Teaching a CALL Course as a Digital Immigrant: Lessons Learned

Abstract

The common sight of a digital immigrant (Prensky, 2001) CALL instructor teaching digital immigrant and digital native (Prensky, 2001) TESL students introduces the question: How does a digital immigrant instructor meet the needs of technologically-diverse students in a CALL course? Preliminary findings of a qualitative multiple case study suggest that participants overcome the digital native-immigrant dichotomy through collaboration and peer teaching. The digital native-immigrant notion itself is extended through a conception of layers, that an individual can be a digital native in some aspects of technology and digital immigrant in other aspects of technology.