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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 a UK university 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 was the first step taken towards the development and evaluation of a new learning environment for digital students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most existing online learning environments cater for needs identified during the 1990s, a new generation of 'digital students' has emerged in the developed world.. Digital students use technology differently, fluidly (and often simultaneously) using instant messengers, mobile phones, the Web, MP3 players, ipods, online games, blogs and more. If their use of technology is different, the kind of learning environment they will require is likely to be equally different. To identify these differences we ran an online survey in universities from across Europe, followed by focus groups, interviews and observations of students in traditional and online learning environments. From this analysis we have more clearly identified how a learning environment for digital students should be constructed and used; an environment that contains a blend of Internet and mobile technologies which enhance student-tutor and student-student communication through multiple media channels, providing responsiveness, customizability and flexibility to adapt and be adapted to the students' needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent progress in information and communication technology has opened a variety of new ways for education. Although slower than the business to catch up with these new developments, the educational field has gradually migrated towards the WWW, mostly under the slogan of free, accessible education, to and from anyplace, at anytime. For obtaining customised learning environments, different techniques are being adapted and developed for the web. This paper presents some of these techniques on one hand, and on the other hand, also addresses some outcomes of different projects from the last two years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]