'Give me a Website and I’ll Wipe Out a Rainforest': Student Constructions of Technology and Learning

This paper will draw on a two-year case study of postgraduate use of online blended learning resources. The paper will illustrate the contradictory and often counter-intuitive patterns of student use of technology in the production of academic knowledge. The paper explores four key analytical themes: the use of technology in the management of the postgraduate student identity, the role oftechnology in configuring existing identities and practices, the contradictions embedded in students understandings of their own technology use and the ways in which technology is implicated in the (re)construction of academic work. Thepaper concludes by highlighting the materiality of technology use and by suggesting that an empirical understanding of student identity and the cultural contexts in which learning takes place enables us to deconstruct the student as ‘user’, to trace complex and shifting processes and patterns of use and to gain an understanding of how students can benefit from technology in Higher Education.