Crossing the Digital Divide: Metacognition for Learning in the Digital Age

Introduction

With one foot squarely planted in Generation Jones, the “anonymous generation” born in the second half of the Baby Boom (Williams, 2014), I belong to the last generation that was born before the “digital divide”. We Jonesers were born on the brink of the coming technological revolution, during the calm before the digital storm. We came of age just as the exponential course of Moore’s Law was gathering steam. We remember getting up to change the dial on our televisions to one of the other two available channels. We remember going to the rotary dial telephone and sitting next to it to talk to our friends. We remember going outside to play, reading books, and going to the library to find references for school reports. Plagiarism required a lot more effort back then. We rode the digital rocket from classrooms thick with chalk dust and notebooks and pencils, across the digital divide, to a brave new world of smart boards, tablets and the ever-present cell phone. We learned to Google and surf and text with the best of them. But the old ways are still imprinted in our brains, if not in our DNA.

My first experience of teaching in higher education was as a graduate student in the late 1980’s. My teaching tools were a textbook, a chalk board and my own efforts and ingenuity. My students were a few years my junior, and of nearly the same vintage as myself. For the most part they paid attention when I lectured, took notes, did their homework, and attempted the laboratory exercises. The classroom scene of my early career sits in stark contrast to the present. Gone are the chalkboards and pencil sharpeners and notebooks. These requisite tools of the old days have been replaced with PowerPoints and smart boards and tablets and i-clickers. And yet, my students seem less interested, less able to pay attention, and less able to think critically than ever before.

Over the years the responsibility for student engagement and motivation seems to have shifted from the student herself to the teacher (Weimer, 2013). I don’t remember, in my own college years, expecting to be engaged. We did not expect learning to be “fun”. We expected drudgery and boredom and hard work. We consumed what was placed before us, no matter how indigestible. We accepted that not every course would be a dessert. This is what seems to be missing in classrooms today. Many of my students have such little tolerance for frustration that they seem to be defeated before they begin. They don’t ask questions, they don’t ask for help. They just stop working.

For the past 15 years I have taught an introductory geology course. During those 15 years I cannot think of more than a few students who, in my opinion, arrived in my classroom with the interest, drive and eagerness for learning that I remember from my own college days. I remember the thrill of purchasing and paging through my textbooks. My students don’t want to buy their textbooks, much less read them. I have had semesters when not one textbook for my class of 25 to 30 students was purchased from the university bookstore.

Class attendance has always been poor, and it is common that not more than half of the enrolled students attend any class session. When I arrive in the classroom students are generally seated head down staring into their cell phones. Many of them wear earphones and don’t even notice when class begins, and I am compelled to perform the pre-class ritual of speaking loudly to get their attention. During class time the phone, tablet or laptop is ever-present before their eyes. In the manner of a true addiction they cannot seem to go without. Students’ obsession with their mobile devices and social media presents an interesting dilemma for the instructor. Some of my colleagues ban the use of cell phones in their classrooms. Thus, even as we are encouraged to employ and promote the use of digital technologies for learning in the classroom, many of us are also insisting that students put them away.

Discussions on this topic with my colleagues usually result in one of two responses: 1) admonitions to implement punitive measures with my students; or 2) advice about how I should modify the mechanics of my teaching. I am not by nature a punitive person. I realize that a teacher must be prepared to set and defend certain boundaries and expectations, but if harsh measures are required, then it seems to me that the battle has already been lost. And while I have had some minor victories by implementing different pedagogical approaches and tightening up on student expectations, none of these changes has addressed the deeper problem, which is a decided lack of student interest and engagement.