Academic education is challenging for individuals on various levels. First of all, students must get along with campus and university structures. Secondly, they need to get used to their own field of study, its characteristics and scientific rules. Thirdly and in addition to the subject-related socialisation, students also have to learn a study-specific use of (digital) media, which can differ between disciplines. At the same time, students maintain and develop their own media-practices in formal and informal learning environments (Persike & Friedrich 2016; Goode 2010). 

In addition to the description of student media use, the reconstruction of students' media practices becomes important in order to gain insight into and an understanding of students' media use in higher education. Therefore assumptions about students’ media practices – such as those expressed in media typologies on student media use (e.g. Zawacki-Richter et al., 2014) – serve as a basis for further analyses.

From a theoretical perspective, Rheins (2015) understanding of studying as a social habitualization process is a main point of reference. Within this epistemic practice of studying, students make the potentials of science accessible, handle possible impositions of the educational context and utilize them for themselves. Taken into account an understanding of (digital) media as an influencing factor for the emergence of practices and the formation of orientations (Kommer 2013; Biermann 2009) the use of (digital) media in higher education may be considered as a practice that contributes to the revision and change of everyday theories as well as scientific and media practices and may even lead to entirely new practices related to academic learning.

The aim of the project “You(r) Study” is to identify and reconstruct these practices and patterns of students’ media use. We are particularly interested in gaining a deeper understanding of student “sensemaking” of their media use and their habits rather than merely describing it. In order to do so, it is necessary to integrate non-formal or informal contexts of media use beyond formal contexts (e.g. courses) into the research programme as well as students’ individual (communication) needs (e.g. integration into student councils or groups; individual activities in student Facebook groups; use of administrative and organizational, i.e. not only digital learning tools).

The research programme of the project includes both established quantitative and qualitative methods in a mixed methods approach (Creswell & Plano Clark 2018), which closely links par-tial research results to each other (e.g. through online interpretation groups). Overall, six Ger-man universities will be involved into the research: Online-based questionnaires will be used to explore students’ self-efficacy when studying with digital media (Pumptow & Brahm, in prep.). Furthermore, a logfile-analysis of a learning management system might reveal patterns of learn-ing within these systems (Schulz & Breiter, 2013). The individual “sensemaking” of studying with (digital) media will be reconstructed via a qualitative approach (Documentary Method (Bohnsack, 2010)) including group discussions.

Since the research project will be in an advanced stage at the time of the conference, the aim of our contribution is to take a chance on a first presentation of final results. Therefore, we will try to point out research results from all subprojects and furthermore discuss methodological issues and possibilities of connection. A deeper insight into the used qualitative and quantitative meth-ods will be given and a discussion on the scope of such research as well as on possible recom-mended actions based on the research is intended. An opportunity to discuss in how far recom-mended actions can be transferred to other higher education institutions will also be given. All colleagues with affiliation to higher education institutions as well as students, lecturers and ad-ministrative personnel are invited to take part.

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