06. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures
Paper
Real or Imagined? A Speculative Future of Kindness in Education
Eamon Costello, Ruby Isabella Cooney, Nargis Mohammadi, Enda Donlon
Dublin City University, Ireland
Presenting Author: Costello, Eamon
This paper reports on an investigation of acts of kindness in education. Social science researchers have in recent years been calling attention to the ‘rise of affectivism’ (Dukes et al 2022). They argue that by building upon and integrating previous phases of behavioural and cognitive research, we are entering into a new area of understanding of human behaviour that is concentrated on emotions, motivations, feelings, moods and other affective constructs. Not only are such processes linked to our well-being, but also they shape our behaviour and drive key cognitive mechanisms. This is nothing new to those concerned with educational research and scholarship who have long emphasised the role of care in education (Held 2006; Noddings 2003; Tronto 1998; Diller 2018). Our concern here is with something specific within care - kindness. Kindness is not an orientation like care but is known and recognised in specific acts. Kindness according to Brownlie and Anderson (2017) can be conceptualized as being composed of four constituents: its infrastructural quality in a societal sense (low profile acts without which nothing would happen); that is is unobligated; that is has a micro or inter-personal focus; and that it has an “atmospheric” potential to subtly alter what we feel and do. The unobligated aspect of kindness has prompted commentators to believe that ‘what is subversive in thinking about higher education practice through the lens of kindness is that it cannot be regulated or prescribed’ (Clegg & Rowland 2010, p 721).
Teacher pedagogical beliefs are known to be informed by a range of factors, including the stories we tell ourselves about our own historical experiences of teaching and teachers (Kagan, 1992). Teachers may be motivated to teach by their beliefs about teaching, either to pay forward acts of kindness they have been shown or by vowing to do better themselves. Unfortunately we have no shortage of negative stories. Negative framing of teaching can become a dominating narrative of public discourse, leading to teachers being excoriated in the media for example (Mockler, 2020). If the image of what it means to be a teacher is being corrupted it is high time to reclaim this space. In order to offer a counter narrative of what teaching can be we embarked on this project to unearth and shine a light on positive pedagogical practices. The research project described in this talk attempts to address a deficit in focus on pedagogical positivity by asking student teachers what kindness means to them and what examples they can recall, of practices of kindness, from their educational history. We touch and acknowledge issues of diversity and lack thereof in our practice landscape as we seek diverse accounts of universal acts. From these accounts we are developing a mutimodal narrative representation of kindness in teacher education. Our results will be presented in a surprising way, for kindness is just that, something that arises unexpectedly, perhaps just when we need it, and then disappears, leaving nothing but a faint smile.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn order to help weave the stories of its participants this research adopted a form of narrative enquiry. Specifically it aimed to use an approach known as speculative design. Speculative methods have seen increased attention by educators of late (Houlden & Veletsianos 2022; Ross 2022) for their focus on imaging possibilities for education via less traditional representational methods. We aimed to elicit narrative accounts of acts of kindness in teaching from student teachers and then weave these into a speculative fiction that is set in an imagined future - see (Costello et al 2022; Richard & Caines 2021) for examples of how participant testimonies are used to generate fictional artefacts and worlds. We employed a visual artist to help us illustrate our imagined future.
Following an application for ethical approval from our institution’s ethical review committee, permission was granted to conduct this research. Following this approval 13 student teachers were recruited and interviewed. We conducted vox pop style short interviews with student teachers approaching them on the campus and recording a series of audio interviews of short questions which took approximately 10-15 minutes each.
Most of our research population (student teachers in Ireland) are a relatively non-diverse population being primarily white Irish middle class students who accessed university through the traditional competitive entry routes. We also recruited students from a university access programme who are classmates of author two, an undergraduate student herself pursuing a non-traditional route to higher education. Lastly, author three interviewed author two. Author three is a female who was a recent arrival to Ireland seeking asylum from Afghanistan (where higher education for women has now been banned by a recent Taliban decree). (Author two 2021; Author three, 2022).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsResults of this research project are ongoing and we present initial findings here.We have uncovered uplifting acts of kindness from teachers and students in the testimonies of our participants. In this session we will present anonymised excerpts in a creative way. We have engaged a visual artist as a member of the research team to help tell a story based on the participant’s contributions using a multimodal approach. We hope our talk will have an interactive element to allow delegates to be part of this storytelling conversation and help us celebrate and storify kindness in education.
ReferencesReferences:
Brownlie, J., & Anderson, S. (2017). Thinking Sociologically About Kindness: Puncturing the Blasé in the Ordinary City. Sociology, 51(6), 1222–1238. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038516661266.
Clegg, S., & Rowland, S. (2010). Kindness in pedagogical practice and academic life. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31(6), 719–735. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2010.515102.
Costello, E., Soverino, T., & Girme, P. (2022). Books (are not like people): A postdigital fable. Postdigital Science and Education, 4(2), 519-539.
Diller, Ann. 2018. ‘The Ethics of Care and Education: A New Paradigm, Its Critics, and Its Educational Significance’. In The Gender Question in Education, 89–104. Routledge.
Dukes, D., Abrams, K., Adolphs, R., Ahmed, M. E., Beatty, A., Berridge, K. C., Broomhall, S., Brosch, T., Campos, J. J., Clay, Z., Clément, F., Cunningham, W. A., Damasio, A., Damasio, H., D’Arms, J., Davidson, J. W., de Gelder, B., Deonna, J., de Sousa, R., … Sander, D. (2021). The rise of affectivism. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(7), 816–820. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01130-8.
Held, Virginia. 2006. The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press
Houlden, S., & Veletsianos, G. (2022) Impossible Dreaming: On Speculative Education Fiction and Hopeful Learning Futures. Postdigital Science and Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00348-7
Kagan, D. M. (1992). Implication of research on teacher belief. Educational psychologist, 27(1), 65-90.
Mockler, N. (2020). Discourses of teacher quality in the Australian print media 2014–2017: A corpus-assisted analysis. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 41(6), 854-870.
Noddings, Nel. 2003. Happiness and Education. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Richard, S., & Caines, A. (2021). The use and misuse of care, OERx. OERx conference. [Youtube Video]. https://youtu.be/tnt4TP_nJKg. Accessed 18 May 2022.
Ross, J. (2022). Digital Futures for Learning: Speculative Methods and Pedagogies. Taylor & Francis.
Tronto, Joan C. 1998. ‘An Ethic of Care’. Generations: Journal of the American Society on Aging 22 (3): 15–20.
06. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures
Paper
Comparative Analysis of the Effects from the Media on the Higher Education Students During and After Covid Lockdown
Olga Gould1, Malika Sultonova2, Regan Perez1
1Eastern New Mexico University, United States of America; 2State University of New York at Buffalo, United States of America
Presenting Author: Gould, Olga
We designed and conducted two IRB-approved qualitative case studies at two public university in two different states of the United States of America with the interval of 3 years. Our first study was conducted online via the Zoom and Skype affordances during the COVID-19 lockdown. The second follow-up project by our researchers' team which took place during the post-COVID times was concerned with the same field of study. We grounded our research studies in Vygotsky’s (1978; 1987) socio-cultural constructivism. The purpose of the both qualitative case studies was to understand the nature of the effects from the social media and mass media on the college students specifically during the pandemic lockdown and at the post-covid times. The participants in our project were the American and International college-age students enrolled at the university programs. The major research questions were: “What possible effects may social media have on college students' health, well-being, academic, and social behaviors?” and “In what ways, if at all, did the social and mass media affect or change the students thinking, emotional and psychological state, and decision-making?” We recruited our research subjects through the word of mouth. In accordance with Seidman's (2014) postulates, we interviewed our subjects individually and in small groups. Our research team sought our participants' revelations on the levels of their involvement with the social media and mass media and the changes in their perceptions, beliefs, knowledge, trust, and self-perceptions resulting from the information they obtained from the diverse media sources. We audio-recorded and transcribed all the interviews. We utilized Saldana's (2015) thematic coding in order to analyze the ideas revealed by our research participants and identify the recurring themes. We looked for the recurring themes in the speeches by our participants. Upon completion of the data collection for both projects, we analyzed and compared the findings. This research found multiple positive and negative effects from usage of the available to the modern days' American college students mass media and social media. Our studies found that the negative effects prevailed and outweighed the benefits of using the social media by the young International and American college student populations. The significance and the great value of our study for the vast college student populations is in our raising awareness of the predominantly unknown to this population negative effects on the youth's mental health, well-being, and academic achievement, etc. Our research participants shared that they had no prior educational experiences with media literacy. This knowledge and awareness have a strong potential to help the American and International college students to avoid or reduce the negative effects from the usage of diverse media. Another implication of our study is in the acute necessity of the Media Literacy Education embedded in the school curricula on all grade levels or offered as college courses world-wide. One of the limitations of our study is that it was conducted only in two states of the United States of America with a relatively small number of participants. More research projects are needed in the field of Media Literacy and the Effects from Media on the Diverse Higher Education Student Populations, while the research studies need to be conducted not only nation-wide in the United States but, most importantly, globally.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe presented research used the qualitative case study method. We designed our project in accordance with the Ely et al. (1994) qualitative research principals. Though the number of participants was relatively small, our team of researchers went deep into the topics addressed by our subjects during our semi-structured interviews (Seidman, 2013), which we selected as the major instrument for our study. Additionally, we conducted the site and participant observations (Spradley, 1980). Most importantly, in order to deeper understand the current chronotope (Bakhtin, 1981), we engaged in the social media observations at the periods of time when our project was conducted during the COVID-19 lockdown and during the post-COVID times. We randomly collected social media posts and announcements related to the COVID and pandemics thematic. We also regularly took the numeric data suing the nationally accredited and the reliable International media sources. We triangulated all our data (Saldana, 2105) collected from the participant interviews and observations, social media, and the National and international media sources. We used thematic coding (Saldana, 2013) to code and analyze our data. We looked for the recurring themes in all the data collected. Upon completion of the second, follow-up project, we engaged in the comparative analysis of the data obtained through both parts of our extended project. We assembled all the research findings in a report, drew conclusions, outlined the limitations, and suggested the implications for the further research.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsOur research found that our participants, the American and International college students massively lack education the field of Medial Literacy. All our subjects confessed they had never been offered any course work nor public or private school classes concerning mass media or social media literacy. Our subjects trusted the printed word of the available to them publications. They have never thought of verifying any information presented to the mass audiences on TV in the United States or Internationally. Our team of researchers interrogated the participants specifically on the topics frequently viewed, read, and tracked by ourselves in the mass media and social media posts during the COVID-19 lockdown and afterwards. We found that our participants not only trusted that information but allowed themselves to be manipulated and followed the directions provided by the unknown manipulators and guidelines of actions, such as purchasing certain goods not at all related to the COVID-19 necessities nor recommended by the health-care professionals. Our research also found the tendency to depressive thoughts and behaviors in young people, which stemmed from the social distancing, isolation, and masking policies. Another significant finding was the negative influence from the social media on the young college students where the latter chose to decline healthy lifestyles promoted by the official medical professionals and selected to engage in unhealthy contradictory practices manifested by some irresponsible users of social nets. The great significance of our project is in our disclosing the types of negative influence on the young college students from the "fake prophets" and gamers who publish fraudulent postings in the social media. We also suggest the ways to resist the negative effects from the unverified media. We advocate for the media literacy education for the great benefit of our young college student populations in the USA and globally.
ReferencesEly, M., Anzul, M., Friedman, T., Garner, D., & Steinmetz, A. M. (1994). Doing qualitative research: Circles within circles. Bristol, PA: The Palmer Press.
Frederick, C., & Zhang, T. (2019). Narcissism and social media usage: Is there no longer a relationship? Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis, 16(1), 23-35. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.ecc.edu:3555/apps/doc/A596061592/ITOF?u=erieccn_main&sid=ITOF&xid=a81ccc2a
Glesne, C. (2010). Becoming qualitative researchers (4th ed.). New York: Longman.
Househ, M., & Househ, M. (2013). The use of social media in healthcare: organizational, clinical, and patient perspectives. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 183, 244–248. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1285462654/
Indina, T. (2014). Social media communication effects on user’s behavior change. Personality and Individual Differences, 60, S42–S42. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2013.07.117
Kumar, S., Natrajan, K., Bhadoria, A., Das, A., & Kumar, S. (2019). Social media smartphone app and psychopathology - A case report. Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 8(8), 2738–2740. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_421_19
Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1984). Qualitative data analysis: A sourcebook of new methods. Sage publications.
Saldaña, J. (2015). Thinking qualitatively: Methods of mind. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Seidman, I. E. (2013). Interviewing as qualitative research (4th ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.
Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant observation. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Stoian, A. (2019). Education, Social and Media Communication. Revista de Stiinte Politice, (62), 125–135. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/2247528332/
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky: Vol. 1. Problems of general psychology, including the volume thinking and speech (R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton, Eds., Trans. N. Minick). New York: Plenum.
Vygotsky, L. S. (2000). Psychology. Moscow: EKSMO-Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wickersham, K. (2019, October 21). Using social media is not connecting. Retrieved from https://norfolkdailynews.com/select/using-social-media-is-not-connecting/article_67a70e78-f43a-11e9-9df7-0b3f6bdad678.html.
06. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures
Paper
Learner Perceptions of the Use of Danmaku in Open Publicly Shared MOOC Videos
Yujie Xue, Chang Zhu
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Presenting Author: Xue, Yujie;
Zhu, Chang
In today's digital age, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) break the time and space constraints of face-to-face teaching and are being widely used in higher education (Daradoumis et al., 2013). Many top universities participate in and offer high-quality online courses on MOOC learning platforms such as Coursera and edX. It is worth noting that as more and more learners prefer this video-based learning experience, video sharing platforms have also become an online learning approach that cannot be ignored in addition to traditional MOOC platforms. Many high-quality open course videos have been uploaded to video sharing platforms such as YouTube so that more people can learn more easily (Burke & Snyder, 2008). Video sharing platforms with danmaku features are very popular with the younger generation. The term "danmaku" comes from Japanese and is essentially a system of video commentary that slides from one side of the screen to the other like a bullet (Howard, 2012). In China, most mainstream video platforms have danmaku functions, and the most popular platform is Bilibili, which has 54 million daily active users. In Europe, the TikTok platform which is popular among young people, some European streaming platforms and TV stations' web pages have also started to open the danmaku function in some shows.
However, with the popularity of online learning, some challenges have come to the fore, such as an increase in course dropout rates and a decrease in satisfaction with online courses, which may be related to learner interactions with others (Asoodar et al., 2016). The quality of interaction as a feature of online learning is also considered to be an important factor in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of online learning (Bernard et al., 2009). For learners, interaction through forums, discussion boards and danmaku in the online learning environment can promote cooperation and mutual support among different learners. Unlike traditional mainstream video platforms and MOOC platforms, video sharing platforms with Danmaku functionality offer a better user experience in terms of interactivity. In addition to interacting in the comments section, users can also comment instantly by sending a danmaku, which remains at the point in time of the current comment on the video being watched, and when other viewers play to that point in time, they will see other users' comments here. This sense of real-time commenting is difficult to experience on YouTube. As a result, many Chinese students choose to study online on video sharing platforms like Bilibili. Therefore, understanding learners' perceptions of danmaku in this particular context and exploring the application and value of danmaku can provide more options for MOOC improvement and in-class interaction for teachers, as well as provide some reference and help for the development of online learning platforms.
Based on this, the research questions for this study are as follows:
RQ1: How do users perceive the use of danmaku as a tool in open publicly shared MOOC videos?
RQ2: What are the specific roles of danmaku in open publicly shared MOOC videos?
On the basis of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the authors combined the studies of other scholars to construct an analytical framework suitable for this study, which is to code and analyse the data with perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment as the core structures (Davis 1989; Van der Heijden 2004; Rauniar et al. 2014; Zhang et al. 2014). Details will be presented in the next section.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn this study, content analysis was chosen as the research method. Content analysis is a systematic and objective quantitative research method to study information characteristics (Harwood & Garry, 2003). The content analysis method can perform quantitative coding analysis on objective barrage text data and perform in-depth qualitative analysis of the coding results. This study took the textual content of the danmaku as the research object, aiming to explore the acceptance and perception of danmaku by the users of video sharing platforms. These users mainly refer to students who study open publicly shared MOOC videos on video sharing platforms and learners who are interested in such videos.
The data for this study were all collected from the official Bilibili platform using Python. The authors selected a total of 128 open publicly shared MOOC videos from 4 series of MOOC courses on the video sharing platform Bilibili, that is, Game Theory at Yale University, Positive Psychology at Harvard University, Macroeconomics at Peking University, and Mechanics of Materials at Tsinghua University. Two series of courses are taught in English with Chinese and English subtitles, and two are taught in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
Since the Bilibili platform assigns different weights to the danmaku content according to the user's level and behavior records, the higher the weight of the danmaku, the less likely it will be covered by the subsequent danmaku, which also means that the publisher of this part of the danmaku is more core user groups. Therefore, this study selected the first 100 danmaku of each MOOC video as the research sample, and used each individual danmaku text as an analysis unit, with 128 videos totaling 12174 analysis units. In this study, the qualitative analysis software MAXQDA 2022 was used as an analysis tool to analyze the content of danmaku.
By combining the analysis framework mentioned in the previous section, the authors selected perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment as the three primary indicators, and summarised the secondary indicators from the raw data through open coding. The coding process was carried out by two coders. To ensure objectivity, the author and another coder performed pre-coding after learning the key indicators and specific coding rules to test the consistency of their coding.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThis study found that learners preferred using danmaku for instant messaging and interaction than traditional comment section discussions. Learners' perceptions of the use of danmaku as a learning tool in open publicly shared MOOC videos are mainly reflected in the areas of socialisation, information exchange, participation and interaction. The perceived usefulness of danmaku is mainly reflected in the fact that the use of danmaku is helpful for learners to obtain information and achieve effective communication. Perceived ease of use in this study refers to how easy and convenient it is for users to use the danmaku. The perceived enjoyment of using danmaku is reflected in the enjoyment and ease that users feel when using them, as the anonymous and open atmosphere created by danmaku video platform makes it easier for users to express their ideas.
The main application scenarios of danmaku in open publicly shared MOOC videos are explanations, recommendations for videos and other related materials, explanations or corrections of subtitles, content discussions, communication conversations, simplified interaction, video interaction, comments, social interaction and emotional expression. These application scenarios also reflect the roles currently assumed by danmaku in the field of online learning. Danmaku adds a sense of ritual to MOOC learning, breaks the time and space limitations of teacher-student interaction and interaction between students, and transforms traditional MOOC learning into a decentralised online learning mode. Based on these unique and attractive features, more and more learners are choosing to use video sharing platforms with danmaku for their MOOC learning. The findings are useful for understanding the popularity of MOOC videos in video sharing platforms with danmaku features, the design of the danmaku function and the development of MOOC-based educational technology.
ReferencesAsoodar M, Vaezi S, Izanloo B (2016) Framework to improve e-learner satisfaction and further strengthen e-learning implementation. Computers in Human Behavior 63:704–716. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.05.060
Bernard, R. M., Abrami, P. C., Borokhovski, E., Wade, C. A., Tamim, R. M., Surkes, M. A., & Bethel, E. C. (2009). A meta-analysis of three types of interaction treatments in distance education. Review of Educational Research, 79(3), 1243–1289.
Burke, S. C., & Snyder, S. L. (2008). YouTube : An Innovative Learning Resource for College Health Education Courses An Overview of YouTube Using YouTube in Higher Education. International Electronic Journal of Health Education, 11, 39–46.
Daradoumis, T., Bassi, R., Xhafa, F., & Caballé, S. (2013). A review on massive e-learning (MOOC) design, delivery and assessment. Proceedings - 2013 8th International Conference on P2P, Parallel, Grid, Cloud and Internet Computing, 3PGCIC 2013, 208–213. https://doi.org/10.1109/3PGCIC.2013.37
Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Quarterly, 319–340.
Harwood, T. G., & Garry, T. (2003). An overview of content analysis. The Marketing Review, 3(4), 479–498.
Howard, C. D. (2012). Higher order thinking in collaborative video annotations: Investigating discourse modeling and the staggering of learner participation. Indiana University.
Rauniar, R., Rawski, G., Yang, J., & Johnson, B. (2014). Technology acceptance model (TAM) and social media usage: an empirical study on Facebook. Journal of Enterprise Information Management.
Van der Heijden, H. (2004). User acceptance of hedonic information systems. MIS Quarterly, 695–704.
Zhang, K. Z. K., Cheung, C. M. K., & Lee, M. K. O. (2014). Examining the moderating effect of inconsistent reviews and its gender differences on consumers’ online shopping decision. International Journal of Information Management, 34(2), 89–98.
06. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures
Paper
Neither with You nor Without You. Higher Education Students and Digital Technology
Laura Malinverni, Juana M Sancho-Gil
UB, Spain
Presenting Author: Sancho-Gil, Juana M
Neither with you nor without you my sorrows have no remedy, with you because you kill me and without you because I die. Antonio Machado. Spanish poet (1875-1939)
Today's societies are heavily permeated and configured by digital technologies, and education is no exception. Higher Education students are now "post-20th century" (McCrindle & Wolfinger, 2011). They have grown up connected to virtual environments and have access to more information than any other generation (Sancho-Gil, 2021; Seemiller and Grace, 2017). This fact has brought McCrindle & Wolfinger (2011, p. 102) to argue that our era "It's not the era of experts but the era of user-generated opinion". In a world where "data is cheap but making sense of it is not'' (Boyd, 2010; Sancho and Hernández, 2018).
The multiplication of communication tools and codes, more and more available for young people, means an increasing tendency to use multimodal forms of communication and information search (McCrlinde & Wolfinger, 2011). Young people seem to prefer non-textual content platforms (Geraci et al., 2017), show a predilection for the role of observers, seek real practical examples before applying their learning, and need to understand such applicability to be involved in the process (Seemiller and Grace, 2017). At the same time, the old trend of copying and plagiarism has considerably grown (Abbas et al., 2021; Diaz et al., 2021). The recent emergence of chatbots such as ChatGPT -to which development the tycoon Bill Gates seems ready to invest 10 billion dollars (Fabino, 2023), is representing new challenges for meaningful student learning and universities (Cochrane, 2022; 2023 Huang, 2023; Illingworth, 2023; Kramer, 2022).
There is a long-time predominant discourse of celebration and applause of any technological development, mainly digital. However, as discussed for decades, technological development impacts nature, social systems and individuals. And the consequences are not always positive and desirable (Morozov, 2013; Shallis, 1984; Mumford, 1938).
In our world of apparently unlimited digital technology and information, everyone seeks people's attention, which is essential to think and making informed decisions. Everybody knows that without attention (which implies time and concentration), friendship, love, family, followers, business, work, and learning are impossible. Human relations, publicity, media, educational institutions, and churches are all trying to obtain this limited human attribute. For Lankshear & Knobel (2001) and Lanham (2006), the scarcest product is attention in the new economy. As human beings' capacity to produce consumer goods, information, etc., widely surpasses peoples' capacity to consume them, the need to attract attention is becoming the focus of productive activity.
This growing and seemingly unstoppable phenomenon is giving rise to an exploration of the collateral and detrimental effects of the impact of digital technologies on young people (Twenge (2017; Desmurguet, 2020; Alter, 2018; Sampedro, 2018). Due to the excessive and unwise use promoted by persuasive technologies (Fogg, 2003).
One of today's paramount issues is educating over-stimulated people who often feel bored. In this context, contemporary universities are confronting the colossal challenge of capturing students' attention and interest and, even more, guaranteeing meaningful learning processes for all students beyond passing the exams. For their part, students are confronting the need to evade the persuasive "siren calls" of digital technology. We need to understand how they deal with the technological world; they can see it as an ally or a monster. What strategies are they using to make the most of their situation, and how do they value what digital technology gives and takes out of them? This controversial and entangled situation has been one of the main issues of the [anonymised] research project.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis communication builds on the project [anonymised], whose aim is to explore the learning trajectories of young university students to situate their conceptions, strategies, contexts and relationships with technologies, adopts a participatory and inclusive research perspective (Bergold & Thomas, 2012; Nind, 2014; Wilmsen, 2008). It involves the academic community (students, academics, managerial bodies) to contribute to a better way to meet contemporary students' learning needs.
In the first stage have participated 50 university students, 28 from Catalonia and 22 from the Basque Country. Thirty were women, 20 were men (55.6% and 44.4%, close to the distribution observed in Spanish universities in the academic year 2019-2020), and seven had special needs (14%). Throughout four meetings, we explored and built with them their learning lives (Erstad & Sefton-Green, 2012), placing special attention on their university experience.
In the first meeting, we made sure we had conveniently explained the research scope and aims and the compromise it entailed for them and us. We signed the ethical protocols. Then, we shared a set of contradictory views about contemporary youth. In the second meeting, they shared a reconstruction of their learning lives from childhood to the present through textual, multimodal and rhizomatic narratives; they highlighted moments, places, people, activities, objects, technologies, timeframes, turning points, etc., which they considered crucial to their learning paths. The third meeting focused on learning moments, methods, tools, and strategies they identify as relevant for their daily learning, including academic and non-academic activities undertaken inside or outside the institutional walls. In the final session, researchers, after dialoguing and conceptualising the information generated with the participants, shared a draft of their learning trajectories to contribute to the final version of the text. All meetings were audio-recorded and transcribed.
This paper focuses on the role of digital technologies in higher education students' learning and everyday life. In particular: (1) their ways of describing their use of digital technologies; (2) their perceptions about how these technologies influence their learning; (3) their beliefs and conceptions about digital technologies and their social impact.
To review these reflections, the researchers' team conducted a first thematic analysis of the transcription of the interviews with the 50 students. They highlighted statements and observations about their experiences and considerations regarding digital technologies for each student. This first database underwent a second thematic analysis to evidence common discourses and patterns.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsParticipants' reflections and experiences showed that the interviewed students live in a constant ambivalent feelings regarding the role of DT in their lives. This ambivalence is reflected in all areas of their lives: personal, interpersonal relationships, and learning.
Regarding their personal lives, DT has allowed them to gain comfort and optimise their productivity. However, they also expressed their concerns related to the dependency generated by DT and the feeling of wasting time absorbed by them.
Many students feared that DT could make us lose fundamental cognitive abilities, such as the capacity to focus, pay attention and concentrate. However, some of them remarked how by freeing us from specific mental loads (e.g. memorising), DT could offer us spaces to develop other forms of thought. Some of them also considered the relationship between DT and mental health. According to some students, DT had a detrimental effect on their mental health, e.g. lowering self-esteem or depriving them of a moment of absolute rest. According to other students, digital technologies offer benefits in raising self-esteem and allowing resources for rest and escape. Their comments about the impact of DT on interpersonal relationships also reflect these mixed feelings
Regarding the impact of DT on learning, students also showed puzzling opinions. They referred to DT at the same time as learning triggers and distractors. For some, how digital technologies have reshaped learning ecologies has provided them with much information and diversified learning resources. This new landscape offers them opportunities to access information "just in time", deepening into themes of interest, widening their knowledge and entering into contact with new ideas and worldviews. However, the overabundance of information makes it challenging to go deep into something and build profound knowledge; they often "just read diagonally" and are used to rapidly switching their themes of interest.
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