'It's not the university experience we were expecting'

Digitally literate undergraduate students reflect on changing pedagogy

Abstract

This paper reports from a 2012 small-scale study with campus-based undergraduate students at an Australian research-focussed university. The students' ownership of learning technologies was examined alongside their appreciation and experience of online learning opportunities. It came to light that a number of the students having opted for a campus- based experience were less willing to embrace fully the wider blend in learning that the learning environment provided. These digitally competent and literate students held a somewhat stereotyped expectation of university teaching as being a didactic process within a classroom with some blend of online learning activities. The students typically owned a range of personal technologies and they were avid users of one particular social network - Facebook. This preference for a single social network above all others has been found to be true in both prior UK studies (Ofcom, 2012) and US experiences (Dahlstrom, 2012). The students generally considered themselves as consumers of technology to support their learning rather than as engaging with university LMS to transform their learning approach. Suggestions for improving the scaffolding of learning are made.