Developments in technologies have led to far-reaching social changes in communication, as mobile digital devices permeate our day-to-day lives. This has also changed the way students engage with texts in higher education. This paper will report on a JISC-funded study into student engagements with technologies, illustrated by data from a 6-month multimodal journaling study using handheld devices to document practices with photos, video and notes, explored in a series of in-depth interviews. Drawing on sociomaterial approaches (e.g. Fenwick et al 2011) and Feenborg’s notion of the ‘margin of maneouvre’ (1999), the analysis focuses on three student forms of engagement in the data: ‘curation’, ‘combat’ and ‘coping’. The paper will conclude with implications for pedgagic and institutional practice, plus future directions for related research and theory.

1. curation, combat or
coping? student
entanglements with
technologies in HE.
Lesley Gourlay & Martin Oliver
Institute of Education

2. overview
digital mediation and textual practices
multimodal journalling: findings
theorising agency

3. „the university‟ is
enacted through day-
to-day
entanglements
clustered around
texts

4. these are overwhelmingly characterised by
digital mediation devices and practices

5. texts and semiotic
practices are elided in
contemporary accounts
of the university,
rendered transparent,
„innocent‟ repositories,
stripped of situatedness,
materiality and
embodiment

6. textual practices in the
university are saturated
with digital mediation,
entanglements with
devices, and hybrid
domains

7. the study
2-year funded project
http://diglitpga.jiscinvolve.org/
Digital Literacies programme,
10 projects
1st year: student research
Focus groups Longitudinal
multimodal journalling
2nd year: implementation
projects

8. Yuki: ‘curation’

9. for example when I attend a lecture or a session I
always record the session, and it‟s after the
session, but sometimes I listen to the lecture
again to confirm my knowledge or reflect the
session...when I, for example we‟re writing an
essay and I have to...confirm what the lecturer
said, I could confirm with the recording data.
(Yuki Interview 1)

10. Sally:
‘combat’

11. I was like bullied into it by people saying, oh, you‟ll be left
behind if you don‟t use Facebook. So yes, that was when I
got into it, so... And then... so now I would say Facebook,
I‟m not the most... like I said to you in the focus group, I‟m
a bit uncomfortable about the whole kind of like Big Brother
aspect. (Sally Interview 1)
I feel like, also that Google is equally watching you. You
know, they‟re all watching you, they‟re all trying to sell you
things, and the thing is not, I don‟t so much mind being
bombarded with advertising as I mind having things put
about me on things like Facebook that I don‟t want. You
know, I don‟t want my friends to spy on me, I don‟t want my
friends to know what I listen to on YouTube. (Sally
Interview 1)

12. Faith: ‘coping’

13. In my school, I… we had… our staff room was
equipped… one, two, three, four, five, six, seven…
seven computers now we can use and only one of
them attached with a printer. So, actually we‟ve got
six PGC students over there, so it‟s, kind of,
everybody wants to get to that computer where you
can use the printer. Yes, so in the end I found actually
I can also use the printer from the library in the
school. student teachers tried to use other computer.
So, six
So, it, kind of, sometimes feels a bit crowded. And
when the school staff want to use it, well, okay, it
seems like we are the invaders, intruders?

14. theorising agency

15. sociomaterial
perspectives
Actor Network Theory (e.g. Latour 2005)
Sociomateriality (e.g. Fenwick et al 2011).

16. „If you can, with a straight face, maintain that
hitting a nail with and without a hammer, boiling
water with and without a kettle...are exactly the
same activities, that the introduction of these
mundane implements change 'nothing important'
to the realisation of tasks, then you are ready to
transmigrate to the Far Land of the Social and
disappear from this lowly one.‟
(Latour 2005: 71)

17. Enlarging the ‘margin of
maneuver‟ for studying
Power expresses itself in plans which inevitably
require implementation by those situated in the
tactical exteriority. But no plan is perfect; all
implementation involves unplanned actions in
what I call the “margin of maneuver” of those
charged with carrying it out. In all technically
mediated organizations margin of maneuver is at
work, modifying work pace, misappropriating
resources, improvising solutions to problems and
so on. Technical tactics belong to strategies as
implementation belongs to planning. (Feenberg,
1998: 113)

18. The under-determination of
technologies for studying
If all this is true, why aren‟t we more aware of the
public interventions that have shaped technology in
the past? Why does it appear apolitical? It is the very
success of these interventions that gives rise to this
illusion. Success means that technical regimes
change to reflect interests excluded at earlier stages
in the design process. But the eventual internalization
of these interests in design masks their source in
public protest. The waves close over forgotten
struggles and the technologists return to the
comforting belief in their own autonomy which seems
to be verified by the conditions of everyday technical
work. (p89)

19. implications
Undermines stable,
taxonomic accounts of
digital literacy
Destabilises notions of
single, stable, human
authorship and agency
Opens up political
questions about the
(non-)involvement of
students in design

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JISC (2012) Digital Literacies as a Postgraduate Attribute?
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LitPGAttribute.aspx [Accessed 30 June 2012]
Kittler, F. (2004). Universities: wet, hard, soft, and harder. Critical Enquiry 31(1): 244-
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Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory.
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