Exploring Digital Native Characteristic to Create Learning Instruction for Learning Computer Graphic Design

Abstract

Technology leads to massive changes, including in the way of learning. As digital natives, students have different ways of learning, especially in courses that use technological devices, such as computers graphic design. Exploring information by building empathy from a student's perspective, can give more authentic information and find opportunities for designing a better learning instructional. The purpose of this study is to explore student’s characteristics by building empathy towards students, finding their specific needs and criteria of creating learning instructional that are more need-based. This is a qualitative research, using case study through interviews, focused group discussion and an instrument of empathy map with a qualitative descriptive analysis technique. Study shows that building empathy has the opportunity to prevent the failure of creating learning instruction. Involving students can help to gather the latest information related to their learning needs. The result indicates that students have no difficulty in accessing and using complex technology, this is in accordance with their characteristics as digital native. Students not only need to learn technical capabilities, but also need to develop the ability to operate software in design practices. This is where other study skills related to being a designer for students are needed. Building empathy brings positive impact to find new learning objectives and create learning instructions. These findings suggest following future research on instructional learning that stimulate student’s ability that concentrate on designer's skills in their future.