Digital downsides: exploring university students’ negative engagements with digital technology

Neil Selwyn has a new article in the Taylor & Francis journal Teaching in Higher Education, titled: “Digital downsides: exploring university students’ negative engagements with digital technology“. The article derives from LNM’s recent strategic commissioned project on digital technology use in universities, funded by the Australian Government’s Office for Learning & Teaching. The article reports on survey data from 1658 undergraduate students exploring their engagements with digital technology. In particular, it focuses on the aspects of digital technology use that students see as notably unhelpful, highlighting four distinct types of digital ‘downside’. These range from low-level annoyances and interruptions, to ways in which digital technologies are seen to diminish students’ scholarship and study. Against this background, the paper considers how discussions of digital technology might better balance enthusiasms for what we know might be achieved through technology-enabled learning, with the often unsatisfactory realities of students’ encounters with digital technology.