Abstract:

The present research aims to examine how students who are digital natives cope with new ways of communicating in the Digital Age. With this purpose, we introduced for the first time the use of a microblogging platform in the course of International Finance. This subject is taught in the University of Granada in the degree in Business and Management. We then asked the undergraduates to engage with the microblogging platform in order to follow the updates through it. The objective was to increase students' participation and engagement with the lectures, and to enhance the communication teacher-student and also between peers. Students who accomplished this task were incentivized with extra scores in their final grade. Afterwards, we explored the degree of engagement, and how it was influenced by the level of digital literacy and the perception of information overload. Likewise, we measured factors related with the extended Technology Acceptance Model [1] and the Theory of Planned Behaviour [2].

Introduction:
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the use of ICT in education. This variety of tools has been proved to enable and improve teaching/learning process. There is a wide range of tools that are being used by both students and teachers, as it happens with social networks, blogs, wikis and many others ways of communicating. In the same line, virtual communities have developed and enhanced knowledge sharing. Nevertheless, individuals may feel overwhelmed with the potential quantity of information they have to deal with. This can reduce their level of productivity, performance and well-being resulting in an obstacle. For this reason, the present paper focuses not only on the use of microblogging as a way to enhance learning, but it also wants to examine the barriers that students disclose for not using it.

Digital literacy:
The concept of literacy has been broadly examined in research related with education. In the beginning, it was mainly associated with the medium of writing [3], but the evolution of the concept has linked it to the notion of information overload.
Königer and Janowitz [4] believe that improved competence of the individual in information processing is crucial to understand the process of information overload. Likewise, Mutch [5] also believes that people need to become more information literate to reduce the misuse of information and the problems of information overload. It means that students should be prone to use new technologies whenever they are literate on it. More experienced users should feel less information overload when using microblogging in particular so far.

References:
[1] Venkatesh, V. and Davis, F.D. (2000). A Theoretical Extension of the Technology Acceptance Model: Four Longitudinal Field Studies. Management Science, 46(2): 186-204.
[2] Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2): 179–211
[3] Buckingham, D. (2010). Defining digital literacy. Medienbildung in neuen Kulturräumen. Ed. Bachmair, B. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-92133-4_4
[4] Königer, P. and Janowitz, K. (1995). Drowning in information, but thirsty for knowledge. International Journal of Information Management, 15(1): 5-16.
[5] Mutch, A. (1997). Information Literacy: An Exploration. International Journal of Information Management, 17(5): 377-386.

Keywords:

Digital literacy, information overload, microblogging, higher education.