Revisiting the digital divide(s): Technology-enhanced English language practices at a university in Pakistan (2018)

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Type of Content
Journal ArticleISSN
2209-0959Language
EnglishCollections
Abstract
With the rapid penetration of technology in the lives of students, it has become important for educators to look for opportunities to enhance students’ engagement and achievement by integrating technology in education. However, deciding which technologies should be included is a big challenge for higher education institutes, particularly in developing countries with limited financial resources, such as Pakistan. As students’ non-educational use of technologies shapes their academic use of technology and learning process (Swanson & Walker, 2015), integrating students’ preferred technologies can help fulfil their educational needs and expectations. This paper investigates the digital practices of undergraduate students in a public university in Pakistan and examines the impact of gender, study major and medium of education on the use of digital devices by students. The data is drawn from 316 responses to an online survey, administered online. The results of the study reveal that although a substantial proportion of the students had access to digital tools such as smartphones and computers, there was limited use of them for educational purposes. The technology most extensively accessed by undergraduate students for this purpose was mobile phones. Use of university-provided computers and bringing their own computers/laptops to campus were much less popular choices. Further, most students were not sufficiently comfortable with their digital skills to use their devices for educational purposes, although many were interested in getting training in how they could do this.
Keywords
mobile-assisted language learning; digital divide; digital practices; technology-enhanced language learning; smartphones; learner trainingANZSRC Fields of Research
47 - Language, communication and culture::4703 - Language studies::470306 - English as a second language47 - Language, communication and culture::4704 - Linguistics::470401 - Applied linguistics and educational linguistics
39 - Education::3904 - Specialist studies in education::390405 - Educational technology and computing
Rights
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial 4.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Related items
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