Twenty-fifth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

In the rapidly evolving world of online higher education, there is an urgent need to actively and reflexively examine the interconnections and complex relations between what is learned in formal university scenarios and the everyday informal learning that happens in online contexts. Among the most significant (and solvable) challenges impeding technology adoption in higher education is connecting learning across formal and informal scenarios. The connectivity and ubiquity of digital culture have become integrated into our daily lives, changing our behaviours and everyday learning habits, while also offering expanded and emerging learning scenarios. The current study uses a qualitative multi-case study to examine and systematize the components that configure the digital learning ecology of online higher education students. It will use in-depth semi-structured interviews, online ethnographic techniques, and a digital survey to identify and systematize how students configure and activate the different components of their digital learning ecologies to generate opportunities for learning across formal and informal contexts. This paper presents initial results of a multi-case study through discourse and content analysis of initial interviews and online participant observation of case study participants. As the majority of all learning in present and future settings will be both online and situated in ever-shifting physical and online contexts, it is the argument of this research that an ecological perspective in online higher education, represented through a digital learning ecologies conceptual framework, will prepare students for the demands of a complex, dynamic and interconnected global society.