Understanding the Limits of Student Technology Knowledge

Faculty often assume that their digital millennial students will take to any classroom technology like a fish to water. But these faculty are often surprised by the limits to student understanding of technology, which, Abamu (2017) points out, tend to be narrowly focused on the domains of social media and gaming. These students tend to have trouble with business productivity technologies such as Microsoft Word and Excel. As one student put it, “I did not know how to use headers, footers, or page numbers in Microsoft Word, so I got five points off every essay for an entire semester.”

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