68% of all United States students are not proficient in mathematics and would greatly benefit from the boost of resources and flexibility offered by online resources (Peterson, Hannushek, & Riddel, 2011). However, despite having access to these resources, the achievement gap remains, so much so that one out of every 5 students are enrolling in remedial mathematics coursework on the post-secondary level (Planty, Hussar, Snyder, Provasnik, Kena, Dinkes, Kewal-Ramani, & Kemp, 2008). Minorities, especially African Americans, are also greatly disadvantaged in regards to mathematics education, such that 50% are low-achieving (Spencer, 2011). Experts warn US secondary, collegiate, and post-graduate educators that students are being passed on with increasing mathematical deficiencies (Wenner, Burn, and Baer, 2011).
Currently, the proliferation of technology is growing at an exponential rate, particularly with mobile or portable devices. Tablets, netbooks, laptops, and notebooks are out-selling desktops currently 2 to 1, and in just three more years are expected to reach consumer levels of as high as 9 to 1 (Selleck, 2010). Students are not just using Blackberrys, PDA's (personal data assistants), Apple, Windows Mobile, and/or Android devices solely for entertainment purposes, but increasingly, students are understanding that these handheld devices are highly helpful and convenient educational tools which enhance their learning experience (Song, 2011). But just how many and who are the students using these devices?
Last year, 2011, there was an article that identified 600,000 manufacturing jobs that went unfilled as a result of skilled and educated operators for the machinery that defines the majority of manufacturing assembly lines (Clabaugh, 2011). These deficient students are not only being passed on to the colleges and universities, but also thrown into the business world where their deficiencies are causing a great economic calamity. This is not solely an American problem, as worldwide there were 10,000,000 manufacturing jobs that went unfilled in 2011 (Cancino, 2012). How is it that in just a few years workers across the globe suddenly became underqualified and unskilled?
Automation, while a boon for corporate bottom lines, are putting workers with menial job skill sets out of business. Think of the self-serve checkout stations at grocery stores like Kroger, Walmart, Home Depot, etc. which contain 4 or more electronic scanner and registers. Now think of all the high school students without an after school job as a result of those machines. The rapid growth of technology is not only making entertainment easier and providing greater opportunities for students to gain more educational opportunities. Those machines have replaced jobs. 83% of more than 1100 manufacturing executives report that they have redesigned/streamlined production lines and 51% have increased the automation (Morrison, DeRocco, Maciejewski, McNelly, Giffi, & Carrick, 2011).
Cashman reports that in McHenry County Illinois, local manufacturing business leaders are banding together to stop this horrendous educational, employment, and economic trend by sponsoring buses to take 844 high school students to attend a local conference where they will meet with and hear from human resource executives explaining what job requirements and benefits are, to attempt to entice high schoolers to take their education more seriously (Cashman, 2012). Microsoft is pushing to raise the corporate fee for higher foreign workers from around $2500 to a much higher penalty $10,000, and use that extra money to develop programs to spur interest and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) graduates here in America (Schaffhauser, 2012). These and many more changes are examples of the way education systems and businesses are working together to respond to this Grand Canyon sized employment skills gap that is ever widening.
However, regardless to how much instructional technology, different curriculum standards, the business community, economic pressure, unemployment worries, technology development, and government programs are avaliable to students, nothing will make a difference unless people can identify what is causing the disconnect between students and reality. They know as we do what is out there, but why don’t they try harder and match the efforts of the other interested parties? There are plenty available quality Instructional Technology resources that can help students develop the STEM and technological skills that the new workforce is requiring, but they are not taking advantage of those resources.
“We can bring students their education and put it on a silver platter right in front of them, but if they don’t want it, they’re not going to eat it. How can we make our students crave it? How can we get them motivated and passionate about learning again?” (Mackie, 2012). These questions no longer have to perplex educators, business leaders, parents, etc. To begin the search for the answers to those questions, the objective of this study will be to gain a better understanding as to why students struggling in mathematics fail to utilize helpful instructional technology, even though they have access to it.
Specifically, this study aims to provide insight into student demographics, motivation, maturity, technology access, level of learned helplessness, and self-discipline to determine if there are any significant differences between users and non-users of IT as determined by association. As a result of this study better marketing, designing, promotion, and/or implementation of IT can be developed and produced so that struggling students will be more likely to use the Mathematical IT available to them and therefore be better qualified students and workers in the future.
