Reflective Summary - Digital Visitors & Residents

The scaffold of Digital Visitors and Residents has proved contentious.  While it appears most people have embraced it, others have remained cynical about its consistency and practice. The academic commentary throughout the framework have helped developed people’s understanding of the matter, I am no exception.

In response to HuiMin’s  blogpost, I questioned her understanding on the distinction of Digital Visitor and Resident.  She argued that there were a handful of people who shared a combination of traits from both sides but failed to give convincing evidence to support the statement. The hypothesis seeks not to compartmentalise individuals, but to understand the ways they use the internet. This brings me to the next point where Constance's blogpost illustrated that there might be a deficiency in White's framework, but have yet to clearly construct a solution for it. Therefore, like what I projected in my previous post, there must be more empirical evidence of technical skills like gathering, managing, and evaluating information online to support White's terminologies. Hence, it does not wholly replace Prensky's Digital Natives and Immigrants' framework.

Wan Chyng’s blogpost presented a balance between the two perspectives on Digital Visitors & Residents. Using herself as an example, she described how her use of the internet were influenced by her day-to-day schedules. Additionally, it was quite interesting to know that her dad is quite active on social media despite his age. The image shown below was taken from Wan Chyng’s blog:

Credit: Wan Chyng via WordPress

In retrospect, the main limitation of White’s scaffold is the lack of empirical research made throughout the years. There were some minor discrepancies amongst the reference lists of all the blogs that I scrutinized. Therefore, like what I concluded in my previous post, I do not think White’s framework is a good alternative to Prenskey’s theory because they are addressing two different facets of internet consumers.

[306 Words, excluding citations & references]

References

White, D. S., & Cornu, A. L. (2011).  Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement.  First Monday, 16(9).

White, D. (2008). Not 'Natives' & 'Immigrants' but 'Visitors' & 'Residents'. Tall Blog, University of Oxford.

Chan, Wan Chyne (2015) on WordPress.com. Available at: https://chanwanchyng.wordpress.com [Accessed November 02, 2015]

Tan, Constance (2015) on WordPress.com. Available at: https://constancetanpq.wordpress.com [Accessed November 01, 2015]

Loh, Hui Min (2015) on WordPress.com. Available at: https://lohhuimin.wordpress.com
[Accessed November 01, 2015]

Digital Visitors & Residents

The theory of Digital Visitors and Residents was hypothesized by David S. White and Alison Le Cornu (2011) as an alternative model to Marc Prensky’s (2001) scaffold of Digital Natives and Immigrants. Prensky argued that there was an association between technology, technical skills, and age. Generally, the younger demographics that grew up during the internet age are known as Natives while the older demographics that grew up prior to that age are known as Immigrants. Immigrants have unusual habits in using the internet, much like a non-native speaker of a language will say some words differently.

Prensky’s framework is contentious because not all older demographics have negligible knowledge of technology and not all younger demographics are efficacious users of technology. Hence, White and Le Cornu presented various criticisms on Prensky’s scaffold in their article which led to them proposing an alternative; Digital Visitors and Residents. In their article, visitors are defined as people who only use the internet as a tool when necessary and try not to leave a digital footprint, like when booking a hotel. Residents are people who use the internet to build and develop an identity like through blogging. The video provided below is quite useful in explaining the terminologies:

Credit: White, D. jiscnetskills, Visitors and Residents.

via YouTube

One advantage of White and Le Cornu’s analytic framework is that it does not compartmentalize people. They can be a Visitor, a Resident or even both at any point in their lives. For instance, during the early years of my education, I was an active user of social media sites such as Facebook. However, I did not acquire any experience in an academic or professional context. Therefore, I was a Resident only in a social context. At the same time, when I started using the internet in an academic context, I was an ineffectual Visitor who visited school websites and communities only for obtaining necessary information and not leaving any particulars of myself behind. Ultimately, I aspire to become a Resident in all social, academic, and professional contexts.

Nevertheless, it could be argued that White and Le Cornu theorized an over simplistic approach which does not provide empirical findings of technical skills. For example, gathering, managing, and evaluating information online. In contrast, Prensky’s Digital Natives and Immigrants scaffold looks mainly on technical competencies of individuals. Therefore, I highly recommend that a combination of both approaches is used for studying people who use the internet. 

[397 Words, excluding citations & references]

References

White, D. S., & Cornu, A. L. (2011).  Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement.  First Monday, 16(9).

White, D. (2008). Not 'Natives' & 'Immigrants' but 'Visitors' & 'Residents'. Tall Blog, University of Oxford.

Harris, L., Warren, L., Leah, J. and Ashleigh, M. (2010) Small steps across the chasm: ideas for embedding a culture of open education in the university sector. In Education http://ineducation.ca
Technology & Social Media (Special Issue, Part 2), 16 (1).

White, D. (2014). Visitors and Residents. YouTube Video, jiscnetskills [Accessed October 30, 2015]