Challenging assumptions about IT skills in HE

The presentation challenges the idea of 'the digital native' and the subsequent assumption of digital literacy skills amongst HE students. It provides a brief summary of the author’s experience as an IT tutor over the past seven and a half years, matching the author’s own findings to those within research and describes alternative evidence indicating that current student populations are far more complex and with varying levels of digital literacy experience and that treating students as a homogenous mass is problematic. It then explores digital literacy skills for academic purposes compared to social use of technology and asks whether generic technology skills are always instantly transferable to academic study. The presentation concludes with a warning that we're letting down some of our students by the ‘IT barrier’ within HE and that IT should be considered a core study skill along with maths and academic communication rather than something that students can ‘easily pick up’. It also suggests that we test for IT skills rather than assume. This is an accompanying presentation to the academic paper ‘Challenging assumptions about IT skills in HE’

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