Lode: Learners of Digital Era
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COVER AND TITLE LoDE: Learners of Digital Era From the analysis of the current debate to an empirical study emphasising the learners’ perspective A dissertation presented by Emanuele Giovanni Rapetti Supervised by Prof. Lorenzo Cantoni Submitted to the Faculty of Communication Sciences Università della Svizzera italiana – Lugano for the degree of Ph.D. in Communication Sciences July 2012 To Serena, who is always able to see in me more than I can. 2 BOARD Advisor: Prof. Lorenzo Cantoni Università della Svizzera italiana– Lugano (Switzerland) Reviewers: Prof. Mark Bullen British Columbia Institute of Technology –Burnaby (Canada) Prof. Pier Cesare Rivoltella Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – Milano (Italy) 3 The research was carried out at the Università della Svizzera italiana Ph.D. Thesis, Defended the 17th July 2012 Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano (Switzerland) Address: Via G. Buffi 13 CH-6900 Lugano © Emanuele Giovanni Rapetti, 2012 Copyright note The present written text is a unique, creative, original and unpublished intellectual work as a whole. Everytime it has been possible to find a reference, author(s) is(are) presented between brackets in the text and fully quoted in the Bibliography section, according to APA citation style. I am willing to solve any eventual case of omission or controversy. Concerning my texts, I used in the dissertation parts of other works I did. At the beginning of each chapter, already published documents on the topic are listed, and then quoted, when it is the case. 4 ABSTRACT(English) Since the 1990s, a wide debate has been generated around the "learners-new media dichotomy", with a consequent journalistic reverberation. In particular, expressions like “digital natives”, “Y” generation, or “net-generation” contributed to diffuse the hypothesis that– since the 1980s – a generation of learners with typical characteristics related to their great familiarity with digital technology could be identified. Such a debate has been widely dominated by commentators who expressed a confident attitude towards that generation, stressing how their common peculiarities were extremely positive at the social, cognitive, and learning levels. On the other hand, the impact that new media could have on such a huge range of people caused great concerns too. Recently, critical voices have jointed the debate: they put in doubt that these "labels" are useful for an accurate understanding of reality, and notice that scientific evidences of this fact are very limited. This dissertation is based on the analysis of these controversies, and is aimed to focus the debate, offering a strategy to overcome the mere antithesis between the different interpretations. In order to do so, the empirical research Learners’ voices at USI- SUPSI(run in Ticino, from October 2009 to June 2011) is presented. This research explores in depth this theme and observes the role that ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) play in USI (Università della Svizzera italiana)and SUPSI (Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana) students' learning. This research falsifies the presence of a unique cohort of learners, putting in evidence different positions within the same age range and similar behaviours among individuals with different socio-demographical characteristics. 5 RIASSUNTO (Italiano) A partire dagli anni 1990 si è sviluppato un ampio dibattito, e una conseguente estesa pubblicistica, intorno al binomio apprendenti e nuovi media. In particolare, espressioni come “nativi digitali”, “generazione Y”, o “net-generation” hanno contribuito a diffondere l’ipotesi che – a partire dagli anni 1980 – fosse identificabile una generazione di apprendenti con caratteristiche proprie, correlate alla marcata familiarità col digitale. Tale dibattito è stato ampiamente dominato da voci che hanno espresso un atteggiamento fiducioso nei confronti di questa generazione, insistendo su tratti comuni particolarmente positivi a livello sociale, cognitivo, di apprendimento. D’altra parte, sono emerse anche posizioni preoccupate per l’influsso dei nuovi media su tale vasta platea di soggetti. Recentemente, poi, sono apparse anche voci critiche: esse mettono in dubbio che tali “etichette” aiutino per una più adeguata comprensione della realtà; e osservano inoltre il limitato numero di evidenze scientifiche in proposito. Questo lavoro di dottorato muove dall’analisi di tale controversie, proponendosi d’inquadrare il dibattito e di offrire una strategia per superare la semplice contrapposizione tra le diverse interpretazioni. A tal fine, viene presentata la ricerca empirica Learners’ voices at USI-SUPSI(condotta in Ticino, dall’Ottobre 2009 al Giugno 2011) . Essa esplora nel dettaglio la tematica, osservando il ruolo che le TIC (Tecnologie dell’Informazione e della Comunicazione) giocano nell’apprendimento degli studenti dell’USI – Università della Svizzera italiana – e della SUPSI – Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana. Tale ricerca smentisce la presenza di una coorte univoca di apprendenti, evidenziando posizioni diverse all’interno della stessa fascia d’età e comportamenti simili tra soggetti con caratteristiche anagrafiche e socio-demografiche diverse. 6 AKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, the formal acknowledgements. This PhD research exists thanks to: The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), for the financial support to my doctoral research; The RED-INK(Rethinking Education in the Knowledge society) doctoral school, for the valuable training I received; The Università della Svizzera italiana, for the physical infrastructures and the theoretical context; The NewMinE Lab (New Media in Education Laboratory), which has been my research community; The CERI (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation) at OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), where I experienced the practice of the international research arena. I would like to thank (a lot) all the persons met at USI and during the Red-InK experience, for a very long list of reasons. It is almost impossible to list them, and it is probably useless, since each person knows exactly how much s/he has been important for me. I started my PhD on 1stof April, 2008. Since that date, eight people have been playing a great role in this challenging navy cross. Prof. Lorenzo Cantoni patiently supervised my plans, throughout the stormy sea of research during the past four years. Dr. Isabella Rega, dr. Stefano Tardini, and dr. Luca Botturi resisted all my changes of mind and course, and helped me to hold on. 7 The “fantastic four”, Andreas Schmeil, Chrysi Rapanta, Luca Mazzola, and Silvia de Ascaniis were colleagues and have been friends. Without them, it would have been impossible not to drown. Doubtless, I have to thank my father Vittorio, my mother Livia, and my sister Federica: I begun to bother them – talking of education and new media– when I was sixteen; and I’m still on the same topic. I have to express all my gratitude to Samanta Ciannamea, who (almost) lost he eyes working on the dataset. Finally, I must mention three great friends for their big help: Rossella Icardi, who tried to make me familiarize with numbers and statistics, and in meanwhile, discussing about “how to avoid unexpected and unsolvable difficulties in life”; Austin Delaney, who suffered all the abuses I unintentionally provoked to his language, and in change provided me many valuable hints; and Valerio Quassolo, who demonstrated me that a human translator has many more features than Google Translate (i.e.: teaching me how to play guitar). 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER AND TITLE .............................................................................................. 1 BOARD .................................................................................................................... 3 Copyright note ............................................................................................................................... 4 ABSTRACT(ENGLISH) .......................................................................................... 5 RIASSUNTO (ITALIANO) ..................................................................................... 6 AKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................... 9 LIST OF ACRONYMS (ALPHABETICAL ORDER) ................................................................ 17 LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................ 19 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. 23 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 26 Foreword ..................................................................................................................................... 26 INTRO ........................................................................................................................... 27 The architecture of this dissertation: ........................................................................................... 32 Panorama of the dissertation ....................................................................................................... 34 PART I: ................................................................................................................