Born Digital: Integrating Media Technology in the Political Science Classroom

U.S. higher education institutions spend a large amount of time, money, and energy on technology. Educators face a student population that has never been without the Internet-they are "Born Digital." Students expect that faculty and universities utilize more technology. Higher education is faced with the question whether technology provides students with the experience they need to succeed or whether it hinders development of valuable skills that are achieved through traditional classroom instruction. We must be sensitive to what pedagogical approaches are helping students to gain technology skills that will aid them to engage in civic and political life. Consequently, few studies have shown a connection between increasing use of technology and improved student performance. Does academic performance improve with increased use of technology? This is the question our study attempts to answer. Our experimental design involves a pretest-posttest experiment examining student knowledge of political topics as well as their use of news media and products in introductory American Government courses. Students experienced different levels of exposure to technology to determine any differences in learning outcomes. Two important themes were explored: (1) How information technology promotes and enhances student learning and (2) how qualitative and quantitative research methods can be used to investigate the online learning experience.