The holy grail of the IT guide — What they really really need
I was recently asked to develop a how-to guide for an advanced application to be used by HE science students. The request came from student feedback, and learning technology was asked to address the need.
After several interesting conversations with lecturers within the relevant subjects, we found that what students said they needed and what they actually needed were two separate things. Students come to university often with the genuine belief that they are digitally literate. They can use a computer, and they do so all the time. Yet, more and more, what they mean by a computer is at best a Chromebook, which uses web-based software instead of locally installed software on the device, and at worst they just mean their smartphones. If their work requires additional software to be loaded locally on a device, the intentional use of local or cloud based storage for the purpose of working with more advanced applications, the devices they know are limited in scope.
Many come to a science degree, and other types of degrees for that matter, without a grasp of the difference. This is a problem for HE lecturers who may need to teach the use of such advanced applications and for IT support functions operating with laptop/desktops devices on an intranet system.
Lecturers assume in their planning that the students can use a computer, as indeed the students themselves do. The discovery of mistaken assumptions on both parts comes in the midst of a busy term with many assignments and no time to offer the basic computer skills that are found lacking.
“What all students need, and particularly all HE Science students because they end up having to use more advanced applications, is a guide to basic desktop/laptop systems. They need this in order for them to be prepared to start learning how to use more advanced science applications in their second year, for example. This means being able to use File Explorer, being able to understand the difference between storing items on OneDrive and storing items on a desktop/laptop hard drive, when we might want to do one or the other, being able to use a university desktop/laptop, being able to understand that Chromebooks/Tablets/Phones are not able to be used for certain applications.
The quote above is adapted from one of the lecturers I spoke to this summer about this issue. They further added that even though we rely on students being able to work “on their laptops outside of class, an increasing number do not have their own laptops, just chromebooks. This is leading to a real social divide in attainment between the ‘haves’ and have-nots’. “
This lecturer raised an important socio-economic issue which I had not paid enough attention to in ongoing digital coaching sessions with students. In their words,
“the ‘have-nots’ do not have basic desktop/laptop IT skills — in particular I have observed increasing lack of understanding of how to use File Explorer, Word and Excel. How do we get round this social divide in attainment? “
A way to support students who lack this knowledge, and who may even be unaware they lack it, is to work on offering them access to core digital skills in the use of desktop/laptop systems. Yet, the students themselves may believe that what they lack is a guide to the advanced application their course requires them to use, and may be reporting that what they need is a guide to that application.
Unpacking this issue more deeply I found that what students need are basic computer skills in order to be able to use the required applications as they move on into more advanced elements of their course.
I am spending increasing amounts of my module time teaching File Explorer, Word and Excel rather than the application I am supposed to be teaching them!
From a learning technology and IT support point of view, this is often also frustrating. The guides exist, the support is there, reams of tutorials and even, in the case of our university, 121 support to learn basic skills. So, how come that such a significant amount of our work day is spent teaching students the basics of a computer when they arrive to us for digital coaching?
Part of an answer can be found in what has already been said. Students do not know the nature of their problem until they encounter the desktop or laptop they cannot use. They do not go to the tutorials or support because they do not know they need it.
Another thread is access to closed systems. A student used to being able to search for the meaning of life on Tik Tok via browser or smartphone app struggles with the complexities of sign-in and authentication methods which they have to constantly navigate to use university systems. If a student cannot access our systems to access available resources, they are lost. If they lack a basic ability to engage with software and hardware, they will not be able to access tutorials, guides or 121 support easily. We have a support hub on campus which gathers students that are in need of extra support and refer them to our services. But how many do we miss, who may drop out in the end?
Yet another thread is that some students are trying to complete a course with inadequate hardware off-campus, they fall behind and we never find out that what they needed were basic skills and the right hardware to do the course. Our official answer is that they can always do their work on campus computers. Yet, we know this is not what many students want or can do given their home circumstances.
How is it that we allow students to start a course without the basic digital skills they need to complete it, or a clear explanation of the minimum hardware requirements for the course they have chosen? We can, and do, say that all needed guidance is available in our websites, but students who lack the most basic digital skills often cannot find these resources without extra (human) support. It is not an exaggeration to say that some students come to digital coaching unable to switch a laptop on, or use a keyboard. Please see some of the custom curated resources I create after digital coaching sessions (linked at the end of this article); they really do include a typing tutor for those who have never used a keyboard. This may be a quirk of our particular context, but I have spoken with many academics in other institutions who find similar issues.
This summer I learnt that, in our context at least, part of the issue is that students learn about traditional (traditional?) computer systems and background computer skills until age 14 and then move over to using Chromebooks and smartphones unless they are studying some specialist subject. They arrive to university around 18 often having forgotten what they learnt in earlier studies. Particularly, if they have not had access to laptops or desktops at home.
I was initially of the view that implementing some kind of mandatory pre-entry test which assessed students basic digital skills would ‘fix the problem’. If students did not have the entry level needed, they needed to develop the skills with or without our support, and then retake the test for an offer to become firm.
I was wrong in this assumption, for our university, at least. The administrative detail is not important here, what is important is the comment from one lecturer that,
It would be continuing the inbuilt bias against students from more disadvantaged backgrounds. I actually think this is the more important reason. Any pre-entry test will only be to the advantage of those learners who are lucky enough to have a family home with a desktop or laptop in it….. and this is much more likely to be a middle-class home with one or more parents in a profession. A pre-entry test will be to the severe disadvantage of any youngster who does not have such home life advantages and who is wholly dependent on what they have been taught (or not!) at school.
The core issue is with pre-entry, not with mandatory. The better option I was offered in feedback by lecturers who deal with this closely, was the option of setting up mandatory activities to be carried out by students that mirrored what they need to do during their course, done at induction and given to all first year students.
Every student has to complete a simple set of digital skills exercises, ending with emailing a word doc to a (human) assessor with completed activities.
This means that all students are included, the digital activities are completed at different standards, and can give lecturers guidance as to who would need the most support early on. This would bring to the fore students that might otherwise remain
“just ‘hidden’, never feeling confident enough to ask us for help. This way it woudl be easier to arrange a mandatory follow-up session where they could get these skills under their belt.”
Such a basic assessment at induction, could both save money and stress later on. There are institutions that do this as standard, and I hope to see my own institution pick up some of these ideas and find a way to implement them. A potential obstacle is that this requires the whole organisation to align behind one action to assess digital skills. This is usually seen as the job of IT, rarely the job of the whole organisation.
For now, I have created a basic skill audit with guidance to resources and the suggestion that the audit is repeated after completing tutorials to get to the score needed to study effectively, as assessed by the audit. At this point, nothing is mandatory, but I have suggested to lecturers that they could use the audit as a required assignment and that with a score of x or less they could require the student to book digital coaching support from our learning technology services to practise core skills to achieve the needed standard,
This idea has been positively received by some and I look forward to turning the self-assessment audit into specific activities the student can carry out in the Learn Tech Lab I run on campus and online; realistic activities that can come together into one document that shows basic skills learnt and is emailed by the student to theit lecturer as evidence of learning. Themes and specific students needing extra support can be then be identified and supported.
So much in education is now self-assessment, with no external eye to offer accurate skill levels. In my view, there is no substitute for a “show don’t tell” pedagogy when teaching digital skills.
This is why I started digital coaching at my institution. It is how I find out that students can, and do, lack basic skills — when I say: just show me what you do that means the computer is ‘not working’. It is usually a PEBKAC type of error (an acronym used by tech support to stand for “problem exists between keyboard and chair”) though the user will locate the problem inside the computer, as a rule, or in the advanced application they cannot yet use because “the computer is deleting my files” (what they mean is they do not know the difference between local and cloud storage, so cannot find what they have saved). As I said above, this is partly driven by their belief that the computer they now need to use is the same kind of computer as their smartphones.
Should we continue to design courseware which needs ‘traditional’ computer expertise and access, or should we move with the times and re-design for smartphones and Tik Tok? Should we be using online generators rather than Photoshop or writing text from scratch or with the help of the applied statistical methods of large language models?
You should never underestimate the power of comfort. To our everlasting discredit, we owe our utter dependency on technology to our inability to resist it’ — David Whiteland
We need more internal research to gain further insight into how best to support learning through the use of technology at our institution in particular.
Some Learn Tech Lab custom curated resources can be found here.
