The Highs and Lows of Ubiquitous Connectivity: Investigating University Students' Experiences and Connections with Well-being

Higher Education has seen a dramatic increase in the use of information and communication technologies in recent years. Universities around the world have built complex Information System infrastructures implementing local networks, wireless networks, cloud services and Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). These technological changes have stretched and expanded the boundaries of traditional campus universities in space and time allowing easy and ubiquitous access to people, information and services. The term “ubiquitous connectivity” identifies this enhanced accessibility to resources due to the development of infrastructures and devices. This qualitative research adopted a holistic approach to investigate how new technologies and ubiquitous connectivity affect university students’ experiences and consequent well-being. Data were collected from on-campus students and staff members (lecturers, learning technologists, tech support, programme administrators) using a qualitative survey, semi-structured interviews and focus groups. The data were analysed using constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz 2006) and situational analysis (Clarke 2005). The data analysis shows that new technologies and ubiquitous connectivity appear to play a positive role in enhancing students’ well-being by providing them: 1. A sense of ease and freedom in managing their daily learning duties 2. A sense of connectedness with other students and lecturers 3. A sense of reassurance by knowing that peer and lecturer support is always at hand 4. A sense of improved workflow by using mobile devices to retrieve information and to take notes anytime and anywhere during the day 5. Flexibility in managing everyday life and in balancing study, work and leisure. However, in some cases new technologies and ubiquitous connectivity seem to have a negative impact on learners’ well-being. The data analysis shows that students can experience: 1. High levels of stress when technology failures occur or when online information is not accessible due to the lack of alternatives in performing their learning duties 2. Difficulties in managing information overload and the constant flux of information arriving to their devices 3. Stress and irritation when dealing with complicate website layouts and disorganised online materials 4. Lack of motivation in attending lectures due to the ease with which materials and information can be retrieved from the VLE and from peers using social apps and networks. 5. Difficulties in developing relationships with lecturers and peers due to the lack of face-to-face communication. These findings can be utilised to provide pedagogical suggestions to university stakeholders to avoid a negative impact of new technologies and ubiquitous connectivity on learners’ well-being and to improve the quality of students’ experiences

Exploring Community Building with an Awareness Display

In this paper, we present a field trial of a pervasive system called Panorama that is aimed at supporting social awareness in work environments. Panorama is an intelligent situated display in the staff room of an academic department. It artistically represents non-critical user generated content such as images from holidays, conferences and other social gatherings, as well as textual messages on its display. It also captures images and videos from different public spaces of the department and streams them onto the Panorama screen, using appropriate abstraction techniques. We studied the use of Panorama for two weeks and observed how Panorama affected staff members’ social awareness and community building. We report that Panorama simulated curiosity and learning, initiated new interactions and provided a mechanism for cherishing old memories

DIY networking as a facilitator for interdisciplinary research on the hybrid city

DIY networking is a technology with special characteristics compared to the public Internet, which holds a unique potential for empowering citizens to shape their hybrid urban space toward conviviality and collective awareness. It can also play the role of a “boundary object” for facilitating interdisciplinary interactions and participatory processes between different actors: researchers, engineers, practitioners, artists, designers, local authorities, and activists. This position paper presents a social learning framework, the DIY networking paradigm, that we aim to put in the centre of the hybrid space design process. We first introduce our individual views on the role of design as discussed in the fields of engineering, urban planning, urban interaction design, design research, and community informatics. We then introduce a simple methodology for combining these diverse perspectives into a meaningful interdisciplinary collaboration, through a series of related events with different structure and framing. We conclude with a short summary of a selection of these events, which serves also as an introduction to the CONTACT workshop on facilitating information sharing between strangers, in the context of the Hybrid City III conference