What Should Every College Educated Person Know About Digital Technology?

Thousands of college students take an "Introductory Computing" course every semester. These students are not necessary majoring in computer science or computer information systems. Many students take the course to fulfill liberal studies requirements, and in that sense the course caters to a wide audience.

Currently, the course tends to be a mix of Office apps and basic computer concepts. But several factors are putting pressure on this existing paradigm.

• First, students are acquiring basic Office skills in lower grades. 
• Second, handheld devices are likely to replace desktop and laptop computers for many consumer who are simply interested in browsing the Web, e-mail, and social networking; computers may be relegated to primarily to business venues.

If the Introductory Computing course is to evolve into something that is truly relevant for today's students, a fundamental question becomes, "What should every college educated student know about computing?"

It means we have to look around us as identify the kinds of decisions that are being made about technology, not only by consumers, but by politicians, educators, courts, law enforcement, content providers and others. What do we have to know about technology to make sure that it continues to serve us, rather than limit our rights and freedoms.

The week beginning December 5 is Computer Science Education Week. It is a perfect time to discuss the Introductory Computing course curriculum. As a textbook author, I welcome your ideas, and hope that I can contribute to the field by incorporating relevant materials into the books that I develop.

It Takes a Village to Build a Digital Book

Let My Computer be My Memory

In a study recently published in Science Express, researchers Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, and Daniel M. Wegner, studied how well people remember information when they expect it to be accessible from their computers.

The study results have interesting implications for pedagogy. One outcome of the study was that when subjects knew that information would be available later, they tended not to remember it. Subjects were given a set of trivia facts and asked to type them into a computer. Only half of the subjects were told that the information would be saved. Those who expected the information to be saved, remembered less. They did, however, tend to remember where the information was stored and how to access it.

Although the study examined information retention in the broad sense, what might the findings mean for students who take notes on their computers? Perhaps putting the information into computer memory means that students don’t put it into their own memories. Students who don’t learn and remember the information they receive while in class will have to learn it later, when and if they review their notes.

We might wonder if the “facts” are really so important. Perhaps we’d prefer that students look for the broad structures of knowledge and understand that there are facts to support it--facts that can be looked up at any time in their notes. If that is the case, then we as educators have to devise assessments to evaluate students understanding of broad structures, not an easy task using computer-scored multiple choice questions.

To access the study check DOI 10.1126/science.1207745.  For more on the topic of memory in the information age, see Is Google Making Us Stupid? (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/) and check “transactive memory” an idea proposed by Daniel Wegner back in 1985.  

Who’s Raiding Student Pocketbooks - Really

Textbooks are expensive to produce; before I go any further let me just say that 30-40% of the price students pay goes to the college bookstore. And for what? The bookstore only has to order the books and pile them on the shelves. It doesn’t pay for shipping, selecting the books, or trying to market them. The bookstore doesn’t even have to pay for books that don’t sell; unsold books can be returned to the publisher.

The bookstore also makes money on used books; it buys only books that instructors will be using the next semester, and again adds the 30% markup. Note that neither the publisher nor the author get any $$ from the sale of used books.

Before blaming authors and publishers for the cost of textbooks, consider the piece of the revenue pie that is allocated to college bookstores. I am not suggesting that bookstores should give up all their textbook profits; bookstores generate funds that would otherwise be taken from taxpayers. Perhaps digital books will change this model, but as of today, many states require some share of online sales to be repatriated to college bookstores, even if those stores have absolutely nothing to do with the sale.

Learning is Fun-NOT MORE

Is learning more fun when presented as a game? Anastasia Salter Assistant Professor at the University of Baltimore in the school of Information Arts and Technologies added extensive use of a gamified Web site to her social media and games course. She reports about her experiences here.


I looked at some of the examples she provides and found them interesting. However, much of that material seems to be simply a re-labeling of standard educational activities. For example her mid-term project is called a "Midterm Raid" to make it sound like an adventure game.


I'm not sure that students won't quickly get wise to such techniques, and I guess I have to ask, What's wrong with learning for its own sake? Why are students not excited about finding facts and analyzing new ideas? 


If you are interested in the trend toward gamification, check out Ian Bogost's blog on the topic. 

It’s all in the Context

Recently, an instructor asked if I had a list of media assets for the digital version of New Perspectives on Computer Concepts. This instructor wanted a list of videos, software tours, labs, and computer-scored activities in each chapter.

I was curious about this request and on follow-up discovered that the instructor wanted to assign these media elements and expected that students would want to jump directly to them, rather than plough through the text; reading the narrative until they reached the assigned element. This idea got me thinking about context.

Instructors lament their students’ lack of fundamental knowledge about computers and other digital technologies. You too?

Now  bear with me for a moment, because on the face of it, the characterization that students are clueless doesn’t jibe with the prevailing notion that today’s kids are technology wizards. “See them texting and tweeting and doing all manner of stuff on Facebook!” say the generation that grew up with TV as the cutting edge technology, “These kids know all about technology because they’ve had those gadgets in their chubby little baby hands since birth.” Or so the rhetoric goes.

Is there any way to reconcile these two notions that seem diametrically opposed? How can students on the one hand be clueless about technology, yet be wizards with their digital gadgets?

My thought is that students have a fairly large collection of unorganized blobs of technology knowledge that they acquire randomly. What students are missing, and what their instructors perceive to be cluelessness, is a framework that gives meaning to the bits and pieces of knowledge they have acquired. That framework is what a concepts course is all about; that’s what a concepts textbook can offer; and that should be the objective of course activities.

When the digital edition of New Perspectives was on the drawing board back in 1995, I insisted that we make the media elements available within the context of the narrative. It was a key part of the pedagogy that students would be able to read about a topic in the text and be able to immediately launch a related video, software tour, or assessment activity. 

I did not want a disconnect between reading, seeing, and doing. I didn’t want students to break up the flow of ideas by transferring from a book where they read about a topic, to a Web site for accessing media elements and assessment.

To me, learning is about the flow of ideas and how they pin to an underlying conceptual structure. Students who acquire knowledge piecemeal are rarely able to pull it together into a coherent cognitive map. They need help from their text and their instructors, and perhaps from their peers.

As instructors, we sometimes get caught up in measurable objectives, but these objectives can unfortunately reinforce piecemeal learning at the expense of underlying concepts and structures. I’m not suggesting that objectives are useless, but rather that we need to think beyond them to include higher order learning. One way is to make sure that activities, such as watching videos and touring software, takes place within an overall structure, whether that structure is provided by a textbook or by the instructor.  

Also, just as we instructors get caught up by detailed learning objectives, so too do students. They sometimes have a difficult time seeing the forest for the trees. They get so wrapped up in keystrokes, that they never see the concepts. 

Experienced instructors suggest going at concepts with a heavy hand. What might seem obvious to you, is often not at all clear to students. You can use a variation of the “3 to go” rule: 1) tell them the concept, 2) give them examples in the form of demonstrations, keystrokes, and activities, 3) reiterate the concept. That’s how you can put learning into context.

Digital for All the Wrong Reasons

Just returned from BookExpo in NYC. The push was for --you know what--digital books.  Wow! It’s about time. In 1995 when we introduced our first digital version of New Perspectives on Computer Concepts, I remember one editor stating with conviction: “Students don’t want to read books on screen.” If that characterization ever was true, it certainly has changed and now students are obsessed with their screens.

But what, exactly, are student expectations about digital textbooks? Why do students want them? The answer comes clear in the context of all the free information that is available online. To students, online means free, or at least really cheap. They’d rather a cheap textbook than a good one, or so it seems. Although they live in a society powered by information, students do not put much value in it. What’s up with that?

In DBTS (Days Before the Screen), information required work. You had to find it in a library, by phone, in a bookstore, or by word of mouth. You often had to record it (write it down) or remember it so that you didn’t have to find it again. Obtaining information required work, and that effort, I think, made the information acquired worth something. 

In today’s wired world, getting information requires little effort other than a quick Google search or Wikipedia query. And there is no reason to record or remember information if you know it can be located again with another simple search.

We, as teachers, are dealing with a different learning mindset produced by this brave new digital reality. When students don’t value information, not only do they want free textbooks, they also don’t see value in obtaining information through the learning process. Why learn the history of the American Revolution when you can query Wikipedia for an excellent synopsis? Why memorize the definition of SSD when you can Google it?

Educators faced an analogous problem when inexpensive digital calculators became widespread. “Should we allow students to use these calculators?” they asked. Then, because the answer was “yes,” some educators and many students jumped to the logical conclusion that it was no longer necessary to learn how to do mental arithmetic or memorize multiplication tables. And know what? It works--at least when there is a cash register, calculator, or smartphone at hand. 

It works, but at what cost? As an example, suppose you check out at WalMart and hand the clerk a $50 bill for your  $42.90 purchase. The register tells the clerk give this customer back $7.10. And so, with out any thought, the clerk does so. The job of cashier, which once required some skill, now requires very little expertise. It is easy to replace those cashiers with self-checkout machines. Cashiers become free to pursue more challenging jobs or join the unemployment lines.

So back to our students. Does it matter that in our brave new online world, we can’t get facts to “stick?” Can we allow students to complete their education without having a body of knowledge in their brains as long as they can access all the Internet’s knowledge with their fingers? 

I’m going to say “no” because I believe that humans need to internalize a body of knowledge in order to make decisions relevant to their lives and to develop valid opinions on the critical issues of our time.

As educators, we have to figure out how to convey this idea to students. Part of our mission is to identify that core of information; the other part of our job is to engage students in activities that demonstrate the sort of multidisciplinary mashup they can produce given a functional core of information. 

We’ve got to get beyond keystrokes here; in the big picture of things, the steps for creating mail merge or a pivot table are surface knowledge. What are the underlying concepts about technology that educated people need to know in order to make informed choices in our digital world? 

Think about that. More anon.

BEA First Impressions

Attendees were cuing up for free mimosa this morning at the Italian pavilion.  

The big booths tend to overshadow some interesting smaller gems. You can't miss the convict, Gary Goldstein handing out flyers for his book Jew in Jail.  Also notable indies: Sharon Cramer and her Cougar Cub tales, beautifully illustrated; check out the prints of her watercolors at her booth. Taylor Dye and startup Exalt Press specializing in military books. And David Keefe with an odd little gadget called ReMarkable; an etch-a-sketch cum bookmark.

Most colorful exhibit: Galaxy Press featuring early works of author L. Ron Hubbard. Weren't the Battleship books more than enough? 

Authors in the Digital Space

The 1997 edition of my textbook, New Perspectives on Computer concepts, included a fully digital version. Students could read the entire text on their computer screens, take interactive quizzes, work with simulations of application software, and do lots of other cool stuff.

Now, fifteen years later, the rest of the publishing world has jumped on the digital book bandwagon. Authors working with most publishers can now go digital, but there is price; filling out cumbersome grids so that a production team in India can put together all your digital assets.

I've been working with BookOnPublish software that allows me to easily DIM (do it myself), just by mousing over my manuscript to create hotlinks to videos and Flash animations and dropping in quiz questions. It gives me complete control and I can see what works pedagogically right away. Check out this cool tool at www.bookonpublish.com.

Learning is fun-NOT!

I'll keep this short. Should learning be fun? I think we might be wrong to chase that notion. "Fun" is not the right word; it conjures images of arcade games and carnival rides. Take a few moments to write down some words that you associate with learning. How do you go about learning new things? What motivates you to learn? Examine your feelings about learning.

Why is this concept important to teachers?  If you can describe learning, then you have taken a big step toward arming yourself with tools that you can use to motivate your students. Hey, we're not all that different, no matter what you've been told about millennials.

I'll warn you that it is not easy to examine your personal learning process and express it in words, but I guarantee that you'll be surprised at the insights you gain!

Are today's students hunt-and-peck learners?

Think about this: Once upon a time, rote learning was the norm. Students memorized state capitals, the periodic table, classic poetry, and lots of dates.

That style of learning fell out of favor about the time the Beatles arrived in America and was replaced by constructivism, which encouraged students to focus on process, rather than outcomes. Students were required to come up with the right questions, and in theory the right questions would lead to the right answers.

My daughter brought home an English paper from a college course. The paper received a B, which was a small miracle considering that it was riddled with grammar errors and other elements requiring corrections. Not a single error was marked, however, so I asked why not. "Oh," my daughter replied,"we just write for creativity. Our instructor doesn't want to discourage us by marking things wrong." So constructivism was not perfect, especially when the focus on process meant never mind the results.

Today, rote learning and constructivism have been relegated to the scrap heap by technology. Students do not need to memorize facts; they can look up facts, figures, and dates in an instant on Google or Wikipedia. Why even bother with process when you can copy and paste an entire thesis from a Web site to your term paper, then use a Thesaurus to replace a few words with synonyms to "make it your own." It is what I call hunt-and-peck learning.

Is it surprising, given this environment, that students don't seem to know anything? They don't get much practice in making things "stick" in their brains. When they know that a fact can be found online, why bother to remember it?

But, facts are (or should be) the basis for forming opinions and making decisions. Without facts at hand, what goes on up there in those young adult minds? How can we expect them to think critically or creatively?

I'm not suggesting that we go back to constructivism or even rote learning, but I think educators should carefully consider whether or not we should proceed down this road.

Students used to gather at bars to socialize.

Today, students spend time socializing on Facebook. Okay, so what? Well, a growing number of educators seem to be seeking ways to use Facebook as a tool for teaching and learning. In the old days, when students hung out at bars, educators didn't look for ways to bring classes to the local pub; they didn't call for drinks and peanuts to be served in classrooms. How much sense does it make to use Facebook as the platform for modern education?
Yes, students are familiar with it. Yes, they use it frequently, but do they really want to mix their social lives with their coursework? Fire your missiles my way; convince me that we are not pandering to our students when we try to make learning fit into a social milieu that consists of  fun, but vapid posts.