Editorial

Now that technology is so embedded in all that we do in (and outside of) our classrooms these days, it is perhaps no wonder that there is currently a great deal of interest in, and studies about, the use of technologies, particularly those concerning online social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook. Indeed, even the most ‘traditional’ of universities which, it is often claimed, are slower to embrace the new have on their homepage a ‘follow us on Twitter’ icon prominently positioned somewhere. So, rather than making the argument ‘should we be using this in our teaching’ (there is no longer a need to make that argument), it is instead ‘this technology is here to stay, so how might we best harness it to the advantage of our learners’. Our learners are, naturally enough, mostly of/from the generation where they have grown up with such technologies and indeed would be pretty lost without them in their everyday lives, and that ‘everyday life’ includes, for a great part, their studies. With far more of their time spent outside of the classroom rather than in it, it is clear that we, in universities, need to better understand how best to make the technology work for us all in supporting learning and teaching. There is, however, some irony perhaps in that while the likes of Twitter and Facebook are to be seen on all the homepages of universities, there is evidence that this generation of learners/students is instead turning to other, newer, web 2.0 communication tools/social networking sites such as Instagram, saying that as ‘oldies’ are now regular users of Twitter and Facebook, they do not want to be seen as using some ‘old fashioned’ social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Being, or looking, ‘cool’ is, after all, what each and every young generation wants, and so as fashions and trends evolve in other parts of life, this is no less the case for social networking sites. So, for those who have only recently got to grips with Facebook and Twitter at home, let alone in the classroom, it is time to start looking at the other, newer, ones that incoming students are now using. However, whatever the social networking tool, there is a need to better understand how it can best support our learners in the classroom. Or, rather, as in the first article comprising this issue, outside of the classroom. Which is, actually, where we, educators and/or researchers, should instead be focusing our attention after all, given that this is where most if not all of the learning is taking place.

While we naturally need to look at what we do in the classroom to better help our learners, it is what we can do to support them in their learning outside the classroom where far greater efforts need to be made. Titled ‘Facebook as a tool for learning purposes: analysis of the determinants leading to improved students’ learning’, its authors Mathews Nkhoma, Hiep Pham Cong, Bill Au, Tri Lam, Joan Richardson, Ross Smith and Jamal El-Den, from RMIT Australia, RMIT Vietnam or Charles Darwin University (CDU) University in Australia, look at communication between learners and educators and, by definition, between learners themselves. The study looks at how often and how much learners use Twitter and the perceptions that learners have about online social networking and its impact on their learning. Saying that such communication may be either structured or unstructured, the article cites literature that says that regardless of the means of that engagement, it benefits both students and institutions themselves given that how much or how little students engage with those in the university impacts their retention. Describing the Community of Inquiry framework model comprising social presence, teaching presence and cognitive presence, the article describes the role that we, educators, have in the design and development of the learning environment which, in turn, impacts learners and their learning. The article tells us that peer interaction has a considerable influence on cognitive and skill-based learning and it is as much the case outside the classroom as it is within it, hence its importance. Going on to describe aspects such as purposive value and the importance of the quality of the content of a website, the article tells us that cognitive factors impact student performance and that online social networking can be said to both indirectly and directly affect this. That said, the authors cite evidence that all might not be as rosy as it seems. The authors argue that while there has been some research into student–teacher interaction, little has been done in the arena of the online social networking environment, hence their study.

The results of the research described demonstrate how much or how little their perceptions of the quality of the content of the online social network impacts how often/how much students use the online social network and also why students seek clarification from their teacher in this environment. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the article highlights one of the issues involved here, namely, the separation or not of the social aspects of such tools rather than their use to support learning. We are, after all, human beings, social animals, and our need to communicate/socialise is something that cannot help but come into play, regardless of how important the task, whether learning at university or anything else. Social networking tools such as the one described in this article are, say the authors, rightly, going to be at the heart of higher education, and as this is the case, there is clearly much more that we need to do to better understand how and in what ways we, educators, can use such technologies whether within or outside the classroom. A sense of community, and how to best foster that between students and educators, and also with administrators (they, too, play a major role in the learning environment, although they are often overlooked in the literature), is the subject of the second article. Its author, Paulo Duarte, from the University of Beira Interior Estrada do Sineiro, Portugal, describes a study in which a group blog assisted or not in fostering a collaborative learning environment and the experiences of not only learners but also their educators and the administrators who were involved. Titled ‘The use of a group blog to actively support learning activities’, its author rightly begins by saying that although we, in higher education, need to use technologies, our current students are our future graduates and that they will need such competencies in the workplace given that we are a knowledge-rich society. ‘A time-poor one’, some might add. So, not only should we, educators, use such technologies for the benefit of learning but also because this enhances the skills that they will need to use in the context of work, and for learning both at work and beyond. For any reader who would not like to admit that they are not quite sure what ‘blogging’ is, this article tells us that a blog is a frequently updated personal online space where the person who wrote it (called a ‘blogger’) publishes a series of ‘posts’, and collects and shares information and resources. The article goes on to describe why it has become such an enormous success, not least of which is that it is user-oriented and user-friendly, whatever the blog (there are perhaps 18 types of blog) in what is called the ‘blogosphere’.

Picking up on the point made in the first article, the second says that we are motivated to use blogs and social network sites in general because they satisfy three key elements of human desire. The article then goes on to describe, in depth and at length, how blogs/blogging and in particular edublogs have been used in higher education, with edublogs being divided into six main classes. As this is now a society where much is about sharing experiences and thoughts, it is argued that as social media allow for connection and discussion, this may enhance their learning in some way, with evidence in the literature to support this. However, like everything, it is not without its downsides, as this article makes clear, but although this is acknowledged, so too is the fact that this is here to stay (and its use set to increase) and that much of the literature in this area is still in its infancy. The article argues that visit patterns are especially important but that little is known about these, hence the need for the study described in the article. The article concludes with some challenges for us, educators, mostly to do with the need to keep the blog ‘well fed’. As might be expected, this translates into putting in a great deal of time and effort one way or another and, as the author notes, the role and input of administrators is key. However, if anyone is to participate in anything, whether a blog or anything else the participant, in this case a student, needs to see whether or not it is worth their effort and, as the results from this study show, they need to be sure that they have something valuable to contribute. An important point to make is that when we ask students to post something on a blog, it is perhaps not unsurprising that, as this study demonstrates and has also been shown to be the case in other studies, students are quite keen to read blogs but far less keen to write/post them. Which, if the person, the educator, who is later going to be marking the coursework or examination of that student, is going to be reading what the student has written, students are, naturally enough, going to think twice before writing/posting anything. None of us wants to look foolish in front of others and, importantly, few if any students want to risk losing marks for what might or might not be comments or opinions that someone else, a marker in this case, might regard as inappropriate or lacking in some way, assuming that the blogger is able to be identified by their real name, anyway. The minute that anything can be associated with assessment, however tenuous or indeed entirely non-existent (to us, educators) that link might be, the behaviour of students is affected one way or another.

While students are, of course, keen to learn, they are also keen to ensure that they get the highest marks that they can get. If there is some behaviour, such as blogging, that they perceive might negatively impact that, students will, rightly and understandably, behave in a particular way. It is one thing putting up something to your friends and family (or the whole world) about what you do in your social life but quite another if a marker of your work is going to be reading it. This is particularly the case for those within the young adult population as it is this age group which is said to have the greatest lack of confidence in who they are (their identity is still being developed) and, as the results of this study demonstrate, are those most likely to fear what others think about them, worrying in particular about any feedback or comment that is going to be negative. In other words, it is self-preservation to not participate. The results raise a very interesting point here; not only are students reluctant but so too are their teachers/educators according to this and other studies. While this might be down to a lack of time or effort perhaps, it may also be the case that the same thing applies, that is, that teachers/educators also worry about what others, their students, think about them. If we open ourselves up to others on the Internet in terms of our identity, thoughts and behaviours, and that to do so is neither new nor particularly problematic in most cases, assuming that suitable care is taken, it is perhaps unsurprising that assessment, too, might be opened up in some way. Titled ‘Open-book, open-web online examinations: Developing examination practices to support university students’ learning and self-efficacy’, as the title of this third article suggests, not only is this looking at the issues regarding open-book, itself not new, but is looking also at open-web online, a newer phenomenon. However, having said that open-book is not so new, it is little, arguably too little, used, given the negative perceptions that are still held about this. If open-book is a step too far for many, open-web online is likely going to be even harder to accept. Be that as it may, its authors, Liisa Myyry and Taina Joutsenvirta, from the University of Helsinki in Finland, look at the experiences of students using open-book, open-web online examinations and compare these to how they perceive traditional class examinations. Nothing taxes us, educators, more than assessment, and so articles such as this are always welcome, not least because they may cause us to challenge our own perceptions of what is, and is not, appropriate in terms of assessment, particularly in today’s higher education sector where, for a variety of reasons, it dominates the landscape. As the article rightly points out, the assessment methods that we choose to use directly affects how students choose to approach the task that we, the educators, have set them, whether that is an essay or an examination or anything else. There is, this article tells us, two cultures – an assessment one and a testing one – each underpinned by different perceptions of what is understood by learning and teaching in terms of knowledge and how it is created.

Going on to describe aspects around higher order thinking skills and trait and state factors associated with academic performance, the article highlights the important role that self-efficacy plays in predicting academic performance. As this is context specific, it is not surprising that stress and tension, so readily associated with testing/assessment, may impact that performance. The article describes, at length, all the issues associated with these aspects, including the sources of self-efficacy and how social or verbal persuasion may also play a role, before going on to detail the differences between closed-book and open-book methods, the types of assessment open to us, including authentic, their pluses and minuses and how we may choose to have these assessments done under supervision, that is, invigilated, or not. Given that there is so little handwriting done today given that we are mostly sat at our computers or using our mobile technologies of one sort or another, regardless of our workplace, it is important to bear in mind that for the most part, we usually ask our students to do what they rarely do in their lives, that is, to write texts, often long ones, by hand, using pen and paper, something raised in this article. As with everything, and as clearly demonstrated in the comprehensive review of the literature presented in this article, there is no ‘right answer’ to any assessment method and each has its advantages and disadvantages. However, it is argued in this article that open-book, open-web examinations are perceived to be a step towards student-centred and constructivist learning and that they tend to encourage creative thinking, which are seen to be positives. It is argued in the article that while a lot of research has looked at examinations that have a multiple-choice format, there is little when it comes to essay-type questions, hence the study undertaken and described. Is it that students prepare for them in exactly the same way as for closed-book examinations in the online web environment? Do they suffer the same anxieties as they do with open-book examinations in the online web environment? The results and the discussion which follows provide us with some very interesting insights into whether or not students change their learning strategies prior to undertaking the assessment and also their perceptions of the actual examination situation itself in terms of how professional they find it and whether it does or does not allow them more time for thinking compared to the time taken up with hand writing their responses. Does the open-book, open-web online examination format reduce test anxiety for many students and enhance learning? This article sheds light on this very important aspect of assessment.

Continuing the theme of what is done outside, rather than inside, the classroom, the fourth article in this issue looks at what students can do and what we, educators, can provide for them where possible, in terms of extracurricular activities and how and in what ways this might impact employability which, along with assessment, is right up at the top in terms of what is on the agenda in higher education these days. Titled ‘“It’s everything else you do …”: Alumni views on extracurricular activities and employability’, its authors Gordon Clark, Rebecca Marsden, J Duncan Whyatt, Leanne Thompson and Marion Walker explore not just the possible effects of these activities on students while they are still at university but also in the more long term. As we, educators, know only too well given that we talk to those who are about to graduate, the move from being a student/graduate to being in the workplace is not an easy one, not least of which is the fear that there may well be no job there at all, let alone whether or not they are able to deal with it, once there. Assuming that our graduates are going to be employed by someone, rather than setting up their own businesses, the article describes the long, long list of skills and abilities that, say employers, they require of our graduates and which, they claim, are all too often lacking. These might be summed up not as any lack of knowledge what is covered at university, that is, knowledge about the discipline-specific aspects, but instead about the ‘soft’ aspects of being an employee, such as being good at self-management and having confidence. The response from universities has generally been to attempt to embed more of this into the curriculum, that is, to provide more in the way of, say, team-working or similar, although it must be said that telling people to do x is not the same as providing specific, targeted training in how to do x. We often require students to work in groups, claiming that ‘they will need to do this in the workplace, after graduation’. This is true enough. But, all too often, we put them into groups, which in large classes (over 300) means that there is a difficult choice to be made as to whether to put five/six students into a group based on the order of family name on the spreadsheet of student names or instead ask them to form groups themselves, despite the fact that, normally, they do not know each other, give them a task to do, and then hope for the best. As this group work takes place outside, not inside, the classroom, other than give them some reading or ‘tips’ about working in groups, there can be no hands on, practical, intervention that can be done if, say, something is not going well and which some intervention from us might perhaps help in some way. In short, it is often a ‘sink or swim’ situation in which we hope that nothing too major will go wrong.

In the workplace, as a manager, we usually see those teams or groups in action, in front of us. We, as managers, see the team every day or at least on a regular basis, and have the opportunity to provide, when necessary, one-to-one feedback and support, to ensure that both the team, as a team, functions appropriately in order to carry out the task that they have been given but also that each individual within that team is appropriately supported. And, when things go wrong (they do), we are on hand to attempt to resolve it in some way. As educators, we are usually not there, in person, to see what is going on. We instead have to attempt to pick up the pieces when things go wrong (they do) from a distance, and without the benefit of having seen it with our own eyes. Which, when it concerns assessment (it usually does), is a particular worry. However, not only are we often not best placed to sort it out when it goes wrong, but it is particularly difficult to help our students to develop their skills in terms of those being looked at here, namely, communication, team-working and confidence. As the authors of this article rightly ask, if our students do not already possess these ‘employability skills’, whatever they might be (and it is not entirely clear what these are), how are they to acquire them – from the courses that we design/they take or from their extracurricular activities? However, there is often a blurring of the two, as many of us ‘design in’ activities that, in the past, were solely the preserve of the extracurricular, and thus many of us have a suite of complementary activities of one sort or another which further support the more discipline-specific knowledge that underpins a particular degree programme. As educators in the classroom or as those in our departments responsible for curriculum design and enhancement, not to mention those of us who have to attempt to measure how students perceive their studies and the value or otherwise of various aspects of them, the article provides evidence that, as we all know, from personal experience. That is, that despite the fact that we, ourselves, know that certain skills and attributes are being developed (we have designed the curriculum with these in mind and we also see them, in our students), our students do not necessarily see it the same way at all, and often fail to recognise that any such skills are being developed or that they even possess them. Added to this dilemma is how we, academic staff, perceive such skills acquisition, as the article tells us, going on to say that while there has been research into employability skills, there has been little in the way of research into extracurricular activities, in particular, which extracurricular activities develop which skills and to what extent, and also how far into the future they have any effect on a career, hence the study described in the article.

The article explores issues associated with social and cultural capital, and the role that certain networks play in enhancing or otherwise the ties that are useful. Another important avenue that is explored in the study described in this article is the assumption that future employers take into account any extracurricular activities carried out by applicants, our students, and also that our students believe such activities to be useful. If this assumption is incorrect, it has certain implications not only for students but also for us, those who are responsible for designing the curriculum or the extra activities which support it. Questions explored in the article include, among others, whether or not employability skills and qualities are developed through each and every extracurricular activity, the effect, if any, on how extracurricular activities influence obtaining and actually performing in not only the first job but subsequent ones and whether or in what ways undergraduate students should plan their extracurricular activities. The results raise perhaps the most important point, namely, that while most extracurricular activities can assist in developing most employability skills, it is instead not the activity per se but instead the performance of the individual student within the particular task that is important but also, crucially, how well the student/potential graduate communicates their achievement to recruiters. As many of us will recognise and appreciate from our own experiences of either helping our students, or indeed our fellow colleagues, to write their curriculum vitae (CVs)/resumes or preparing themselves for interviews, there seems to be a natural tendency for most of us to hide our light under a bushel. Modesty and not wishing to look arrogant are commendable, but when applying for a job, or promotion, there is a need to make our skills, abilities and talents shine out (in a suitably modest way) if we are to be seen as the candidate who is worthy of the job. Or, some of us are just not that good at selling ourselves: applying for a job or for promotion calls for not only being in possession of the skills and abilities that the employers say that they require of the applicant but also the need to promote/market the ‘product’ (ourselves). One of the contributions of the research described in this article is around the notion of the complementarity or otherwise around how degrees/qualifications and extracurricular activities interact, and whether or not extracurricular activities might compensate for a poor degree classification/a lower grade point average (GPA). This is one of the burning questions about extracurricular activities, and so this article is a most useful read.

One place where students have the ideal opportunity to either gain the skills and abilities that they need in the workplace or to further develop them is in the workplace itself, hence the importance and focus, these days, on helping students to undertake a work placement of some sort. This might be paid or unpaid, in the voluntary sector or in a major multinational company, but wherever it is, or whatever the student does, as part of that work, no one would disagree that it cannot help but benefit our future graduates, who in all too short a time will find themselves in the workplace. In the fifth and final article, the study described within it identifies the core issues underpinning the ‘paid versus unpaid’ student work debate. Titled ‘Can pay, should pay? Exploring employer and student perceptions of paid and unpaid placements’, its authors Sally Smith, Colin Smith and Martha Caddell explore motivations, experiences and outcomes from each of these two different placement models, that is, paid and unpaid, both for students themselves and also for employers. As the authors rightly say, while students choose to undertake a work placement, often also referred to as an internship, in order to help them while they are at university, believing that it will contribute in some way to their (better) performance and thus higher marks, the main motivation is that they are of the view that it will increase or improve the skills and abilities that they will need in the workplace after graduation. The article describes, in depth, the three inter-related perspectives, namely, those of the employer, the student and the legal. In the first, the perspective of the employer, the article describes the every-changing landscape of employment within any country and that, these days, rather than providing in-house, on-the-job training and development themselves, organisations are instead asking for graduates who can hit the ground running, so to speak. A somewhat tall order, perhaps, given that our undergraduate students have, for the most part, been sitting in lecture halls for 3 years, not to mention undertaking tasks that are rarely, if ever, done in the workplace, such as doing examinations or writing essays. Helping our students to become ‘work ready’ in such an environment, that is, classrooms full of perhaps 300 or more students, is no easy task. Given this, it is perhaps no surprise that when employers are looking to employ our graduates, they look for, and at, what work experience those students have done while at university, as part of a work placement of some sort. Indeed, as we ourselves know from our own students who have carried out, say, a 1-year paid work placement with an organisation while at university, the employer often uses that year as a kind of 1-year ‘probation period’, and if the student performs well, and also satisfies the requirements of their degree, that same employer takes them on as an employee, following graduation.

As the article tells us, there are many benefits to employers of student placements, including the introduction of new skills into an organisation, getting particular projects completed at less cost than it would be if they had to use/pay their own staff and also that having students there can help to create a culture of learning. That said, and as acknowledged in the article, employers can and do use the student placement, or rather the student, for less desirable reasons, including getting them to carry out more menial tasks or to get work done ‘on the cheap’, although, fortunately, this is uncommon. The benefits or otherwise to our students are the mirror of those for the employers, naturally enough, that is, it gives them experiences of work that are just not possible in the university environment, to name but one. The article demonstrates the interesting point made earlier, namely, about how a work placement enhances job prospects, citing research that shows that recruiters expect over one-third of graduate roles to be filled by graduates who had worked for the same employer while on work placement with them, going on to say that this could rise to over three quarters in some sectors, for example, banking. In response to the perceived need to make our graduates ‘work ready’, the article describes what we, universities, have been doing to better prepare our future graduates for the workplace after they graduate, including making funding available to students who undertake a placement for which they are not paid by the employer/organisation. Money is always a factor, whether talking about work placement or anything else in life, and as the article tells us in the section dealing with the legal perspective, in the United Kingdom at least, students who are employed on a work placement/internship are not required to be paid the minimum wage, and that the term ‘intern’ has no legal status, thus throwing up all kinds of implications, not least of which is the money side of it. If we, universities, are involved in some way or other with assisting our students to find those work placements in organisation, it raises issues around not only the legal issues but also the moral ones, as if we are on the one hand promoting a work placement as a ‘must have’, it sits uncomfortably alongside our knowledge that, for some students, it might mean working for far less than the minimum wage and the possibility of exploitation. While our students might perhaps raise this with us, their university, so that we might intervene in some way with the organisation concerned, or perhaps ensure that this does not happen to any future students, by not using that particular employer with future work placement students, they may well be reluctant to do so, fearing that it might ‘cause trouble’ of one sort or another (no one wants ‘trouble’), even if those fears are unfounded. Indeed, the article says that the United Kingdom’s National Union of Students has gone as far as saying that university careers services should stop promoting unpaid work placements/internships given that they can be taken up only by a very small, privileged, minority, that is, those who can afford to work for free.

The article concludes the review of the literature by claiming that while there is much on student placement/internship itself and also employability, the voice of the employer has received little attention and there is no research which has compared the outcomes of students on placement, both paid and unpaid. The results support the fact that whether the placement is paid or unpaid, students reported the same benefits, namely, that they believed that it would help them with their future job prospects and to decide about what career they wished to pursue, to earn money, it increased their confidence and, most importantly of all, that it gave them relevant work experience. It is entirely unsurprising that the results of the study tell us that students believe that employers should pay them, and that being paid was an important factor in whether or not they took up a work placement/internship. Of surprise, however, is whether the fact that they were paid or not affected how meaningful an experience they believed it to be. The results showed that the employers reported outcomes that were almost entirely positive, and it is good to read that the main motivation for offering a paid work placement was to help the students to develop and also to feel like a valued member of staff. That said, and as acknowledged by the authors of this article, not all placements work out, for one reason or another, and so there is a need to look more closely at this, in future studies, as well as why it is the case that many students do not apply for them in the first place, despite the fact that every single university these days is heavily promoting the value of the work placement and that students themselves acknowledge the benefits of undertaking one. The article ends with an interesting discussion around three points, namely, the intrinsic value of the work that is done by students on placement, the issues around opportunity and implications for us, universities/institutions. Because, while we are all banging the drum about the value of work placements, and that for employers it is for the most part a very good thing, the authors of this article make the key point, rightly, that it sends a particular message to our students, and others, and although the authors talk about this in the context of unpaid work placements given possible exploitation and issues around inequality, it is as much the case for paid ones, surely. We need to think not only about negatives but also about positives, as what is a positive for one person is a negative for another, and in any case, as time tells us, what is a positive one day can easily be viewed as a negative later. However, what is uncontentious is, as the authors say, that all universities/institutions are, these days, in the global marketplace when it comes to recruiting students to our courses, whether undergraduate or postgraduate, and that today’s applicants put employability needs at or near the top of their agenda. No wonder, then, that we, universities/institutions, are devoting so much time and effort to ensuring that we support and develop in our students the skills and abilities associated with employability, and also making it abundantly clear in our promotional literature that we do so. Placements/internships are one such dimension of this, the authors rightly say, but this sits within a much broader context of the employability agenda. It raises not only issues about what is meant by ‘graduate identity’, something that is currently taxing us on the agenda in the university sector, but also what it means for the identity of the sector, as a sector. The higher education sector, like much else in the world, is currently undergoing some quite fundamental changes; the only thing that we can be absolutely certain of is change!