Students’ use of eLearning strategies and their perceptions of eLearning usefulness

Students may well be ‘digital natives’; however, there is little evidence that they are natural ‘digital learners’. Two questions were examined in this study. Firstly, in Hong Kong, what are undergraduate students’ perceptions towards the use of technology for teaching and learning? Secondly, in what way did our students’ previous experience in using technology, in particular various eLearning strategies, affect their perceptions of the value of eLearning? We surveyed 1438 students at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The students were generally positive (though not overly enthusiastic) about various forms of eLearning. Students who were more experienced in using technologies in their everyday lives were in general more positive about eLearning strategies. Most interestingly, the more experience the students had with eLearning strategies, the more positive they were towards eLearning as well. This is evidence that eLearning has provided learning benefits to our students. Experiences, perceptions and their relationships Terms such as ‘Net Generation’, ‘Digital Natives’ or the ‘Y Generation’ are used to describe young people who have “spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age” (Prenksy, 2001, p. 1). Studies in Australia (Kennedy, Krause, Churchward, Judd, & Gray, 2006a; Kennedy et al., 2006b), in the US (Kvavik, 2005; Salaway, Caruso, & Nelson, 2008) and in the UK (Green & Hannon, 2007) in general confirm that the vast majority of the students have ready access to web-enabled personal computers and own personal digital devices such as mobile phones. They also use a wide range of digital features and web features in their everyday lives, for communication (emails, msn, etc.) or for forming social networks (blogging, Facebook, etc.). A recent study at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) (McNaught, Lam, & Ho, 2009) confirmed that our students are ‘digitally ready’ to a level that is compatible with their counterparts in Australia. They are also very familiar with information and communication technologies. For example, a vast majority of the students have broadband internet access and have mobile phones. Nearly all students use digital methods to communicate. They use emails, read and comment on blogs, and use social-networking software. The experience digital natives have in using technologies to learn is very different from the extensive experience they have in using the technologies in their everyday lives. Many of the success stories about innovative eLearning strategies in the literature are cases of pioneering teachers who are ‘early adopters’ (Rogers, 2003) testing teaching and learning technologies in isolated courses. Apart from these pioneering cases most other teachers in the ‘mainstream majority’ (Anderson, Varnhagen, & Campbell, 1998) use quite simple eLearning strategies. A series of studies at CUHK show that, while the percentage of supplementary online course websites has grown a great deal from ~45% in 2003–04 to over 80% in 2008–09, the web continues to be mostly seen as a convenient storage house for easy distribution of course materials to students, often using existing basic functions in learning management systems (LMSs), such as WebCT and Moodle. Most communications are done through online forums with simple designs which are not very active; thread lengths, on average, are one to three messages (McNaught, Lam, Keing, & Cheng, 2006; McNaught & Lam, 2009). In general, students do not ask for more eLearning. We have previously reported challenges in the use of technology in teaching and learning from the students’ point of view (McNaught, Lam, Keing, & Cheng, 2006). A study at CUHK concerning students’ perceptions of mobile eBook technology (Lam, Lam, Lam, & McNaught, 2009) indicated that eBooks are not yet a useful and practical tool for academic learning (though this was a pre-iPad study). While students who were first introduced to the technology in generally gave us positive comments about the technology, those who actually spent more time on it were much less enthusiastic. They raised concerns with many aspects of the technology (such as the slow processes of finding and downloading eBooks, the hardware, and the reading process itself). There is no strong evidence that students’ habits of using technologies in their everyday lives