Responses from 100 device-led student interviews

Between January and March 2011, one hundred students were interviewed about their use of technology and places of study at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). The interviews took place at locations across MMU and, as far as possible, students were selected in order to give a course and gender balance that reflected MMU as a whole. Students were asked to talk about the technology that they had with them. Those who took part were rewarded with a £5 print credit voucher.

Detailed analysis of the results and reflection on questions will follow, but this post presents preliminary analysis of headline results for students’ use of technology in their studies. Please note accuracy of data is yet to be validated by the research team, and use of specialist equipment, for instance Apple Mac computers available to Design students, is yet to be factored in. These results are presented as a preliminary indication only and should not be considered safe for citation.

A link to the interview schedule is available here.

Of the 100 students interviewed, 98 had brought a mobile phone with them and 45 had brought a laptop (or netbook). Questions concerned use of the devices *for* learning and study.

Initial Observations:

If the number of mobiles used for email and web is taken as an indicator of smartphone ownership amongst the students interviewed, then the figure of 49/98 (50%) is practically identical to the figure obtained in the online survey undertaken in October 2010 (496/982 = 50.5%).

Despite popular opinion that students use social networking rather than email for communication, more of those interviewed used email for learning-related communication:

Interestingly, email use was more common on mobiles than on laptops or desktops.

Reflection on questions and responses in the online survey and interviews:

For future studies, it could be useful for research instruments to elicit responses for different (but sometimes overlapping) categories of technology-use for learning:

1. Discussing and arranging course work
2. Accessing course deadlines, timetables, briefs and feedback
3. Discovering and accessing learning materials
4. Producing and submitting course work
5. Maintaining a personal study environment

An initial skim of the qualitative interview data suggests that mobile messaging, particularly texts and blackberry messenger (BBM), is used extensively for category#1.

Category#2 access to e-admin information to support learning emerged as the top priority for institutional mobile development in the larger (982 respondent) online survey

Prompts in this questionnaire could have done more to elicit responses about category#3 and category#4 use, but it is interesting to see in both the quantitative data and the qualitative responses to technology and study space questions that a number of students place an importance on playing music while studying (category#5).

As ever with W2C, we look forward to feedback and further ideas generated by this post.