Research in Learning Technology

ALT's Open Access Journal

2.1. ICT and current generation of students

ICT refers to information technology in the context of telecommunications, computers, software and the data systems that support, store and transmit unified communication technologies for users to access and manipulate information (Murray 2011). For the purpose of this paper, ICT is categorised into hardware, software and networks as described below:

• Hardware: This includes various types of computers such as smart devices, desktops, laptops and tablets.
• Software: This is any set of machine-readable instruction that directs a computer's processor to perform specific operations, such as Microsoft Office and Endnote.
• Networks: These are systems of telecommunication that allow computers to exchange data, such as Wireless and Ethernet connections.

Students are well ‘e-equipped’ with increasing numbers of ICTs present in their daily lives. For example, a notebook and a pen may have formed the tools for study of prior generations but today's students come to class with ‘e-equipment’ such as smart phones, laptops and mp3 players (Economist Intelligence Unit 2008; ITS 2012). The existence of the above-mentioned hardware, software and networks offers students today the access to enormous information and knowledge beyond the classroom setting or the teachers’ control. Such access enables students to capture, share, collaborate and publish in previously unavailable ways. It is undeniable that the Internet provides easy access to vast quantities of information (Williamson et al. 2007) and, as a result, it is claimed that students today ‘… think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors’ (Prensky 2001, p. 1). This is evidenced by studies which describe how the present generation of students multi-task (even though the idea of multi-tasking has been critiqued in the existing literature) with digital technologies. Students take notes on a laptop, send text messages on a smart phone, while they may simultaneously have social networking software such as Facebook operating in the background on either their laptop or smart phone (Economist Intelligence Unit 2008, p. 11; Hembrooke and Gay 2003; Wood et al. 2011). According to Lieutenant Colonel Greg Conti, the director of West Point's Information Technology Operations Centre, ‘it is impossible to sit someone in front of the World Wide Web and expect them [students] not to use it’ in today's world because ‘today's students are used to getting what they need instantly’ (Economist Intelligence Unit 2008, p. 12).

It is believed, therefore, that, as time progresses and new technologies are introduced and embedded life, ICT will become even more interwoven into academic life than it already has. As a consequence, ICT will continue to have a significant impact on higher education (Economist Intelligence Unit 2008; TLTTeam 2011). The new challenge for higher education institutions is how to ‘e-equip’ students with the skills and knowledge required to use ICT effectively in the university as well as in preparing them for the workplace (Economist Intelligence Unit 2008; Güçlu 2010). This challenge can be especially significant for the postgraduate students.

2.2. What is doctoral research?

As noted earlier, PhD students’ progress through a number of phases in the process of doing their doctoral research. Doctoral research is described as the process of developing the independent scholar, or a scholar who independently produces original research or new knowledge (Council of Graduate Schools 2005). According to Gardner (2008), overall, there are three stages in a PhD research journey: (1) admission, including applying to prospective programmes and institutions and meeting and talking with faculty members, staff and graduate students in these prospective programmes; (2) integration, including social integration with peers and faculty; the eventual choice of an advisor/supervisor/committee; and (3) candidacy, which is the time during which the student focuses primarily on the research. Focusing on the candidacy stage as described by Gardner (2008), this review assumes four phases:

1. preparation – when a PhD student creates a research project proposal, reads relevant literature and constructs a research framework;
2. fieldwork – when the PhD student collects data as planned according to his or her research framework;
3. analysis – when the PhD student engages with the collected data, in alignment with the designed research framework and the existing literature; and
4. writing – when the PhD student writes the dissertation or thesis as a fulfilment of the degree requirements.

3.1. The aim

This review aimed to summarise the relevant studies on the role of ICT among graduate students since year 2005. Specifically, it reviewed studies that have touched upon the ways graduate students engage ICT in their research practice.

3.2. The inclusion criteria

In this review, the literature relating to graduate students’ engagement and integration of ICT is examined. More precisely, the viewpoints of different roles of ICT held by graduate students is taken. Thus, this includes literature dealing with the role of ICT for both research-related and non-research-related practices. Only those papers whose main focus was on the topic of this study were selected and therefore the articles that mentioned the topic only in their introductory remarks, or as collateral research themes, were excluded from the analysis. Within this sub-set, a smaller cluster of articles that specifically focused on this research topic were further identified and considered for the review. Further analysis resulted in the generation of themes, which consisted of 27 papers that were published from 2005 to 2014. These papers were examined in-depth. Table 2 presents the details of these 27 papers.

In summary, papers on this topic were published in various journals, presenting a wider research on computer use among graduate/postgraduate students in different countries (e.g. United Kingdom, Taiwan, India, Turkey and Greek). Also included are articles that addressed the role of computers in research practice in general.

3.3. The review process

The review process entailed a two-pronged approach. First, the papers were categorised on the basis of their content and the second categorisation was according to the research methods used.

The included papers were organised according to the perspective on content that they took: (1) an institutional focus (n=10), which concentrated on ICT facilities in institutions; (2) a teaching focus (n=3), which emphasised the ways ICT was integrated into teaching activities (through advisors/supervisors/committees); and (3) a student focus (n=14), which reflected students’ perspectives and behaviours in relation to ICT in learning. Despite the three different perspectives, the theme of the reported studies appeared to cluster around four key areas (see Table 1): (1) computer literacy; (2) ICT integration in a research practice; (3) research productivity alongside information consumption; and (4) student graduate profile in relation to ICT competency.

Papers were also examined on the basis of the research method(s) used. The review revealed that many of the examined articles were empirical studies (~89%), which used questionnaires, surveys, case studies or interviews as principle data-gathering techniques. There were very few contributions based on students’ actual research practice with ICT. Such ‘actual research practice’ would include data gathered from, for example, observable behaviours while engaging with ICT. Only three papers (11%) out of the 27 articles included actual practice data. One paper used observation (Ismail 2011), one paper used an online testing system (Wallace and Clariana 2005) and another one used qualitative data capture through written comments (Lawlor and Donnelly 2010).

3.4. Summary of the review

Contributions written from the institutional (viz. the role of university or library) and teaching (viz. the role of supervisors) perspectives were generally written in the mid-2000s. Papers focusing on student's perspectives (i.e. their e-literacy) were relatively more recent and their numbers have progressively increased. Additionally, in recent years, researchers have started to examine students’ perceptions of the role of ICT and have included strategies to gather data on student behaviour and attitudes while using computers in research work. These two foci suggest the need for the collection of actual practice data alongside perception data. However, in this review no paper showing any specific relationship between the roles of ICT in the process of doctoral research and how PhD students engage ICT in their research practice, as evidenced through practice data, was found.

4.1. Content based

Most studies in the extant literature from 2005 to 2014 have focused on students’ computer literacy (e.g. Blignaut and Els 2010), communication (e.g. Lawlor and Donnelly 2010), entertainment use (e.g. McCarthy 2012), use of learning management systems (e.g. Sultan 2010), library use (e.g. Sutton and Jacoby 2008) and knowledge consumption (e.g. Griffiths and Brophy 2005). These studies have highlighted a range of aspects including skills in ICT use, the variety of ways different ICT have been used for academic practices and students’ self-confidence in the use of ICT.

Where PhD student's use of ICT to support their research processes is concerned, the place of ICT with a focus on ways students use ICT in their research practices and research activities is often discussed in a limited way in the literature. For example, graduate students are described as ‘binge’ users of e-journals and as having a preference for electronic resources during their thesis writing process (Dange 2010; George et al. 2006; Liew, Foo, and Chennupati 2000; Rowlands et al. 2007; Tenopir 2003). It is also acknowledged that all PhD students will use ICT for their doctoral research. Depending on the academic discipline, some will use software applications such as SPSS and NVivo for data analysis, while some will use software designed specifically for work in their field of study. Most, if not all, will use widespread applications that facilitate searching references and typing and archiving documents. What is important is that the nature of PhD students’ use of ICT for the integrated tasks involved in their study is unclear in the current literature. In other words, current studies do not offer a clear picture of how PhD students integrate computer technologies into their daily research practices; only reporting what students use computer technologies for.

In summary, a number of themes are under-represented or missing. The positive place of ICT in graduate education has been extolled in the literature, with the focus being on information searching through web browsers. Thus, the review undertaken here has identified four shortcomings, which are described below.

4.2. Data-gathering methods used in this research domain

Most studies on student's use of ICT in higher education rely on perception data, often gathered via surveys, interviews and questionnaires. Perception data refer to students reporting on what they believe they do or what they have done through post-event recollection. In an above-mentioned example, graduate students self-reported as ‘binge’ users of e-journals or as having a preference for using electronic resources during their graduate study (Aderibigbe and Aramide 2006). However, the results in some studies suggested that graduate students are not competent to the same extent in using generic spreadsheet, presentation, word processing and database applications (e.g. Dange 2010). As mentioned earlier, another report suggested that students had high levels of ownership of application types that they did not frequently use (Shaw 2000). One of the reasons these studies raise different scenarios of graduate students’ use of ICT could be that they rely on perception data, often gathered via surveys and questionnaires. Thus, none of these studies can lay a claim to knowing what students actually do in practice. This situation prompted Conole et al. (2008) to state that, ‘more in-depth research is needed to understand the nuances of how students are using technologies to support their learning’ (p. 512). In short, from the point of view of the research methods, the under-representation of certain research methodologies, such as actual practice data, suggests opportunities for future research.

As suggested by Dange (2010), there should be more ongoing studies to monitor the situation as technological and educational environments continue to change. The ‘first necessary step of this process is an accurate and realistic assessment of the actual computer skills of the student’ (Divaris, Polychronopoulou, and Mattheos 2007). The studies should be based on students’ observable behaviours in relation to their engagement with ICT. One reason is that such findings, while relevant to explorations of postgraduate students’ perceptions of ICT use, also offer a convincing picture of student practice as experienced in their day-to-day practice. In Sim and Butson's (2013) study on the use of personal computers by third-year undergraduate students, it was argued that ‘the difference between the students’ beliefs about their personal computer use and their computer use highlights that self-report data reliant on post-event recollections should not be relied on to represent actual practice’ (p. 338). Furthermore, there is no, or little, practical significant correlation between performance and students’ expectations of additional technological support (Blignaut and Els 2010; Sim and Butson 2013; Wallace and Clariana 2005). In other words, data gathered through self-rating data collection techniques are not a reliable measure to assess ICT use by graduate students. This assertion aligns with the findings of van Vliet, Kletke, and Chakraborty (1994) that the self-ratings are not accurate indicators of computer skills, as students often rate their skills lower or higher than their practical skills reflect (Blignaut and Els 2010; Butson and Sim 2013; Sim and Butson 2013, 2014). It is worth considering that actual practice data-gathering methods be employed in order to reveal students’ daily technological academic practices, rather than through the more traditional approaches of questionnaires, surveys and interviews only.

Green et al. (2006, p. 1) suggested that students’ participation might be secured by allowing them to play a ‘researcher-like’ role in the study and experience the invested outcome of the study. Conole et al. (2008) also agreed that research should focus more on the student voice, their ongoing use, experience and perception of technologies to elicit and explore their e-learning strategies in different contexts. Although students might be more familiar with research methods such as survey and focus groups (Dahlstrom 2011), there might be unexpected outcomes by engaging research participants as peers and colleagues when collecting the data. Applying such methods recognises the participants’ power and uniqueness as sources of evidence, as well as engaging them in the inquiry. It enables the introduction of first-person observational perspectives to the collection and analysis of the data.

4.3. Summary of findings and discussion

Generally, what has emerged in the reviewed literature is the lack of in-depth studies on ICT use by PhD students with regard to their practices. The research into PhD students’ computer literacy is also limited. Similarly, the existing empirical research has yet to consider PhD students’ productivity with ICT integration in their research practice, especially in relation to graduate capabilities. Even though the literature indicates a rising interest in different perspectives on the role that ICT plays in higher education, such growing interests from the research community have not yet expressed the awareness of students’ practices in this area. The increased inclusion of students’ perspectives in this research area in recent years seems to be mainly focused on information-searching activities or measurement of computer literacy. Evidence of students’ actual practice alongside their perceptions is still limited.