University students’ approaches to learning Page 1 of 25 University students’ approaches to learning: Re-thinking the place of technology Peter Goodyear & Rob Ellis, University of Sydney This is the authors’ version of the paper. If quoting or citing please consult the published paper: Peter Goodyear & R.A. Ellis (2008): University students’ approaches to learning: rethinking the place of technology, Distance Education, 29:2, 141-152 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587910802154947 Paper for a special issue of Distance Education on e 3 learning, guest edited by J. Michael Spector and M. David Merrill. Abstract In this paper, we argue that educational technology research has spent too long trapped in a paradigm of simplistic comparisons, wherein normal science (Kuhn, 1970) consists of evaluating a technology-based intervention by contrasting it with some established set of educational practices. Our argument is different in significant ways from the claim that media will never influence learning. Rather, it focuses on two sets of issues. The first set of issues is concerned with the nature of comparison, and especially with the hidden work of simplification that is usually entailed in comparative research. We draw on Annemarie Mol’s (2002a, b) painstaking analyses in the domain of healthcare, to show how serious understanding of a treatment (medical or educational) must be informed by a consciousness of the complex web of activities, undertaken by various participants, that enact or perform that treatment. The second set of issues is also concerned with a shift in perspective from that of the educational innovator to that of the student. We argue that students are only rarely or tangentially interested in the ways that educators classify an educational situation or innovation (e.g., as distance learning or e-learning). Rather, the student perspective takes in the whole of their experience, and only isolates particular characteristics of the whole when a component fails. We illustrate and support our argument by reference to outcomes of our current research into students’ approaches to learning. This research takes a broadly phenomenographic view of students’ conceptions of, and approaches to, learning. The data come from courses in which teachers have been using a so-called ‘blended learning’ methodology. In particular, we have been interviewing students in order to try to understand how they conceive of learning in such situations, and how they say they actually go about their learning. The paper has implications for thinking about the design and management of learning environments in more holistic or ecological ways. Contact: Prof Peter Goodyear Education Building (A35), University of Sydney, NSW2006, Australia peter.goodyear@sydney.edu.au