1. C-SAP e-learning forum Continuities and Contradictions: Student use of New Technology in Higher Education

2. The next big killer application for the Internet is going to be education. Education over the Internet is going to be so big it is going to make e-mail usage look like a rounding error. (Friedman 2001) Setting the scene

3. Utopian advocacy vs. dystopian critique. Optimists can envision thousands of happy students, credit card in hand sitting at home in front of their internet links to websites and newsgroups, sopping up knowledge as fast as it comes online…Sceptics can envision an equal number of angry students working of credit card debts, seeing no educational or competitive advantage gained from an online McDegree in a postgraduate world. (Bagherian & Thorngate 2000) Research background: Academic and policy debate

4. In the course of its brief but expensive existence, the UKe-U managed to recruit a total of 900 students worldwide, which works out at about £33,000 per student. Given those numbers, it would have been cheaper to have given each of these folks the money and sent them to Harvard. (Naughton 2004) Research background: Academic and policy debate

5. Student use case studies Undergraduate website tutorial page Postgraduate website resources page

6. All those concerned with the delivery of Higher Education have a responsibility to ensure that the benefits of communication and information technology are exploited as fully as possible…We recommend that by 200/01 Higher Education institutions should ensure that all students have open access to a Networked desktop computer, and expect that by 2005/6 all students will be required to have access to their own portable computer. (National Enquiry into Higher Education Dearing Report 1997 13.1, 13.57) Undergraduate students

7. Exploring patterns of non-use “I was convinced that I had to have a computer and that it was part of being at university, something you really needed. Thinking about it though I just send emails really and use the work processor. I mean I need that, but I suppose I could just as easily use the labs. I won’t tell my parents that though, I don’t think they’d be too delighted they’d coughed up for my laptop - lovely gadget though it is.” Undergraduate students

8. Crook and Light (2002) ‘Doing’ being a student and the student identity Temporal process of technology as part of student portfolio

9. Becker- ‘Making the grade’ & the ‘student’ perspective Learning as structural logic vs. exploratory, flexible ‘voyage’ Student role and identity as barrier to use Undergraduate students

10. Complex and contradictory patterns of appropriation Contradictions of convenience ‘convenience’, ‘access’, ‘flexibility’, ‘usability’ Embedded in other social spaces and other social relationships Postgraduate students

11. “I’ll go to an internet café near me and look at stuff and then what I want to print I’ll email to myself at Uni, because it’s cheaper to print there, and then when I’m next at Uni I’ll get my emails and then I can print the article off - it might end up being a couple of days later and I know its not the most efficient way, bit ridiculous actually.” “I give my boyfriend or a friend the url that I’ve written down from the website when I’m at Uni, and then get them to download and print stuff off for me at their or at home, then I’ll get hold of that from them and take it on the train or something. All very complicated but it’s easy enough and it works for me.” Postgraduate students

12. Using ‘technology’ “The irony’s not lost on me, give me a website and I’ll wipe out a rain forest.” “if you think about it it’s nuts, my use of technology is not about the web or even a computer, it’s my huge file of paper – how old school” Symbolic markers and representations Postgraduate students

13. Towards a model of technology use

14. Kate Orton-Johnson School of Social and Political Studies University of Edinburgh k.orton-johnson@ed.ac.uk