Reading “Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement” by David White and Alison Le Cornu made me reflect on a recent experience. When I introduced blended learning into one of my courses last year, I thought that my students would enjoy the online learning activities because it would be very different from the traditional format that was characterized by didactic lectures and summative assessments. While most students enjoyed some online activities like exchanging peer feedback and receiving instructor feedback, a number of them did not like participating in asynchronous discussion forums and watching micro-lectures. Most students said that they preferred conducting their discussions on Whatsapp. Surprisingly, 60% of the class said that they enjoyed 2-hour didactic lectures and that they wanted even more content to be built in!

I now wonder whether I was wrong to assume that they would be comfortable using just any tool so long as it’s online. I later discovered that they found our LMS discussion forum inconvenient and difficult to use. They said it was much easier to talk to one another on Whatsapp, which was not very surprising to me given how easy and convenient it is to use this app. So, I totally agree with what David White said in his Digital Literacies webinar last week – that we just assume that students know how to use technology and are comfortable with it! I need to remember that when it comes to text messaging apps and social media, students are very much digital residents in personal space. In the professional space, however, they will tend to be visitors.