The Backyard Blitz Syndrome: the emerging student culture in Australian Higher Education

Abstract

This paper discusses the transformation of the learning/teaching culture in a tertiary education environment brought about by the evolution and application of digital communication technology. In examining how technological development has altered the way in which study materials are delivered to, and accessed by students this paper outlines changes observed in student attitudes to the tertiary learning experience over a ten-year period at a regional university.

The paper argues that an intensely private and absorbing multimedia world has emerged in which many contemporary university students – acculturated as they are to an electronic visual environment – acquire information in short chunks as and when they need it. It also argues for the possible use of the technology that has helped create this cultural construct – The Backyard Blitz syndrome – to transform the way in which academics interact with multimedia savvy students in order to engage their interest in studying theoretical material they often find boring and irrelevant to their needs.