College Students' Technology Arc: A Model for Understanding Progress

Abstract

This article introduces the Student Technology Arc, a model that evaluates college students ‘technology literacy, or how they operate within an education system influenced by new technologies. Student progress is monitored through the Arc's 5 interdependent stages, which reflect growing technological maturity through levels of increasing cognitive complexity. These stages track students’ functional and perceptual knowledge of technology and their abilities to gain plural perspectives from conducting multiple tasks. Additionally, they measure students ‘synthetic awareness of technological and manual (nontechnological) processes, competence in using technology, and capacity to work with multiple dimensions of technological applications. Furthermore, the Arc gages faculty and institutional development by highlighting how new technology literacies should be taught, and how schools should support faculty and student needs. The article concludes with the results of a study undertaken at a U.S. university, where the Arc indicates students’ decreasing ethical and social behaviors as their technological abilities increase.