A study of ICT student’s views on sustainable technology development

In this thesis, I focused on sustainable technology development and services, and how they are understood by Finnish university students in modern society. Students discussed sustainable development in technology and services, in the public system, and private sector, and used the EUs green targets as a base for it. The thesis is focusing to analyze the digital technology development inside the European market areas and takes into account the cultural, economic, and geographical aspects about the topic. The reason for writing this thesis is understanding the values of digital product users’ backgrounds, habits, and values, because these have become an important part of sustainable change strategies and sustainable technology development. For this, I am conducting Nexus Analysis, which leads our focus to three main topics: discourses in place, historical body, and interaction order, to support a deeper understanding of students’ actions and decisions. I am taking the discourses of Finnish students, future developers, into analysis on sustainable change of technology development, and also what kind of values the student discourses contain, and what kind of methods and features should be remembered in digital technology development when trying to change those values and behavior. This scientific work includes familiarizing with previous research made on the topic, analysis of 163 student essays with quantitative data analysis, as well as qualitative nexus analysis where the focus is on discourses in place, historical body, and interaction order. Quantitative data gave me an overall understanding of favored topics and opinions by the students and nexus analysis provided me a deeper understanding of these student opinions and actions. This thesis is made as a collaboration with INTERACT research group which provided me the students’ essay materials for the analysis. As a result, I provided guidelines and important factors for behavioral and background analysis