Abstract:

Learning with mobile technology has been a real challenge in the last few years. In this article we present the results obtained from a study conducted in France which investigated how university students use laptops in private and public contexts. In order to fulfill our aim, we have conducted an exploratory research which involved 262 subjects of different nationalities, studying in Parisian Universities. Our research tends to bring a new view on the use of these devices: surprisingly is not on the go that these devices are mostly used, but in the private area, at home.
Issues like privacy and security are involved in this choice of the students. All students had their own device bought by more than 90% of them from their own resources.
The research presented in this paper investigates aspects like: uses of laptops in private context (e.g. at home) and in public contexts (e.g. university, library, in the train etc); benefits and inconveniences of laptops and health issues and concerns.
The results we obtained give a better insight on how this technology integrates with the life of the students from Parisian Universities. More than 88% of students declare that they will miss not having a laptop, as one of our respondents mentioned: “It is my life. I have everything on it”. However it is still a long way until laptops will also integrate better in the university curricular activities. Future concerns would be how can we better integrate the use of these devices in the university environment? Which are the digital and mobile competences that learners and educators need in order to survive in the mobile technological era? What are the modifications the educational institutions need to apply to their infrastructure?

Keywords:

laptop, pda, university, private/public, formal/informal.