Shedding Light on Students’ Technology Preferences: Implications for Academic Development

Abstract

This study built on previous research in 2010 to determine changes to students’ current use of and expectations for future integration of technologies in their learning experience. The findings reveal a continued trend of conservative technology use amongst students but with a growing demand for more integration of technologies for assessment and administrative purposes, podcasts or lecture recordings in flexible and blended course designs. While academic practice has been slow to change, this study reveals a continued need for academic development to focus on strategies that enhance technology adoption amongst academic staff. Students’ preferences from this and the earlier study suggest that they would like more use of technologies, especially mobile technologies for efficient and convenient access to content, communication and assessment that can not only inform academic development and course design for fully online and blended learning courses, but also for the growing number of massive open and online courses (MOOCs) in the education landscape.