You are here

Podcast | Digital literacy

DST Podcast - Episode 4: Digital literacy

Can we assume that the junior ranks of military personnel will adapt well to the use of digital technology in training?

Susannah Whitney explores her research of digital literacy.

Transcript

Colin Blair: In today’s podcast:  Can we use digital technology to train our troops?

[Music plays]

Colin Blair: They might embrace smart phones and social media, and are au fait with the web and gaming consoles, but can we assume that the junior ranks of military personnel will adapt well to the use of digital technology in training?

[Music ends]

Colin Blair: Hi, I’m Colin Blair with another podcast from Defence Science and Technology.

Dr Susannah Whitney is a cognitive scientist at DST. She has been undertaking research to understand the effectiveness of digital training, specifically by the military. Our lives have been changed by huge advances in digital technology over the last two decades but how easy will it be to introduce this technology into military training regimes. And how effective will the training be?

Susannah Whitney: Hi, I am Dr Susannah Whitney from the Defence Science and Technology Group and today I am going to be talking to you about some research we’ve conducted into digital literacy.

Over the last twenty years or so, we’ve seen a huge rise in the availability and use of digital technology. This includes things like smart phones, tablets, the Internet, gaming consoles, and so on. The knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to use these technologies is called “digital literacy”.

There’s a popular belief that all young people today have high levels of digital literacy. According to this belief, since young people grow up surrounded by technology, and using it on a daily basis, they’re very good at using it. They like using it for recreation, and so it’s assumed that they will also like using it in education and training.

This belief has also been applied to the military. The military uses a lot of digital technology for training. This covers a range of technology from computer-based or tablet-based lessons and programs, to large vehicle simulators. There are some assumptions that junior-ranked military personnel will be highly digitally literate, so they will readily adapt to the use of technology in training.

Despite these beliefs, the evidence isn’t so strong. Researchers have found that levels of digital literacy aren’t just based on age, but also on level of education, social class, and so on. Also, high levels of digital literacy don’t necessarily mean that you prefer learning through doing, or through using computers.

There’s a risk that if educators make assumptions about their students’ level of digital literacy, and get it wrong, the training may not be as effective as it could be. 

So, we ran our study to start to understand digital literacy levels in the Australian Army and the New Zealand Defence force. We wanted to examine, what are the current levels of digital literacy, and what does this mean for the use of technology in training? This was part of our ongoing program of work helping the military optimise its use of training systems.

Our study asked three key questions.

First, what sort of devices do our junior military personnel own?

Second, how are they using these devices for work and for recreation?

Third, how does their ownership and use of devices influence their attitudes towards the use of technology in training?

To answer these questions, we surveyed 98 soldiers from the Australian Army, and 213 soldiers, airmen, and ordinary rates from the New Zealand Defence Force. The Australian data was collected by Lauren Bollard, who was a Master’s student at the University of Adelaide. The New Zealand data was collected by James Kerry, from New Zealand’s Defence Technology Agency.

When we looked at the kinds of devices that our participants owned, we found that almost all of them owned a smart phone and a computer. Just over half of them owned a game console, and very few of them owned a tablet or an e-book reader or anything else. Most people owned around 2 or 3 devices, but some had as many as 11.

We also found that our participants were using these devices to carry out a relatively narrow range of functions. And these were mostly social and recreational tasks, like social networking, downloading music, movies, and TV, or online banking. They weren’t very likely to use these devices for work or for study.

Also, the participants had mixed attitudes towards the use of technology in training. They didn’t think that digital skills were important for their own career advancement, although they thought they were important for everyone else. However, they did think that they would like to access manuals, documentation, and instructional videos on their tablets or smart phones.

Our results are pretty consistent with previous findings. We saw that digital literacy levels in this group weren’t universally high. There were some people who owned a lot of devices, or were very positive towards the use of technology… but there were also some people who were the opposite.

So, what do these results mean?

It’s important to say upfront that we believe technology has a valuable role to play in training. However, these results suggest that trainers need to understand what skills are required to use training technology, and what level of skill their students currently have. If there’s a gap, they need to be able to address that as part of the training.

We shouldn’t assume that all digital technologies use the same skills. Someone might be great at finding videos online or using social media, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be equally good at using a military vehicle simulator.

Also, trainers should be able to demonstrate how the use of technology can improve training – they shouldn’t assume that students will like using technology for its own sake.

And we’re continuing to look at digital literacy and other related areas as part of our ongoing support to the Australian Army.

[Music plays]

Colin Blair: Food for thought from Susannah.

If you’ve embraced digital technology, you can find out the latest in Australian defence science by following us @DefenceScience on Twitter, or download the DST App from Google Play or the App Store.

The Defence Science and Technology podcast is a production of the Defence Science and Technology Group, part of Australia’s Department of Defence.

That’s all for now. See you next time.

ENDS

More information

Podcast Type

Audio

Publish Date

March 2016

Subject Area

Human, social and health sciences

Listen now


Listen and subscribe

Subscribe to the Defence Science podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher and TuneIn, using the links below.

Listen to Stitcher