Digital downsides: exploring university students’ negative engagements with digital technology

Digital technologies are now an integral feature of university study. As such, academic research has tended to concentrate on the potential of digital technologies to support, extend and even ‘enhance’ student learning. This paper, in contrast, explores the rather more messy realities of students’ engagements with digital technology. In particular, it focuses on the aspects of digital technology use that students see as notably unhelpful. Drawing on a survey of 1658 undergraduate students from two Australian universities, the paper highlights four distinct types of digital ‘downside’. These range from low-level annoyances and interruptions, to ways in which digital technologies are seen to diminish students’ scholarship and study. Against this background, the paper considers how discussions of digital technology might better balance enthusiasms for what we know might be achieved through technology-enabled learning, with the often unsatisfactory realities of students’ encounters with digital technology.     

How do teachers help children to learn? An analysis of teachers' interventions in computer-based activities

In British schools, educational software is normally used by children working under the supervision of a teacher, who will have set them specific tasks and organize them to work at the computer in pairs or groups. However, those theories of learning which have most influenced research into the design and use of educational software have been essentially concerned with individualized learning, and are insensitive to the nature of teaching and learning as a communicative, culturally-based process. The present paper discusses an alternative theoretical perspective, one derived from the work of Vygotsky. This is used in an analysis of interventions made by teachers in the computer-based activities of their pupils, using observational data gained from video-recordings of primary school classrooms. The usefulness of the theoretical perspective is evaluated, and implications for the development of computer-based activities are discussed.     

An Aid to Intuitively Understanding Bias and Consistency

Students often find the concepts of bias and consistency hard to understand intuitively. This article presnts means of demonstrating these concepts using a computer so that students, once they have seen them in action, can more readily grasp their meanings and imlications.     

A comparison of freshmen and seniors on general and specific essay tests of critical thinking

There is much interest in the impact of college on critical thinking ability. Freshmen and seniors at a mideastern university were given either a general instruction or multiple specific instructions for critically evaluating one of two articles. All critiques were in essay form. Seniors provided more appropriate criticisms to both kinds of instructions for both articles. However, the absolute level of performance of seniors reflected major deficiencies in applying critical evaluation skills. It was concluded that while college seems to be having an impact, greater emphasis is needed on more directly teaching critical thinking skills in the classroom.     

Predicting students' epistemological orientation from demographic,ability, and learning style variables

Although college students' epistemological orientation largely determines how they approach, interpret, and learn in higher educational contexts, little is known about the student characteristics which reliably predict the orientation. Thus, the aim of this study was to determine the relative potency of different student characteristics potentially salient to differentiating epistemological view. The student variables evaluated were demographic (major and sex), verbal ability, and learning style (four scales from the Inventory of Learning Processes). Results of correlational and multiple regression analyses reveal that only students verbal skill accounted for a significant percent of the variance in epistemological orientation. The results are discussed in terms of the meaning of the orientation, its relevance to practitioners, and implications for further investigation.     

In Partnership with Industry: The Educational — Industrial Interface

The paper discusses the long-term strategic approach to collaboration between education and industry initiated by Glasgow School of Art's Department of Product Design, and examines the opportunities and benefits of the investment in the post of an Industrial Liaison Officer (ILO) over a four year period which furthered this partnership. The paper shows the need for a professionally and adequately resourced approach to provide mutual benefits to industry and education, and to the economy in general     

“Science of the singular”: an explanatory single case study of whole school guidance counselling in Ireland

This article will discuss the findings of a single explanatory case study on the model of whole school guidance counselling in the Irish secondary school system, which was carried out during a turbulent period of policy and practice changes in the delivery of guidance counselling services to students from 2012 onwards. Although the case study is positioned within a single voluntary school, the findings may be typical of similar secondary schools settings in Ireland and abroad. Particular focus is given to explicating the key findings of the case study through the specific themes of: concepts of whole school guidance counselling, the Irish integrated model of guidance counselling, stakeholder roles and responsibilities, and the effect of resource re-allocations by policy makers funding guidance school services.