Devices, demands, and desires: tracing technology use in the daily life of Cambridge students

by Mr Matthew Riddle, Dr Michael Arnold, Dr Catherine Howell

Recent studies have looked at the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) by higher education students. For example, Haywood et. al. (2004) compared ICT skills among students across Europe, concluding that skills are adequate for the needs of university learning, and a survey report by the SPOT Plus Project (2005) reports on student perspectives of ICT use across 7 European higher education institutions. In the United States there has been the ECAR study (Kvavic & Caruso, 2005) and in Australia a report on the use of ICTs by first year students at the University of Melbourne (Kennedy et al, 2006). While some compare traditional methods to teaching with technology, these studies have tended to use technology as the axis of their investigation, rather than the broader student experience.

As one part of the Learning Landscape Project on learning and teaching at the University of Cambridge, the project reported in this paper aims to investigate the use of technology in students' everyday lives. At Cambridge, the distinction between home and study environment is notably blurred. This study investigates which technologies students are now using, and the extent and nature of their use. It provides a picture of the use of ICTs by Cambridge students in the context of their daily lives in order to contribute to a fuller understanding of the teaching and learning environment.

There are certain general principles that underpin the project method. Our focus is not on the technologies per se, but on the activities related to scholarly life that may or may not involve them. Experience of and with technology is thus comparable to experiences that do not involved technology, and alternative practices constitute a natural control for a technology assessment. By capturing daily life, the experience of those not using technologies in any given context has equal empirical standing. Evidence relating to non-use is as important as evidence relating to use, from both a technology assessment and an equity and access perspective. The methods are predominantly qualitative, and cast respondents in the role of co-researchers. The methods do not look to respondents as relatively passive sources of un-processed data, but as active sources of informed experience and analysis. The project sets out to enthuse and engage the respondents in stimulating and amusing ways, and make maximum use of their experience, intelligence, and insight.

In doing this, the project makes use of a number of innovative research techniques. We identify relevant demographic characteristics and technology-use combinations to produce a technology-use matrix. It employs a series of techniques including the 'experience sampling method' (Intille et al 2003), the 'day reconstruction method' (Kahneman et al 2004), methods inspired by the "cultural probe" approach (Gaver and Dunne, 1999, Arnold, 2004) - such as the 'cold turkey method', the 'very advanced technology method', and 'movers and shapers' focus groups. This paper presents the aims of the research, an account of the methods and their underlying rationale, and our initial findings.

ID Number: 1253

Date: Wednesday, 5th September 2007

Time: 1600

Location: Law and Social Sciences Building, Room A2

Theme: Learning technology for the social network generation