The Use of Technology in Educational Context: Students and Teachers Participating in Business Communication Courses.
Lucyna Wilinkiewicz-Górniak
Abstract
Being a teacher in a very competitive and constantly changing global environment forces us to continually rethink and redesign our teaching strategies and syllabuses. In a world where a typical teacher is the so-called: “digital immigrant”, we are expected to successfully teach our students – “digital natives”. In this paper, the author attempts to analyze the use of technology among students participating in the Business Communication courses at the Cracow University of Economics and their Business English and Business Communication teachers. The starting point of this paper is a brief survey carried out among 121 respondents, consisting of 94 students and 27 teachers. The surveyed students were enrolled in undergraduate studies and were further subdivided into those studying in English – 50 % of the respondents (47) and in Polish – 50 % (47). Each of these two groups is composed of subgroups specializing in different disciplines (e.g. finance, technology). The analysis also takes into consideration the differences (if any) between male and female respondents’ attitude to and use of technology.
The survey consisted of thirteen questions concerning access to technology, the Internet, and their use for educational purposes both in the classroom and at home. The results are the starting point of the ensuing analysis of students’ and teachers’ approaches to technology, to see if the technological gap between these two groups exists, and, if so, how big it is and what it means for the quality of the educational process viewed as one taking place both in the classroom and outside of it.
Keywords: Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives, Digital Citizenship, Teaching Strategies and Syllabi, Role-Reversal, ICT Literacy
Introduction
The standpoint of this paper is that technology is used in the educational process, in the classroom and at home. This refers to both the teachers and students, and will intensify in the years to come.
“The traditional approach to learning and teaching cannot be sufficient, precisely because of turbulent conditions in which the gaining knowledge comes to use. In the era of globalization and digitization of social and economic life, it has become a very important need of skillful and flexible use of ever more sophisticated tools and technologies” (Nogalski & Wójcik-Augustyniak, 2012, p. 425).
In the case of business communication, technology is used to present and explain the content of the course – during the lectures and classes and at home, and in the broadly understood process of communication between the teacher and students (both formal and informal communication). The main forms used for those purposes are:
As far as classroom activities are concerned, the access to the Internet is granted by the University, and it is possible for both students and the teacher to use it. Most of the lecture rooms are provided with multimedia projectors, so teachers are able to use these to present the materials on their laptops, and students are allowed to bring the documents on pen drives, send them via email, or use their own laptop to present, give talks or perform other activities, both individual and prepared in teams. At home, students have their own laptops and access to the Internet.
Literature review
Higher education is currently undergoing changes, the scale and impact of which is almost as huge as of those in the 19th century's turn, which brought into existence research institutes, first in Germany, and later in other countries (Kwiek, 2013). We are living in the age of rapid technological development, where the ability to generate and adapt innovation is a deciding factor in determining the position of a given economy. The key element of innovativeness is the quality of human resources – the human capital of businesses. The speed of the change and the growing stress on the innovativeness of economy creates pressure towards change in the educational branch. The educational branch is more innovative than public administration and „higher education stands out in terms of speed of adopting innovations, above the economy average, and well above the rate in primary and secondary education” (OECD, 2014, p. 15).
The economy of the 21st century is the economy of information and communication technologies. In a natural way, it affects education, including its higher levels. It does not only mean that new information and communication technologies allow for the introduction of new teaching and learning methods, including distance learning, access to enormous resources of various databases in individual knowledge acquisition, the opportunity to support the acquisition of practical skills through simulations and computer games, as well as to test one's knowledge and abilities. It also means that the strong presence of information and communication technologies in education fosters the acquisition of technological competence in the process of „learning by doing”. Regardless if we find the paradigm „that E-Learning represents the true nature of future education and traditional face-to-face instructional norms in universities and schools are, so to speak, exceptional practices” (Cox et. al.., 2013, p. 478) to be true, or if we stick to the conviction that the traditional face-to-face teaching is an irreplaceable method in the development of the key 21st century skills, the presence of ICT in education is now as obvious as that of a notebook, ink and a dip pen used to be not so long ago.
The challenge of the contemporary world is to find a way to skillfully use the competencies of the teachers and the technological devices to ensure that<