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Natives and immigrants in the digital world

By Gilly Salmon (October 2005 Issue)
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It is rare that I get the opportunity to explore in depth, as an observer, what happens as a fully online course process rolls around in cyberspace. But Rick Bennett, of the University of the New South Wales, Sydney Australia recently offered me (and my small team of online researchers) access to his super project, called ‘Creative Waves’.

Creative Waves was the first in a series of free fully online projects for students located anywhere in the world, studying graphic design, photo-media and visual communication. Over a seven-week period in March and April, Creative Waves formed the largest multi-cultural community of student designers ever to work together in a totally online context. Participants interacted in creative exchanges, responded to challenges by unfolding design briefs and engaged in dialogue, discussion and collaboration to produce visual outcomes.

Students, who made up small mixed teams, were drawn from education institutions in six continents. Also joining in were special guests, professional designers, writers, theorists and teachers. The community consisted of 100 participants from 22 countries. Typically the students had grown up within the digital world and were used to surfing and working online – just the kind of people we call digital natives. However, most of the professionals and teachers who became involved found themselves heading rapidly for a new and somewhat unfamiliar beach – the digital immigrants.

Even the cool digital natives (the student participants), knew that the Creative Waves experience was something special. They said:

“It’s like being in The Matrix. Totally plugged! We’ve got very encouraging mentors and co-ordinators and not to mention the brainstorming between us Alyans. Discussions on Branding! It’s been really good learning experience and tons of knowledge” (Participant Team Alya)

“There were times that I was really excited about …being creative with people from around the globe. e.g. clicking our cameras at the same time all around the world. I mean how cool is that! I have never done anything like that before and that really pumped me up!” (Participant Team Hyades)

The digital natives worked well together, in spite of no overt and planned teambuilding. All of the participants were very task orientated, focussed and self-sufficient, even in the absence of regular mentoring input. They got down to the task quickly and single-mindedly without any preliminaries, bypassing the small talk and ‘getting to know you’ stages. They concentrated successfully on the immediate tasks to the exclusion of distractions. In effect, ice breaking was not relevant to their tasks. At some level this was admirable, and at another we thought that a little more attempt to understand and appreciate each other’s strengths and potential contributions from the start would have enhanced the collaborative outcomes.

The teacher-mentors were unsure about their role and less confident to just jump in, compared to the participants, although many were as excited by the project’s potential. We felt that there could be much greater coordination or division of labour between mentors. They needed briefing, effective online training beforehand, tips on effective time management and on a division of labour between them. They also needed a facility in the software for feedback, summarising and archiving messages at the end of each week.

The researchers on this project felt that six weeks was about the right length of time, but that the time online could be better used with more structured planning – fewer tasks more simply presented, a better flow between the tasks, and provision of a simple model of the creative and collaborative process to follow e.g. divergence and convergence. There was no systematic tracking, monitoring, support and encouragement of lurkers, laggards and dropouts. A better shared experience for all participants could have been created through such a system.

Ultimately, their view was that small changes across a number of fronts, together with more explicit, clear supportive human intervention from trained mentors, could make a big difference if the Wave rides again.

The Omnium Project (Australia) hosted the Creative Waves project on behalf of the International Council of Graphic Design and their worldwide education network (IEN). The project can be found online at www.omnium.edu.au

Dr Gilly Salmon is professor of e-learning and learning technologies at the University of Leicester. Prior to this, she worked at the Open University Business School for 15 years. Gilly can be contacted at gilly.salmon@le.ac.uk

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