Academic Use of Digital Resources: Disciplinary
Differences and the Issue of Progression
Chris Jones1, Maria Zenios1 and Jill
Griffiths2
Lancaster
University1, Manchester Metropolitan University2
This paper examines the use of digital resources by academics in UK
Higher education. The explosive growth of the Internet and in particular the
Web has led to a growth in speculation about networked and e-learning (Steeples
and Jones 2003, Brown and Duguid 2000). Increasingly researchers have become
aware of the ways the university resists such changes and provides a
‘resourceful constraint’ to the changes surrounding the introduction of
networked learning (Brown and Duguid 2000, Cornford 2002). The take-up and use
of digital resources by academic staff will be a critical factor in the success
of attempts to integrate networked technologies into university teaching. There
has been little research work to date that investigates the ways in which
academic practice varies in relation to digital resources although there is a
significant tradition of research concerned more broadly with disciplinary
differences amongst academics. Two key issues are identified, different
discipline and subject areas show significant divergence in the types and uses
of digital resources and progression seems to affect the use of resources
within the different disciplines. The research supports the view that
disciplinary and subject differences reported in other contexts have a significant
influence in relation to the use of digital resources.
Digital resources, disciplinary differences, teaching and learning,
distributed learning environments.
Networked learning is an educational form that is closely associated with
the development and deployment of computer networks and the rise of a networked
society (Steeples and Jones 2002). The growth of the Internet and more recently
the Web have made it conceivable that education can take place in a learning
environment that is based on instant communication and the ability to search a
vast array of resources. Despite these rapid social changes the university
resists transformation and provides what has been called a resourceful
constraint to activities (Brown and Duguid 2000, Cornford and Pollock 2002).
Cornford and Pollock note that despite the development of networked
technologies that hold out the prospect of distributed learning the campus
refuses to disappear. They claim that the idea of a virtual university rests on
the idea that learning simply relies on the timely distribution of texts,
sounds and images, in short information. By way of a contrast they note that
the campus provides a number of resources as well as constraints and the
persistence of the campus illustrates the need to take the resources afforded
by place seriously and not be seduced by an apparently simple translation of
education to the virtual and an informational view of learning.
The vision of a virtual or e-university as the future form of education
has been taken up by government and is now embedded in national and European
policy initiatives (Hodgson 2002). The Minerva action of the European
Commission’s Socrates programme focuses on Open and Distance Learning. At the
European level policy places a stress on digital literacy, lifelong learning
and developing the skills required for what is described as the information
society. The UK government since the Dearing Report in 1997 has informed its
policy initiatives with a 20 year vision for higher education that includes the
promotion of networked technologies. While the exact outline of government
policy in the UK is unclear it is highly influenced by a technological
determinist view of social and educational change (Jones 2002). The simple
advent of new information and communication technologies and the Web cannot
guarantee a successful integration of technological changes into new forms of
education, even when supported by government policy. It is well known that
technology doesn't simply translate into new social practices and that the
simple provision of access to materials will not be sufficient to ensure that
they are taken up (Goodyear and Jones 2003). Even though online models of open
and distance learning have moved away from what have been called transmissive
models towards more socio-cultural or constructivist models of education these
approaches still rely on specified resources and content. The interactive and
communicative aspects of the new technologies displace but do not replace the need
for quality assured resources.
The research reported here was conducted in the context of a broad
formative evaluation of the JISC-DNER (Distributed National Electronic
Resource). The JISC-DNER is:
a managed
environment for accessing quality assured information resources on the Internet
which are available from many sources. These resources include scholarly
journals, monographs, textbooks, abstracts, manuscripts, maps, music scores,
still images, geospatial images and other kinds of vector and numeric data, as
well as moving picture and sound collections (JISC 1999 paragraph 5).
It is funded by the JISC – the Joint Information Systems Committee of the
four UK funding councils for higher education, with an investment to date of
over 30 million pounds. The JISC-DNER is aimed at users in tertiary education
in the UK, not just for learning and teaching but also for research and
scholarship. The term JISC-DNER is used throughout this paper but it should be
noted that the initiative has undergone a re-visioning and the current term
used to describe the JISC-DNER is the Information Environment (IE) (JISC 2001).
The original proposal formulated by JISC for additional government funding
captures some of the core intention:
Although this data
has been primarily used for research purposes, it is beginning to find a use in
learning and teaching. However, this work has been slow and some additional
funding would enable the JISC services to be used in totally different ways
than originally envisaged. There is a strong requirement to improve the
interaction between the people who are involved in the development of new
learning environments and the national information systems and services being
developed by the JISC. It is therefore proposed that an initiative be funded to
integrate learning environments with the wider information landscape aimed at
increasing the use of on-line electronic information and research datasets in
the learning and teaching process. (JISC 1999, paragraph 9).
The aim of the JISC-DNER is to influence the use of networked digital
resources in teaching and learning. This paper attempts to locate that aim by
examining the way this initiative interacts with current practice within
universities.
Research in Higher Education has debated the role that academic
disciplines have in organizing recognizable groups within universities (Becher
1990, 1994, Neumann 2001, Becher and Trowler 2001). This research has
identified disciplinary differences as significant influences on the ways in
which academic work is organized. Disciplines have been shown to influence the
relationship of academics to knowledge, the relationship of students at
undergraduate and post-graduate levels to teaching staff and the type of
knowledge that students are expected to gain about their subject or discipline
area. The relational tradition of research has also taken account of
disciplinary and subject differences in research examining both teaching and
learning in universities. This research tradition assumes that disciplines are
a contextual influence affecting teaching and learning (for a summary of this
research see Prosser and Trigwell 1999).
Within this research tradition there has been some limited research
concerning the use of electronic information resources at undergraduate level
(McDowell 2002). This research whilst collected from staff from a variety of
discipline and subject areas did not specifically comment on any differences
found between the different subject and disciplinary areas. Macdonald, Heap and
Mason (2001) show how student’s use of information resources may relate to
their level of development within the discipline rather than a general lack of
IT skills or motivation. This study also found that post-graduate students
showed greater capacity to learn independently from extensive information
resources than undergraduates. This research suggests a link between subject
and disciplinary differences and student progression. The issue of subject
difference in the use of IT more generally has been identified as an
under-researched issue in schools and colleges (Selwyn 1999). Examining
students aged between 16-19 the research found huge variations in computer use.
It concluded that:
for many students (and teachers) computer use is
inherently at odds with their conception of what it is to be a learner within
their chosen subject areas. (Selwyn 1999 p43).
Research investigating disciplinary differences has not been fully
developed to explore whether such disciplinary and subject differences affect
the ways in which digital resources are conceptualized and used, or whether
disciplinary differences combine with
student progression to affect staff and
student use of digital resources.
The research related to disciplines divides academic life up into a
variety of clusters or groupings. Becher for example uses a four-fold taxonomy.
|
Table 1. Knowledge and
Disciplinary Groups (adapted from Becher 1994) |
|
|
Disciplinary Groupings |
Nature of knowledge |
|
Pure Sciences (e.g. Physics) “Hard Pure” |
Cumulative; atomistic (crystalline/tree-like) concerned with
universals, quantities, simplification; resulting I discovery/explanation |
|
Humanities (e.g. history) and pure social sciences (e.g. anthropology) “Soft Pure” |
Reiterative; holistic (organic/river like); concerned with particulars,
qualities, complication; resulting in understanding/interpretation. |
|
Technologies (e.g. mechanical engineering) “Hard Applied” |
Purposive, pragmatic, (know-how via hard knowledge); concerned with
mastery of physical environment; resulting in products/techniques. |
|
Applied social sciences (e.g. education); “Soft Applied” |
Functional; utilitarian (know-how via soft knowledge); concerned with
enhancement of [semi] professional practice; resulting in protocols
procedures. |
For practical and policy purposes subjects and disciplines have been
divided up in a more fine grained way. The Learning and Teaching Support Network
in the UK has subject centers that cover 24 different subject/discipline areas.
The detail of these divisions does not concern us here but the significance of
the divergences in defining subjects and disciplines show that even a finer
grain of analysis still provides no exact fit. Becher noted (1990 p333) that
disciplines themselves were composed of a “constantly changing kaleidoscope of
smaller components”. The research reported in this paper reflects the current
organization of subject and discipline boundaries. Questions concerning the
match between these organizational boundaries and current disciplinary
practices have not been addressed.
The research was conducted as part of a large-scale formative evaluation
EDNER at two universities in the North West of England. One university was a
regional research and teaching institution part of the traditional university
sector (pre-1992 University) the other was a large city center institution, more
vocationally oriented, and came from the UK polytechnic tradition (Post-1992
university). In the pre-1992 university 19 academics were interviewed across a
range of disciplines. These interviews were complemented by interviews with all
9 subject librarians in the same institution. In the post-1992 university the
research was conducted in two phases. In phase one face-to-face interviews took
place with 7 members of staff and a further 8 members of staff completed an
email questionnaire. In phase two a further 4 lecturing staff, five research
students and 10 undergraduates were interviewed. The interviews do not attempt
to be representative of current academic practice, but to illuminate the issues
that might have a bearing on how academics currently approach the use of
digital resources.
The use of digital resources, though highly individualized, was
significantly related to subject and discipline area. The different disciplines
could be grouped into three main types of use.
The use of digital resources was closely related to the use of specialist
software. These subjects were interested in providing access for students to
specialized software, databases, simulations and potentially to networked
experiments. The use of digital resources seemed in this way to be related to
workshop or laboratory work. The purpose of bringing these sources into the
educational environment was not so much to make available primary information
sources, rather it was to develop skills in handling information that were
thought likely to be required in further study or in the workplace. The
staff in these subjects also expressed an interest in the use of images,
including moving and 3D images and simulations, this was also so in the case of
Biological Sciences.
"So for
instance [course name] is a lab class that works on SolidWorks and in that
there is a SolidWorks part so if we want to do assembly file the common place
for them to find the information and the actual parts is from the intranet and
then they can download it onto each PC where they are working and then
configure it" (Engineering tutor)
" Oh they are
basically, the students are being introduced to these as beginner users as it
were, they are not student teaching packages, students are taught how to do
basic things on them…………… So we don’t actually use any Mathematics teaching
package it all tends to be professionals' software that we use in an
introductory context." (Mathematics lecturer)
The mathematics and science subject areas also did not direct students
toward journal use of any kind until the final stages of an undergraduate
programme whereas social science and arts students were more likely to make use
of journals and e-journals throughout their degree.
This group of staff was most interested in the use of particular types of
Web based materials. These subjects needed access to current and in some cases
very up-to-date material often from Government or specific agency sites. This group of subjects also showed an
interest in developing a type of information literacy by using Web sites to
access potentially biased or dangerous materials. The purpose the academic
staff had was to develop students’ skills in reading materials with a view to
assessing their provenance, reliability and validity. Languages were also
interested in access to news media such as local language newspapers.
We are encouraging
students to look at, to look in detail at what is going on in contemporary
conflicts …. if it was the Kosovan conflict we would encourage them to look at
what the Foreign Office’s view is, what the Russians’ view is, what the
American view is and you often can’t do that from resources in the Library
because they are bound to be several years out of date (Politics lecturer)
The other thing I
encourage students to look at which I think that the web becomes particularly
useful for is websites that have been put up by people who are wanting to write
their personal experience of illness because then they are getting perspectives
that are different to what would be presented in the sort of academic press or
just general news and that, I mean that was when I mentioned anorexia last
year, there was quite a wide range of sites which were called, which came under
a heading of “PRO-ANA” and these were sites put up by people with anorexia
advising other anorexics on how to diet. (Applied Social Science lecturer)
I mean there are two
issues, one is actually to do with language which is the fact that a lot of
Spanish websites, if they are done by a private individual, they are not very
fussy about putting things like accents on words and so you need to tell them 'look,
you know, you may come across a page which has half of the accents missing, in
which case you are obviously not going to take that as good linguistic
model'. The other thing is content ….
to take an extreme example, Spain still has a fairly restrictive Abortion Law
so if they are doing a project on Spanish Abortion Law then they would come
across obviously extremist groups, they come across Catholic groups, they come
across Government web pages, so it is just, I suppose, teaching them to
identify or making it clear that they have to identify the source of the
information and from that to actually say 'ok well this is a Catholic group,
the Catholic obviously have, they have this particular stand point on abortion,
therefore the information I am getting is liable to be biased in that
particular way' (Language lecturer)
These subjects stood out in the way that they emphasized using digital
searches for materials that could be accessed either digitally or using
traditional methods. In part this may relate to issues of copyright and the
public availability of materials. In Music the reverse was the case. The use of
digital resources, in this particular area, though technically simple was
hindered by the strict rules applying to copyright.
One of the main
digital resources in Law, and this is generally the case and not just on my
courses, is the online databases of reported cases and unreported cases. (Law
lecturer)
If you have got say
a student who wants to do something on Liverpool, you can put in key words and
you can see whether anything has been written on it. I use this as a sort of
way of finding out what you can find as electronic resources elsewhere possibly
and also what you find in some printed sources or as slides. (History lecturer)
OK the big issue in
our area is about copyright because there’s a huge quantity of already
digitized material and CD recordings which could be used quite widely. ……………
but copyright means I can’t simply rip a bit off a CD …. because it would be
breaking the law. (Music lecturer)
The librarians’ relationships with academics varied though in general,
there was a noticeable gap between library and academic staff. Within the
pre-1992 university each department had a member of staff responsible for
library liaison but communication with the department, other than for
subscription services, often relies upon the development of personal
relationships rather than a formal link. A department with a notably close
relationship to the library was Law where the subject librarian attended staff
meetings regularly and was trusted to buy new digital resources. The use of
digital resources within different departments did not necessarily depend on
the relations between academic staff and the corresponding librarian. The use
of digital resources was reported by librarians to vary markedly within
subjects and disciplines.
a)
Departments identified with low use of digital
resources:
Languages, Politics,
Arts, Philosophy and Religious Studies.
b)
Departments identified with moderate use of digital
resources:
Linguistics,
American Studies, and Psychology, Educational Research, Geography, Biology and
Environmental Science.
c)
Departments identified with a notably high use of
digital resources:
Management School,
Law.
Librarians reported that they considered the variation to be influenced
by the history of each department in the use of digital resources and by the
external demand that exists for the use of digital resources within the subject
area and professions relevant to that discipline area.
All academic staff in all subject areas reported some degree of
progression in the use of networked digital resources. The involvement of the
staff interviewed in teaching at first year undergraduate level varied but all
interviewees reported some student use of digital resources from the first
year. Even when all students were introduced to digital resources in their
first year it was students in their final year or sometimes their penultimate
year of study that made the most significant use of digital resources. Staff
clearly differentiated between an introduction, that was often described in
terms of basic information skills and sometimes left to librarians, and higher
order research-like skills that were developed in the final undergraduate years
or at postgraduate level. In some subject areas such as mathematics and
sciences the use of journals and e-journals was largely reserved for final
years students or postgraduates. In subject areas like marketing the concern
was the highly specific nature of the resources required, especially when a
problem based approach to teaching was adopted.
a) Interviewer So that is the historical abstract?
History lecturer: Yes. So we use this a lot.
Students are introduced to this in the first year but I don’t think they
need it at that stage but I use all of this in the third year.
b) Interviewer: When you get further on, you have
mentioned that e-journals and databases would be used more by post-graduates
but is there a point the second or third year where students would begin to use
those sorts of structures?
Mathematics
lecturer: If students are doing
projects they start to use the Library more and in the third year they start to
use catalogues much more…. but the actual electronic journals and electronic
searching … I think they will be reading more beginning the post-graduate
level.
c) Interviewer: Would you direct students to
e-journals?
Engineering
tutor: It would depend on the member of
staff, we don’t do a lot of teaching by e-journals, that is more when you get
on to the fourth year teaching and research where we will propose further
material.
The view of progression provided by academic staff may have been
influenced by the structure of university programmes and individual
preferences. In three departments two members of staff were interviewed and
these interviews illustrated the differences in the ways individuals make use
of and appreciate digital resources. The differences seemed to have a relationship
to the main teaching load of the member of staff. Teaching staff with more
responsibility for first year students were more likely to mention skills
training as an issue, whereas staff concentrating on final year students were
less concerned with general skills but had an awareness of the students’ need
for highly specific resources. Within each of the three Departments the issue
of progression was reflected in the different ways tutors oriented to the types
of resources they considered most useful for the students.
These findings are consistent with research conducted in the Open
University, in which students' at lower levels experienced difficulties due to
skills deficits despite course guidance in information skills, whereas
postgraduate students were reported to have more fully developed skills on
entry (MacDonald et al 2001).
McDowell also noted the effect of progression on student use of electronic
resources in relation to academic library like resources (McDowell 2002 p259).
The interviews show that the most notable change reported by academic staff in
the use of electronic resources was often when students were undertaking
projects and it was at this point in undergraduate programmes that they were
also encouraged to make use of digital resources in particular e-journals and
digital searching for additional materials.
The evaluation of the DNER used
a variety of measures to assess academic use of digital resources. These
included mapping of the institutional and departmental presentation of digital
resources and a survey of staff and students, These other measures cannot be
reported in full here but it is important to note that they confirm that use of
digital resources was significantly related to subject and discipline area. The
Institutional mapping showed a wide variation in the overall number of links
from Departmental pages and more detailed analysis showed that this unevenness
was retained when links to internal university pages were removed. From the
survey data we were not able to assess the extent to which there were
differences in the transmission of information (measured by level of awareness)
between staff and students by discipline (due to the small staff sample size). Overall,
we managed to interview a total of 58 staff in 20 universities, and asked them
to distribute 10 printed questionnaires to their students. From this we
obtained a student volunteer sample of 296 students. Importantly in terms of discipline 32% of the sample were studying
humanities subjects, followed by 24% studying ‘medical and allied subjects’. In
contrast, only 3% of the sample were arts students, with this being the only
discipline that had very poor representation within the sample obtained. We
were able to establish that within the staff and student samples there were
differences in levels of awareness by discipline area. Examining staff
awareness by discipline (albeit low samples included for each discipline area),
awareness was highest amongst Humanities (64%) and Sciences (57%) and lowest
among Medicine and Allied (33%), Social Sciences (43%) and
Mathematics/engineering (44%). Awareness of JISC specific services was also
fairly high (62%), although once again there was great variation by discipline.
The sample was small, but of those who responded, the highest level of
awareness was found amongst Arts (100%), Social Sciences (71%) and Humanities
(64%), with lowest awareness of discipline specific resources by Mathematics
and Engineering (44%). These survey
results across UK Higher education suggest the findings from the particular
universities reported here illustrate a wider disciplinary pattern in the use
of digital resources.
This paper confirms the view that discipline and subject area is a
significant factor affecting teaching and learning in Higher Education. In
particular there appear to exist disciplinary differences in the way that
digital resources are being integrated into teaching and learning within the
disciplines. A strategy for the development of digital resources will need to
take account of these variations and the variation that also exists in terms of
level of study. The evidence suggests that the factors affecting this variation
may not be the same as in other areas of disciplinary difference. The grouping
of disciplines into three areas does not fully conform to the type of taxonomy
that has been used to discuss disciplines more generally. The divide between
hard and soft disciplines does seem to remain. It is the hard subjects areas
such as physics and engineering that display a distinctly different
relationship to digital resources. The soft disciplines vary but arts,
humanities and social sciences differ most notably from the hard sciences
rather than with each other.
The division between pure and applied subjects is not so clearly in
evidence in relation to digital resources. Library staff did mention
professions as a reference group making use of digital resources more likely
but in the staff interviews this was not a salient issue. On the other hand
there were disciplinary issues specifically related to the character of the
available digital resources. This was most apparent in relation to copyright
issues. Subject and discipline areas that either had a large non-copyright
source of materials were likely to use online databases to search for both
digital and traditional sources. In areas that had strict compliance with
copyright the use of digital resources was likely to be hindered even if simple
technological solutions were available.
Issues of progression were evident in the use of digital resources in all
discipline and subject areas. In the early years of study staff were interested
in developing information skills. These differed by discipline and science
subjects were particularly interested in students making use of particular
kinds of software for their work. In social sciences and humanities the
students were introduced to a variety of materials, some of which were intended
to show weaknesses or view points not available in academic texts or validated
resources. This use of resources that were not quality assured was to help
students learn how to assess different sources of information. These
progression related disciplinary differences touch upon the divergent ways
different disciplines and subjects constitute knowledge. This was also evident
in the students’ use of electronic journals. Journal use of all types was not a
central feature of undergraduate science subjects. In the arts, humanities and
social sciences access to journals and e-journals in particular is being
encouraged from the first year of undergraduate study.
Cornford and Pollock (2002) following Brown and Duguid (2000) describe
the university as a resourceful constraint. This study of subject and
disciplinary variation indicates that the university may be much more than the
physical campus and relate to the organisation of knowledge in discipline and
subject areas. The socio-cultural form of each subject or discipline has a
history and a pattern of engagement with academic resources in teaching and
learning. These ways of using resources carry over into the digital world.
Issues arising beyond technology and the university also affect the use of
digital resources and this is particularly apparent in the influence of copyright
legislation.
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of JISC in carrying out
the evaluation work on which this paper is based. It should not be assumed that
JISC, its committees or its staff share the views we have put forward here, nor
that they are shared by other members of the EDNER team.
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