This paper discusses how bachelor students choose to use media on campus and in their own study work. The Norwegian Quality Reform, expectations were created that educational institutions and teachers should increase the scope of student activating teaching methods (Ørnes et.al, 2015).

Digital technology was launched as an important response to this challenge. At the same time, these expectations points to what many describe as tensions between the teachers' academic facilitation and the students' desire for more use of digital media. Although young students grow up with and use digital technologies in everyday life, it cannot be taken for granted that they are digitally competent and master the use of media, or will choose to use the media as expected in higher education (Buckingham, 2006; Livingstone, 2012). In other words, even if they are very competent in using social media in leisure time, we cannot simply expect them to be a homogenous group of competent media users that master all kinds of technology use. i.e. within an educational setting (Bjørgen & Fritze, forthcoming).

Researchers indicate that students often prefer to stay in the consumer role rather than become active learning producers (Drange & Birkeland, 2016; Moll, Nielsen & Linder, 2015). Using communication theory (Luhmann, 2000), the learning consequences of students' alternative media use in teaching are discussed.

The point of departure is a case-study among first-year students in five bachelor courses; two professional and three disciplinary courses at a Norwegian university college. The overall purpose is to increase our knowledge of how students experience opportunities and challenges related to the use of media in teaching, thereby giving the teachers the opportunity to facilitate participation and academic involvement in the studies to a greater extent. We also want to look at differences in media usage between the different subjects mentioned above. The paper will present some preliminary results from group interviews and a survey.

It is also an aim to develop and design methods and learning resources in order to facilitate and scaffold students' learning processes. A vital concern is how media practices (learning resources and methods) initiated in formal education becomes relevant or is seen as disturbances in students’ out-of-school worlds, and vice verca. If relevance and meaningfulness is achieved, students might be able to connect learning and identities in media practices across different contexts (Bjørgen & Erstad, 2014; Säljö, 2006). Within the bigger picture, these questions concern issues of learning across local vs global contexts and communities.

Our theoretical approach departure from Luhmann's (Luhmann, 2000) communication theoretical perspectives. We want to describe how students of today understand the framework of teaching in higher education, and in what way they choose to be part of the communication system. We could have studied this in relation to the didactic facilitation, but we have rather chosen to have a main focus on students’ understanding of media use. The concept of media and technology is used interchangeably (Fossland, 2015, p. 13ff).

The paper contributes to empirically based knowledge that is important for understanding how individual interpretations affect media use (Tønnessen et al., 2016; Selwyn, 2016).

The paper draws on results from an ongoing research project focusing on first year bachelor students participating in the five different studies at a Norwegian university college. Data is collected in two different ways: 1) Electronic questionnaire to all first-year students at the bachelor-studies, about 400 students, 2) five focus group-interviews with a selection of students from the five courses in groups of 3-5 people, 3) interviews with teachers at the five studies. Questions in the survey will e.g. be the expected use of media in the individual study, how much they use it and what is perceived as difficult and / or less difficult. We also want to ask the students what they feel is the most important type of teaching for their own learning. The analysis is also guided by Luhmann's (2000) approach on communication systems. Luhmann rejects students being able to multitask. When students communicate via mobile or other media, rather than being attentive to the lecture, they are in principle opt for inclusion in another communication system and hence excluded from educational communication. According to Luhmann, communication systems can not completely avoid disturbances, but they can help stabilize an education situation if rejected. If interference or self-inflicted excuses are not rejected, many smaller communication systems may appear, the purpose of which is probably not learning (Fritze, 2005). Data-gathering will take place at campus. The interviews will be audiotaped and transcribed. Both the interviews and the survey will be analyzed in accordance with a thematic-analysis approach (Postholm, 2005). We will search across the material to identify, analyze and report on repeating themes or patterns emerging from within the data. Thematic analysis also allows us to draw on relevant theory and personal experiences from the field (Bernard & Ryan, 2010).

The presentation discusses selected examples on student`s reflections on own and teachers media practices. By focusing on student`s interpretations of different learning resources, methods, media practices and learning contexts, the paper contributes to expand public and academic debates that limits itself to highlight how potentially transformative modern technology might change educational practice. The paper is relevant to Nordic and European educational research by highlighting the importance of investigating how students, as young people, reflect and interpret media practices within certain pedagogical and contextual frames. The relevance also arises from our argumentation that rest on the assumption that technology and anticipated benefits for educational purposes cannot be studied detached from specific participants and pedagogical contexts.

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