The paper describes the educational needs of modern students as generation Net representatives, highlights the contradiction between their characteristics and traditional ways of teaching ICT disciplines. The paper reports teaching experience and poll results for three years at Kherson State University, Ukraine. The purpose of the paper is to offer new teaching approaches to cope with a generation gap and way to improve the quality of ICT teaching.
The UNESCO report on Information Technology in Education [
To date, about 40 books and scores of articles and papers have been written on this
generation that report the results of international surveys and other research and
describe their characteristics. Their impact on education at all levels has been of major
interest to researchers and educators. There are about 10 terms to describe the current
generation of students [
The representatives of this generation were born in 1982-2003. Today’s students and post-graduates are aged from 10 to 30. It means that all teachers and institutions that are involved in the education of the students who have grown up in the world of new digital, mobile and high-tech, digital technologies.
The technology itself has had a profound effect on this new generation, unlike on
any previous one. In the classroom, students can chat on Skype or write SMS to their
friends, take notes on ipad, surf the Internet and read a book on the ReadBook. This
behavior can not be fully appreciated by their teachers: it’s considered that electronic
instruments and digital devices distract students from the "real" study [
It was found that representatives of the new generation inherent a wide range of characteristics that are defined a predisposition for becoming a successful educator. Realizing their significance for the education and considering themselves to be an instrument of world changes, they will be strongly motivated to improve the quality of life of the society. Some research study and develop strategies for a retention them in definite professional sphere including education.
Moreover, the representatives of Net generation have solid moral values connected
with a family and our society. They are highly motivated to create an open and
tolerant society. It’s important for new gens’ educators to consolidate and maintain
youths’ system of values. [
The results of the 3rd year students’ polling showed the low level of professional
awareness (Preschool and Elementary School faculty). Only 50% of students have an
intention to become teachers [
Among the characteristics of generation should be noted that Gen Y workers are usually educationally focused and attribute their success to their educational capabilities. They want to have successful careers. They do not like the dress code, demand ICT equipped workplaces and want have a flexible work schedule.
Ronald A. Berk synthesized pertinent research evidence based on ten national and
international surveys: EDUCAUSE [
We have identified some teaching approaches that are contradictory to the contemporary students’ needs. This gap is especially obvious in teaching computer related disciplines. Complete comprehensive step-by-step instructions and exclusively individual learning are no longer efficient. This context led educators to a revision of present teaching strategies. 3
The only discipline - “New Information Technologies and Technical Facilities of Education” – that concerns the formation of ICT skills is taught for the future teachers of all specialties at Kherson State University. This year the discipline was renamed in "Information Technology" in most curricula.
The teaching experience of teaching the discipline "New Information Technologies
and Technical Facilities of Education” in 2011 (109 students) and in 2012 (112
students) at Faculty of Pre-School and Elementary Education (FPEE) allowed us to
identify problems that are mainly related to the mentioned contradictions [
We interviewed students of Faculty of Pre-School and Elementary Education in 2012-2013 academic year. The results confirm last year statistics that quality of teaching materials on KsuOnline was highly appreciated by students, average score was 9.29 in 2011 and 9.16 in 2012 out of 10.
The results of the entrance poll of other faculties in 2011-2013 academic years showed the following trends: In 2011, 89% of the respondents owned a computer or a laptop. This academic year, 100% of students are the owners of a computer or a similar device regardless of the discipline. 70% (2011), 68% (2012) and 69% (2013) students have an access to the Internet outside of the university – thereby, this rate stays the same. However, a number of students who recognize themselves addicted to the Internet has grown from 24% in 2011 to 32% in 2013. An interesting result was found by visiting University website by students from different disciplines. 17% of the third year students said they had never visited the university website at the departments where teachers hardly use ICT in teaching. On the other hand the rate was 0 (since 2011 to date) at the departments where most of the teachers regularly use ICT.
The number of students who have a positive attitude towards the use of ICT in education (inter alia, at lectures) has increased (see Fig. 2).
The purposes of using the computer by students have almost the same rating, regardless of year and the faculty (see Fig. 3). 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%
To do my lessons
FFP, FT, FPHS (2012‐2013)
To communicate by the To learn something new To entertain themselve I have no computer
Internet (distance learning (games, watching courses, video tutorials, movies, etc.).
workshops, etc.)
FPSEE (2012‐2013) FPSEE (2011‐2012) Social net is becoming more popular among services for communication (see Figure), IME and email are also frequently used.
Modern students overestimate their skills for online searching according to Berk. The results of our research have confirmed this fact. The results of entrance poll and test in Informatics are contradictory. The majority of students estimated their level of ICT proficiency as excellent and good. The rate is depicted below. The entrance test contains 45 comprehension questions and is designed by analogy with ECDL test. The aim of testing is to check residual knowledge of school computer discipline. The results showed that only 3.28% of students had a score higher than 4.5, 82% had a score higher than 3 but less than 4,42 points, 62% had from 2 to 3 points and 1.64% scored less than 2 points.
During the recitations, the following problems were identified that are related to organizational issues and students attitudes: Students have no skills to manage their time and work efficiently without strict teacher control, regardless deadlines. Only few students uploaded their works in time. Not all students use email regularly. Many of them chronically forget their email user names and passwords. Students are confused by various browsers or other version applications. As a result, the login process to email or distance learning system regularly takes up to 7 minutes. There is no clear understanding of terms among students. Being able to work with some programs, often they cannot deal with similar ones. It is necessary for a teacher to consider different speed of students work while planning lessons. Some students do not regularly use computers. Thus, typing, mouse control, and searching for a command causes a delay. Plagiarism. Some students prefer not “to waste” their time to do lessons. They easily copy their colleagues’ results or download similar ones from the net. It is important at the first lesson to highlight the value of students own creative work and punish the students who attempt to copy someone else work. Under strict control, the number of plagiarisms decreases, but does not disappear. In fact, we notice that plagiarism is growing with task level. The reason is that the students desire to get a mark, not knowledge. The students do not like reading long instructions. Usually they prefer to ask a teacher or colleagues than to read step-by-step manual. It is also associated with different systems prevailing perception among students. The feature of the course is that the most of the teaching materials are stored in digital form (in digital form). Creating e-learning course does not require additional financial costs, as opposed to hard copy, faster and easier to edit and update. However, reading from the screen does not give effective results. Perceived only about 40% of the information. Lack of collaborative activities: in pairs, groups and teams, social assessment, problem-solving and decision-making tasks. A student presents results of an individual work only to one person–his teacher, and feels subordinated under such conditions. In addition, it is the reason of the absent of the critical view on his own work. This results in frustration and dissatisfaction of the student to any criticism.
The teacher comments are perceived in a negative or indifferent way. Educators should pay special attention to students feedback about effectiveness of teaching activities and the level of their satisfaction. For example, monitoring and evaluation allow a teacher to obtain an information about teaching incomes and quality, that would improve his work. It should reflect the level the students knowledge. It’s vice versa in practice: evaluations become a sign of knowledge / ignorance of the material, the student rating of the group.
The presented requirements to discipline designed in previous work on digital
literacy formation [
ages students to use new approaches and technologies, highlights current trends in ICT development.
Tasks presuppose creative activity, form skills of self-learning and further development. Examples are inspiriting.
Task execution result is useful, valuable and applicable product in professional practice.
All elements of the discipline are focused on future professional activities.
students to see themselves in their future profession, particularly in teaching profession.
It is important to emphasize interest to the students’ opinion, to make possible to their contribution in doing collective projects, for example, to create a bank of teacher’s materials; Student wants to get a feedback from his colleagues about his work. Any result of creative task should pass following stages: creation, publication and social assessment with definite criteria. Student wants to evaluate teacher’s work too, so a teacher should organize the ways to impact on the discipline development for students, to express their wishes.
Organizational issues
interaction to develop personal aspect of student and help to realize his individuality.
Clear structure, planning, to do list and deadline system.
Active use of formative assessment techniques.
Ice-breaking, team-building and communicative exercises at the beginning and at the end of the lesson to form communicative skills, values, relationship.
Use no more than two new environments at the lesson.
Teacher should consider in the selection of services to work at the lesson: registration absence or its simplicity, functionality easiness, necessity to install additional software opportunities to use in profession.
The main aim of updating the discipline was to help future teachers to create and organize their own learning space in the Internet. Therefore online interactive services that can be used for communication and teaching pupils were included (creating word clouds, mind map, open online documents, site, etc.). We also considered Berk’s strategies while designing the discipline. The updated version of "Information Technology" discipline was taught at the Faculty of Foreign Philology (FFP) - 104 students, Faculty of Translation (FT) – 61 students, Faculty of Psychology, History and Sociology (FPHS) – 28 students.
distance learning ksuonline.ksu.ks.ua located on a MOODLE platform. This system allows developing a course with such elements as glossaries, wikis, multimedia clips, presentations, tests, blogs, forums, etc.
Teamwork and coop- Some tasks are complex and presuppose collaboration, while their eration execution the cognitive interpersonal communication and interaction of all participants progress. An important stage is to prepare a group of students to work together. To ensure about students’ readiness for cooperation teacher should arrange Ice braking, team-building and communicative exercise (up to 5 minutes) at the beginning and at the end of lesson. Teacher, who works in the computer classroom, usually recognizes his students primarily "from the back." Therefore, such exercise facilitates personal contact with the group, which is especially important while teaching short disciplines.
Interested in multime- The discipline content was developed and designed considering
of Net Generation
dia, "visual" communi- students' interest in "visual communication" and multimedia. Videocation clips and presentations were added to each theme. The tasks and manuals contain minimum of text information and maximum of graphics and illustrations. Teachers included such elements as blogs and forums.
Rely on search engines. In adding to use search engines during the course students active Multitasks on every- work with Google services as Google.Drive, Google.sites, etc. This thing satisfies the interest in creating online content and allows simultaneously work with several documents. It’s also an efficient tool of collective activity organization.
Retention in the profes- Organization of students’ activity is a process of consistent modelsion ing of professional activity of specialists under learning conditions.
The students of teaching specialties create educational games, tests, documents, tables that are useful in their professional practice. The results of the work are evaluated not only technical element, but also educational one. Also such task as creating a presentation "My choice" (students aimed to describe situation of their professional choice, analyze their present achievements and capacities, goals and dreams, ways to attain them) and collective writing of mind map "Modern teacher” were added.
Each student’s work passes through formative assessment: selfappraisal, social assessment, teacher’s assessment.
Such tasks as making clouds of words, mind maps, playing learning games are relevant to professional and educational discipline orientation. In addition, they presuppose creative activity and can be easily adapted to a group work.
Poll Results of 2012-2013 academic year at Faculty of Pre-School and Elementary Education are comparable with poll results published one year earlier. The quality of teaching materials on KsuOnline highly appreciated by students, average score was 9.29 in 2011 and 9.16 in 2012-2013 out of 10. The novelty of lectures was assessed as 7.59 in 2011 and 6.84 in 2012-2013, the novelty of practical tasks had 7.64 and 7.39 respectively.
The students’ preferences about the most interesting and useful for future professional tasks have changed. In both of these categories the task "Creating didactic game" leads. Making a poster "It's interesting to know," creation of "Site Class" and creation of online poll follow in the rating. These tasks we preserved in the updated version of the discipline "Information Technology". As a result, new version of "Information Technology" discipline has the following structure:
Lesson 1. Registration on KSUOnline, taking an entrance poll and test. Presentation "My choice" with the following structure: 1. My strengths and weaknesses (academic, creative, personal, individual aspects). executed tasks show not only an attempt to get a high grade but sympathy to a teacher. In computer disciplines social aspect is often nearly absent or poorly developed: most of the time students work individually on the computers. The times of detached teacher have passed. Today’s successful teacher can easily contact with the audience in a short time, acts as a partner, friend and a leader.
During the course, we found that the most third-year students have lack of communication. For example, at first lesson after the game "Introduction", we asked all students to tell us about their three small victories. Such "victories" were often met with utter surprise of the group. It was uncovered that the students' ability to learn is directly connected with their sense of self-confidence and positive mood.
Obviously, a success of training approach strongly depends on a teacher personality and his skills in training and teambuilding. Therefore, the authors of this paper have selected games and exercises that do not require special teacher’s skills and knowledge or any additional devices.
Training elements in students’ groups of different teachers’ specialties and years of study had different reaction. Some students expressed stunning and rejection: "Why should I do that? It is not serious." despite the fact that they had finished Innovative Teaching Methods and Technologies discipline, training exercise was an extraordinary situation. One of the teachers said describing her experience: "Thirdyear students look so serious, that sometimes I feel scared to come to the classroom, as if teachers and students have switched their roles...”. We find it particularly important to use the elements of training and communicative techniques working with students of teaching specialties. Present students are future teachers who are taught traditionally. In several years, they’ll copy one of teaching styles they have seen. It is important to implement innovative techniques and give to students a chance to test them in practice.
Another important improvement in the organization of the discipline was using of open online document on GoogleDrive among teachers. Each of the teachers contributed to planning, selection of training exercise and other notes. After each lesson, teachers made a record in “a discipline online diary” to describe in free form results of the lesson, such as the most common student mistakes, teaching and technical problems, positive situations, questions from the students, etc. Keeping a discipline diary had a great success. Teaching has become more effective and convenient, the level of awareness and collaboration among teachers has risen, so now teachers create and use it in other disciplines. 4
Developed approaches allowed us to improve a range of disciplines including "Information Technology", which is taught for students of all teacher specialties. We also applied them to following disciplines: "Introduction to Information Technology" (for future teachers of elementary school and Computer Science, the 1st year of studiy), "Fundamentals of Computer Science and Applied Linguistics" (translators, the 2nd year of study), and “Office Computer Technology” (programmers, the 1st year of studies).
Students expressed their positive attitude verbally in the classroom and several students sent e-mails with gratitude after finishing the discipline.
The results of the final poll confirmed their appreciation.