The usability of DIMPLE - digital internet and mobile phone e-learning environment

Abstract

Recent years have seen a new generation of ‘digital students’ emerging in the developed world. Digital students are young adults who have grown up with digital technologies integrated as an everyday feature of their lives. Digital students use technology differently from previous generations of students, fluidly and often simultaneously using instant messengers, mobile phones, the Web, MP3 players, online games and more. A study performed in two universities (from UK and Romania) was designed to identify and evaluate the use of new technologies, especially of social software, by digital students. The study is part of a research project which is investigating how the development of the eLearning spaces might be informed by digital students’ attitudes. It is part of the evaluation of a new learning environment for digital students.