Abstract:

The life of an undergraduate student is typically characterised as one of studying, attending classes, and socialising. Traditionally, research focused on student life has concentrated on these discrete aspects of the university experience. However, the student identity is more complex than this. We believe that all aspects of the students’ experiences—the formal and informal; the repetitive, mundane, and seemingly insignificant—form patterns of behaviour that shape what it means to ‘be a student’.

This talk proposes that a more holistic perspective of the students' educational experience is needed. Drawing on theoretical concepts first articulated by Bernard Tschumi (1976), we aim to represent a student’s reality as:
a) the spaces in which they spend their time,
b) the activities (events) they undertake in these spaces, and
c) the movements or connectors that bind these spaces.

This Space-Event-Movement perspective means we can represent a student’s activities, behaviours and movements in a day as a continuous series of events spaced over time, and construct a representation of their personal ‘ecosystem’.

To date, most studies focusing on capturing aspects of student life or identity tend to be based on students’ perceptions, or what they say they do, rather than practice, or what they actually do (John & Butson, 2016; Sim & Butson, 2014; Paretta & Catalano, 2013). However, new advances in digital data capture methods (e.g., reality mining, wearable devices) allow us to harvest continuous naturally-occurring student behaviour data, letting us shift away from relying on perception-based data.

Given the changing state of higher education and the shifts occurring in student cohorts (e.g., a recent report by the New Zealand Productivity Commission, 2017), considering innovative ways to explore and probe student experiences of the university would appear to be essential. We hope that the findings of this study will act as a catalyst to raise the profile of student behaviour/activity and in so doing reveal insights regarding spaces, events and movements that are significant to student identity, performance and wellbeing. The detailed analysis of student experiences may help predict missing links or provide critical details to more accurately model/structure student experience to reflect patterns and relationships exhibited by student behaviour.

This oral presentation will elaborate on the data capture methods and the challenges associated with these, and share some of the preliminary findings of this research.

References:
[1] John, S., & Butson, R. (2016). The behaviour of learning: Investigating study practices of undergraduate Health Science students. In review.
[2] New Zealand Productivity Commission. (2017). New models of tertiary education: Final Report. Available from www.productivity.govt.nz/inquiry-content/tertiary-education
[3] Paretta, L. T., & Catalano, A. (2013). What students really do in the library: An observational study. The Reference Librarian, 54(2), 157-167.
[4] Sim, K., & Butson, R. (2014). To What Degree Are Undergraduate Students Using Their Personal Computers to Support Their Daily Study Practices? IAFOR Journal of Education, 2(1), 158-171.
[5] Tschumi, B. (1976). Manhattan Transcripts. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Keywords:

Reality mining, student life, undergraduate experience.