The Digital Turn in Higher Education: “Digital Natives” Mythbusted

Authors

Keywords:

Digital turn, Digital natives/ naturals, Higher education, Technology, Employability

Abstract

Digital technology has recently become a ubiquitous feature of the modern era posing problems to higher education institutions. Digitization of the academic life has brought forth the claims that there is an evident disparity between the digital naturals and digital immigrants and that the myth of the former is “undemystifiable”. The claim that the new digitized generation has its own distinguished learning preferences, skills of learning and beliefs about how learning in such an era should make higher education authorities revisit their curricula and “reshuffle the academic cards” so that the digital immigrants could catch up with the fast-running pace of the digitized train and provide the digital natives with what they need for a successful academic life. The overall aim of the present work therefore is to investigate the extent to which the so-called digital natives really have control of the use of educational technology either as part of their self-directed learning practices or as part of a formal tertiary level teaching, the type of technologies they prefer to use, whether they possess the required digital skills that are important for their future careers, and how vital the digital skills are in boosting their employability. In line with the major findings of the present study, it could be concluded that the media change under the created discourse of “moral panic” has unveiled the singularity of this generation and has forced academic authorities to reconsider learning, teaching as well as both skills and employability of a such a generation for the betterment of a healthy academic higher education system. 

Author Biography

Bani Koumachi, Ibn Tofail University

Bani Koumachi is an assistant professor at Ibn Tofail University Kénitra, Morocco. He got his National Doctorate (PhD) from Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah, Fes Sais, Morocco. He is the author of many articles in applied linguistics and communication. He has undertaken a variety of research and projects for both the private as well as the public sectors. Professor Koumachi’s research and writing interests include but not limited to intercultural communication, organizational communication, ICTs, ESP, knowledge management, research methodology and educational statistics, and applied linguistics issues.

References

Koumachi, B. (2019). The digital turn in higher education: “Digital natives” mythbusted. International Journal of Technology in Education and Science (IJTES), 3(1), 56-62.

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Published

2019-01-24

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Articles