked but to no avail. I had given up on using my personal intuition (which was obviously non -existent) and was weighing up calling the hire company or my husband when Markus (my colleague from Rhodes) came running up the hill to my rescue. Mildly out of breath (thank goodness everything in GT really is only 1 block away) he calming hops in the drivers seat and asks me if I tried pulling up holding on some funny little button and promptly reverses the car. Thanks Markus.

But thanks to my little laptop I managed to run into the seminar with powerpoint all on and ready to go and literally just plug and play (even though I had a second moment of panic when I realised I hadn’t ever actually used the laptop with a data projector and I had no idea how).  But no problems there and I  hope I managed to salvage my image somewhat. Nothing more contradictory than a person who is reporting on ICT use unable to use the technology herself so “thanks little laptop”.

After WSU we embarked on the drive back through East London to Alice – some 5 hours. The drive was easier as there was less traffic and no rain so I was more confident on the roads.  Driving into Alice was a complete contrast for different reasons. One of the largest faculties there is agriculture and one is confronted by green green pastures and lots and lots of dairy cows before encountering the  FH Alice campus. An old campus with almost Victorian style white buildings with red roofs all constructed very geometrically around squares with fountains and green space. The dynamic at FH was very different.  Perhaps because there is a greater diversity of language groups more students were happy to talk in English although obviously understood isiXhosa well. And there was a far greater diversity of experience both in terms of the disciplines in which the students were studying and their backgrounds. They weren’t all local with some being Zimbabwean and others coming from Soweto saying they chose to come to FH because there were less distractions here than at the big unis and they could focus on their studies.

Certainly there appeared to be not just less but NO distractions in Alice. Aside from a Chinese take out (which the students think had disappeared) their eating options were the student hall or self catering. There was a HUGE reliance on technology for entertainment with laptops needed for playing movies as they lacked TV’s. Many were stuck in res all weekend on campus with no outside entertainment although they said there were sometimes parties in the student hall. I suppose its not surprising then that tensions can run rife (as exemplified by the death of one of the stduents we'd interviewed by phone due to head injuries sustained from an apparent fight with another student).

Ones of the impressions I got  here during the focus groups was that whilst for the WSU students technology was a highly desired resources and critical for their learning, at UFH it was also critical to students ability to survive what  appears to be quite an isolated existence in some cases.

In next series of blog postings I will informally reflect  on the focus group sessions we are conducting in 5 unis across SA.

The first of which has involved a trip to the eastern cape visiting two universities Walter Sisulu and fort hare. Huge amount of driving to get to the various campus’s all located in quite rural settings – Mthatha and Alice.
I am writing this sitting in East London airport because apparently my flight left early? Never heard that one before. Granted I was a bit late but 30 mins early? Hummmm an SAA first for me. Apparently in EL even with no baggage and an electronic ticket you need to check in an hour beforehand. So here I am at the wimpy waiting and thought what a good time to blog. Seeing as I have been meaning to blog for weeks before I headed off to do focus groups and have never found the time.

Of course I have no inernet access either so had to wait to get back to Cape town to post my blog!!

Walter Sisulu Uni is a majestic campus that catches ones eye immediately as one enters mthatha.

 After rolling hills and scattered villages, plenty of roadside animal traffic and a rather stop/ start drive (lots of road works fixing what has become a rather infamous potholed road in South Africa), its imposing brick buildings surrounded by green grass and trees mark the landscape. Its been a landmark for a while as the building were originally the University of the Transkei. Zolani (our isiXhosa interviewer and translator) who was travelling with me said that he always used to drive past the university as a child thinking it was beautiful and wishing one day he could go there (he ended up at university in cape town but I think was always a bit nostalgic that he didn’t go to WSU).

Not knowing the campus we had planned to conduct our focus group at the holiday inn across the road (the most expensive holiday inn in south Africa!). The students started to arrive well before the scheduled time, most walking over in groups. They all called us from outside the building not wanting to walk into the foyer unless escorted by us. They had dressed extremely smartly and many carried folders and briefcases. I think a clear indication that they were taking our visit very seriously. One had even got permission from a lecturer to postpone a test due to our prior arrangement. Our meeting looked so interesting we even had a gate crasher (another student who was there for another meeting and thought he would just join our group while he waited).

Our student participants with Zolani on the left. Interestingly only 1 of female particpant arrived despite 4 being invited.

The students clearly understood English well but were much more comfortable talking in isiXhosa. Once we’d settled down into a relatively private space we started the focus group. I would ask the questions and Zolani would translate. We had told the students we were fine with them talking in whatever language they were comfortable with. Students would often start their response in English but slip into isiXhosa quickly especially when recounting any personal story of their ICT journey. They were very quiet and slow to come out of their shells but once they started talking they would become animated and  determined to tell you their perspective. I could see them warming up to the process and each other. They would laugh and smile and nod at what each other were saying. My impressions despite the language barrier (me not understanding isiXhosa), were that these students had worked hard to get where they were. Almost all were doing a degree that involved some kind of professional use of Icts eg computer science, IS etc. They all remembered the year in which they had first started using a computer without a thought. Like it was embedded in their memory like the year they finished school or the year they started university. What was  also noticeable to me was that once they started talking specifically about their use of particular types of technology they did so more often in English. Most of them used facebook or mixit or gchat or gtalk. In the realm of technology explicitly English is much  more dominant in contrast to their story of how they came to use technology which is more personal and which 7 of the 8 students did in isiXhosa.

They were keen to get their photos taken as a group and asked me how they could put this on their CV’s. Also many want to connect with me on facebook so we decided we should set up a FB group for the focus groups,  These students are good networkers. When they arrived in groups I asked whether they knew each other. They said not really – some were in the same class together but when I sent out a group sms’s about the meeting they connected with other students on the list and made contact. Clearly they make every contact with ple count. I was amused to see that when asked to do a drawing at the end of the session that mapped out the network or people they are in contact with using technology that one student had Zolani and I specifically as a subset of his technology network. I don’t think this is the last we’ll hear of them :-)

Next. Our trip to Fort Hare Alice campus

Today is a day for reflecting on the inadequacies of using ICTs in South Africa. This morning laura posted a sobering reminder about the connectivity divide and digital exclusion. And now I'm bombarded on facebook by stories of Winston the pigeon (with some 1500 fans on facebook already) making a point about the boradband divide. Winston flew 4GB of data some 70km's in in 2 hrs 6 minutes 57 seconds whilst the ADSL download was "still just under four percent complete" at 11:45 (when Winston successfuly delivered the files). And thats with ADSL. Can't imagine how long that would have taken at UCT. Whats more impressive is his multitasking capabilities. he even twittered en route :-)

So my thought for today is: Access is not an either / or and exisits in gradations. Access cannot be taken for granted in South Africa and even those that have it are limited.

Finding the balance between sharing your ongoing research and doing peer reviewed academic publications is a bit of a challenge for me. How much does one share your research in incomplete preliminary form? Ones "thoughts in process" or your ponderings over what data might mean. For example this week I've been in one of those stages of reworking a draft paper for a journal. Its not finished, Laura has the latest version at the moment, we'll get some of our friendly but constructively critical colleagues to have a look before we submit it to the editors. Then there is the peer review stage, the "will it or won't it get accepted" phase and so it goes.

At what stage does one put it "out there" for people to read? And how much of ideas do we share informally in a public space? Still grappling with this so thought i would share two blogs I have found very sueful that i think do well at creating links between communicating openly and research projects

mLearning Africa by Steve Vosloo of the Shuttleworth Foundation is about news, prjects and research around mobile learning in Africa. Steve manages a great balance between highlighting presentations he does, thinking out loud and academic research in the area. Very active and interesting.

Net Gen Skeptic by Mark Bullen whose aim is to provide a balanced exploration of research and commentary on generational differences, particularly the net generation discourse and impacts on learning, teaching and the use of technology. The blog is directly linked to Mark's research project and academic outputs.

Do you know of any other examples where poeple are communicating their research in process? What do you think is an ideal/ viable balance?

We’re about to move between data collection phases for our project. Having done about 100 initial telephone interviews and about 35 follow up telephone interviews (well not all personally we have been very ably assisted by Haley, Mav and Zolani here),  we are now about to embark on the focus group phase. This is very exciting as it gives us an opportunity to delve even deeper into some of the issues emerging.

We had a really useful meeting with our colleague Lucia  on Thurs and she gave us a great idea of using a metaphor as a way of getting students to unpack their dispositions, values, views etc about  ICTs in their lives as a way of getting not just at habitus but also at other forms of capital (which is key to understanding habitus).

Imagine the digital highway ( yes I know it’s a very 90’s / early internet metaphor, but it could still work .....)

• What does this road look like to you?
• Where does it come from and where is it going?
• Are you on the road? Where are you positioned?
• Why you are going on the journey
• How are you travelling?
• Which direction are you going in
• Who is traveling with you?
• What are you taking along with you?
• What else could you tell us about your journey along that road?

BTW - hows this image? A digital highway originating straight out of South Africa. I always knew we were the centre for the digital world (lol)

H. Sapiens Digital: From Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom"As we move further into the 21st century, the digital native/digital immigrant paradigm created by Marc Prensky in 2001 is becoming less relevant. In this article, Prensky suggests that we should focus instead on the development of what he calls "digital wisdom." Arguing that digital technology can make us not just smarter but truly wiser."

The project grew out of our previous research on access and use of ICTs. We found we had alot of information about what students were and were not doing but could only guess as to why. So we set out to undertake an explanatory case study of different groups of students to find out more about  the how and why of their technology use.

We started with a survey StudentQuestionnaireFinal.doc at the start of the first semester where we asked students about how they had learnt to use ICTs, where they had access to to them and then how often they undertook various social and learning related activities. The aim was to expand our sample base but it turned out that this in itself was interesting.

It showed us that there was a group of students who had poor ICT skills, low access and low use YET they all had cell phones which the majority (72%) used often for texting and chat (eg Mxit) and for about a third of these students were the only form of computer and internet access off campus.

So whilst these students are not perceived as “computer literate” by universities they do have an established digital identity and set of practices.  This reminds us that access is increasingly being determined by connectivity and not location and that we are probably not anticipating the ways that students are using cellphones for their learning.

The resonates with research by Jonathon Donner and Tino Kreutzer which provide have links to some fascinating findings about cell phone use in South Africa

This blog is about Phase 3 of CET's Access and Use Project. Building on previous research on access to and use of ICTs for teaching and learning in Higher Education Institutions in South Africa, phase 3 (funded by the International Development Research Centre - IDRC) explores students experiences in their own voices (through interviews and focus groups). We are particularly interested categories of students namely those

• who don't use ICTs much but have good access
• with moderate to high use but with poor conditions of access
• with a wide variation of use in high access conditions

The project started at the beginning of 2009 and we have almost finished the first two phases of our data collection phase. We are keen to share our research through this blog and hope to connect with people undertaken similar research and those that are interested in the issues facing students at universities (particularly in an African contexts).

Who is the "we"?

Well Laura Czerniewicz is the principle investigator and Cheryl Brown the project manager and researcher. And to date we have been assisted by very capable students assistants who are doing phone interviews (Mavourneen Street, Hayley McEwen and Zolani Kupe) as well as a hoard of students doing transcribing (Zolani, Sabah, Ekari, Nicolas, Thabisa, Leanne, Themba).