EJEL
Volume 7 Issue 2
June 2009
Special Issue ECEL 2008
Listening to the Learners’ Voices in HE: how do Students Reflect on their use of Technology for Learning?
Amanda Jefferies and Ruth Hyde
University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
The importance of listening to students' views has been evidenced in various high profile research initiatives in the UK since 2006. The work presented here is from the JISC Learners’ Experiences of E-Learning Phase 2 Learners’ Journeys STROLL project. Seven projects were funded by JISC to investigate the views of FE and HE students in their use of technology to support their learning at university or in adult education.
The STROLL (STudent Reflections on Lifelong e-Learning) project recruited a diverse range of over 50 students to research their experiences of learning in a technology rich environment and their progression in their use of learning technologies over the two years of the project’s timescale between 2007 and 2009. STROLL is a largely qualitative study with students participating from across the University of Hertfordshire (UH) and Hertford Regional College (HRC) by recording their own video and audio diaries of their reflections on their learning.
The project researched and documented the students’ answers to the following questions:
- How do learners experience change through their learning journey?
- How do students use and make choices about their time?
- How do students use e-learning tools to support their learning?
- How do students use their personal technologies?
This paper presents some of the early findings in terms of the ease with which students interact with technology and the choices they make about what they use and when and where. The discussion includes consideration of the research methodologies, since the use of personal video diaries to record reflections on learning, is to date a rarely used method of capturing data on students' reflections.
Keywords:
student experience, e-learning, social uses of technology
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