The digitally mediated study experiences of undergraduate students in South Africa

[摘要] ENGLISH SUMMARY : The academic experiences of today's undergraduate students have become increasinglydigitally-mediated. The growing prevalence of ubiquitous informationsystems and pervasive media use in educational contexts has been shownto have the potential to produce detrimental effects for students' learning andacademic achievement. Media multitasking behaviour poses profound implicationsfor cognition and academic functioning. The objective of this study isto explore undergraduate students' new media usage patterns whilst in academiccontexts. Three key aspects of these usage patterns are focused on:behavioural beliefs, behavioural triggers, and, the behaviour itself. Previouslystudies have focused on determining the prevalence of media multitasking behaviour,or, the implications of such behaviour. Little focus has been placedon studying students' mediated experiences and beliefs. In this study a qualitativeapproach is adopted in order to gather the data necessary for furtheringthe understanding of students' experiences and usage patterns. In this regard, a series of focus groups were conducted with undergraduate students at StellenboschUniversity. Through a thematic analysis approach these focus groupsprovided a number of useful themes describing many aspects of students' mediatedstudy experiences, relating to their beliefs, behavioural triggers andbehaviour. Synthesizing all of the themes, the principal contribution of thisstudy to this area is the finding that students' use of media is based on areasoned evaluation of the impact of their media multitasking behaviour. Thisimplies that contextual factors are primarily responsible for initiating use instances.In addition to this, this study identifies the existence of a 'snowball'effect, prompting unplanned, extended media engagement, prolonging use instances.Finally, a model describing students' media multitasking behaviourin structured and self-regulated academic contexts is proposed.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University