Abstract:

Universities are striving to exploit an increasingly saturated media-rich environment to create greater accessibility and new ways of widening participation. Although the increased use of technology is often viewed as a catalyst for change, it is actually underpinned by the demand for quality improvement in learning and teaching. This ethnographic case study examines some of the current key debates in relation to technology enhanced learning in the everyday lives of students, lecturers and managerial staff at a new UK university and explores their lived experiences of using learning technologies. However, technologies cannot magically transform learning and do not exist apart from the organisation but are integral as part of the wider socio-technical network and it is, therefore, essential to understand how technologies develop, how people use them and the implications that they have on learning and social cohesion in the educational environment. The mixed method research approach generated narrative and image data through interviews, focus groups and online forums. A grounded theory analysis of the data revealed how understanding the diversity of perspectives, skills, motivations and capabilities is fundamental to developing, supporting and promoting the innovative use of e-learning and learning technologies in learning, teaching and assessment in HE. To effectively foster pedagogical innovation, whilst ensuring a robust educational delivery system, the study explores how social learning may be a useful concept in tackling the issue of information overflow in the 21st Century. The paper presents the key findings of the study and discusses recommendations for enhancing aspects of quality through social learning and promoting meaningful engagement with academic staff and students and learning technologies. However, quality is a difficult concept to define and this study puts lecturers’ and students’ everyday experiences and perspectives at the heart of an in-depth ethnographic exploration of learning technologies and explores their perceptions of quality in relation to technology enhanced learning. At its core is a focus on the quality of the educational experiences for students, with the overall aim of the study to consider how to enhance that quality.

Keywords:

University, quality, technology, ethnography.