Fall Research Updates

We had a busy year of new data collection during 2015-2016 and are looking forward to sharing the results of that research this year.

First up is the Library Assessment Conference in Arlington, VA, in early November. We’ll be presenting on the Day in the Life project with colleagues Andrew Asher (Indiana University), Juliann Couture (University of Colorado, Boulder), Jean Amaral (BMCC), Barbara Fister (Gustavus Adolphus College), Donna Lanclos (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), and Sara Lowe (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis). For this project we used text messaging to facilitate students’ self-reporting of their activities, and geocoded the results to create maps of where students traveled throughout a typical schoolday. It’s been so interesting to see the similarities and differences between how, where, and when students do their academic work at the 8 institutions.

In December we’ll be presenting at the CUNY IT Conference on the results of our research on how digital technology can be used by students to create time and can thwart students’ efficient use of time for their academic work. We’ll be talking about data collected during our first round of research in 2009-2011 and a follow up study of student technology use last year in 2015-2016. We’ll post the slides/storify/notes for both presentations as soon as we can.

Post-Conference Posting and Wrap-ups

We’ve had a great time presenting at a couple of conferences over the past few weeks, and are delighted to share our presentation materials.

First off was the American Anthropological Association meetings in Chicago, where we participated in a roundtable with colleagues at other institutions who are doing similar work: Andrew Asher of Indiana University, Lesley Gourlay of the University of London, Lori Jahnke of Emory University, and Donna Lanclos of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Our session was titled Embedded and Engaged in Higher Education: Researching Student Entanglements with Technology, and we used a Prezi to highlight some of the images and numbers from our projects. We had a fantastic conversation with session attendees, some of which was captured by Donna in her post-conference writeup and a Storify of the Twitter stream that she created. I also blogged about the session, and especially our interactions with attendees, over at ACRLog.

Just last week we presented at the CUNY IT Conference at John Jay, again talking about what we’ve learned in our research specifically about students and academic technology. Many thanks to all who attended — we were flattered that the session was standing room only! Here are the slides (again via Prezi) and notes from our presentation “It’s an internet phone, but I don’t have internet:” Students Using Technology.