We’re thrilled to share the publication of our book: Digital Technology as Affordance and Barrier in Higher Education. The book is available directly from the publisher Palgrave Macmillan (among other vendors), and you can take a look at a preview in Google Books.

The book incorporates much of our research over the past 8 years on how CUNY students do their academic work, with a particular focus on their use of technology. We learned so much about the ways that students want to and try to use technology — their own as well as college-provided — to create time for their academic work, and the ways that unanticipated barriers of technology can stand in their way.

The official book description is below. If you read it, we’d love to hear your thoughts — please get in touch.

This book explores college students’ lived experiences of using digital technologies for their academic work. Access to and use of digital technologies is an integral aspect of higher education in the twenty-first century. However, despite the tech-savvy image of them propagated by the media, not all college students own and use technology to the same extent. To ensure that students have the best opportunities for success, all in higher education must consider ways to increase affordances and reduce barriers in student technology use. This book explicitly examines urban commuter students’ use of digital technologies for academic work, on and off campus.