The four assertions are now presented. Each assertion is described and quotations from the interview/discussions along with examples of drawings from the student participants are used to illustrate aspects of each assertion.
Assertion 1: ICT are impartial tools; it does not matter how ICT are used, because the endpoint, that is, thesis completion, is the justification. ICT and people are separate and separated entities.
Students talked about how they worked on their thesis document and on the process of the study they were undertaking. Comments focused on various ICT being used and often on skills needed in order to use them. Some students expressed the view that ICT were tools, separate from the project and the person involved, to be used to achieve an endpoint. For example,
So long as it's formatted – it shouldn't matter - that's their [editors’] responsibility, not mine.
There’s probably a bit more about Zoom [web conferencing application] I could learn but again for me unless it’s a problem, I’m not going to go looking for it… not just for the sake of it at the moment.
Motivation to achieve an outcome was a focus of comments that support this assertion. For many participants, the aim to complete the study and write a thesis was, naturally, a large driver for how they were managing their study. Time was precious, and they would do what they had to do to reach their goal. To be motivated to learn about a new ICT, there needed to be a purpose that sharply focussed on achieving that end.
If the technologies are suddenly not available] I’m happy to sit down with a typewriter and learn it… If I’m not driven, I won’t bother.
This focus is illustrated in Fig. 1. The drawing shows clearly identified components that make up major elements within the stages of producing the research for the thesis. ICT are listed in relation to those components.
Supervisors too, tended to focus on thesis production rather than on the process of producing a thesis that includes the use of ICT (i.e., as opposed to their very clear and explicit focus on the research process). An example illustrating this is:
Generally, people think the standard of the people getting or earning a PhD is that this person should be an independent researcher. [But no] After all, we only examine a particular thesis [and] there are lots of inputs from supports and supervision from supervisors.
In summary, this assertion focusses strongly on the experience of doctoral study being about getting the project done within a research journey that gives minimal regard to the affordances of ICT. ICT are framed as necessary but also fraught, especially due to the effort and time that draw attention away from the primary goal.
Assertion 2: ICT are tools or mechanisms that prompt active thought on practices with respect to planning and managing thesis writing and project execution. ICT and individuals work alongside each other.
Views that expressed notions of there being a close interactive relationship between students and ICT came through in several of the discussions with the participants. The focus on achieving goals and endpoints was strong, but the expression of how to achieve those goals, capitalising upon the affordances that ICT present, was different from the way views were expressed in relation to Assertion 1.
On a simple level, this student describes the checking he did when weighing up the merits of a piece of software to meet his needs.
I normally do a trial version… have a play with it. And if I think they are useful then I might try it on a project. And if then I feel it’s definitely worth investing… then I’ll go buy it.
Others simply liked to explore, to see whether there was potential in any ICT they encountered, as in,
Sometimes I just like playing with stuff to see what they can do and then if they tick my boxes then I keep them and if they don't, I move on. So it's more kind of ‘search and discover’ than kind of looking for something, you know.
Describing a deeper level of activity, a degree of critique and active reflection were indicated by another student when he said,
…we tried an electronic version of putting together a programme for a New Zealand conference and I was surprised how long it took us. Whereas in the past I’ve worked with [colleagues] and we’ve just moved pieces of paper around on the floor for abstracts and we were done really quickly.
These sentiments are well-captured in Fig. 2. Here, the focus is on experimenting with ICT rather than the research process. The process of working things out to suit the individual is foregrounded.
Whereas Assertion 1-type expressions presented effort in a generally negative light, Assertion 2-type expressions couched effort as an assumed part of learning something new. There was a sense expressed in comments that there will be a way to manage the “problem” to be solved, which then generated the necessary motivation to engage effort. For example,
You just know what you know when you start off; when you're unsure about what you need to do. There's a bit of a barrier in front of you. It feels a bit intimidating and overwhelming, and then you get into it and it just works. And you just kind of put all the pieces together and get something out at the end.
There was a sense that supervisors’ perspectives of ICT might support this assertion too. For instance,
[ICT are] integral to everything now – there's no such thing as doing it without [them] anymore – these are the tools with which we do all the things we do.
In summary, this assertion captures the views of students who engage actively in making decisions about which, how and why they incorporate ICT into doctoral research practices.
Assertion 3: Knowing about ICT is only part of the thinking; what is more important is getting the “flow” right. ICT and the individual are in a complementary partnership.
Perhaps prompted by the nature of the drawing task, which was to illustrate how ICT fitted within the whole process of doctoral study, several students described the challenges to bringing everything together into one process made up of many parts, sections and subsections. One participant focussed on her “workflow” in order to manage the multiple documents, tasks and schedule involved in her doctoral research journey.
What systems do I use, what's my workflow? So, I actually spent some weeks looking at … ideas from other PhD students about their workflows and how they manage it.
Similar to Assertion 2-type comments, ‘getting one’s flow right’ involved exploration and an amount of reflective decision-making. For example,
So I did a play around with that [ICT] and found it was quite useful … So I’m trying to be quite disciplined about when I’ve got a document, entering it at the time, reading an article, throw in heaps of tags rather than not …And I simply keep a note, cross referencing to the actual articles. I like to have the articles and for some key ones I like to make a note. So, if it’s a seminal paper that I know I’ll be referring back to.
Thus, students talked about how hard they worked to set up routines and processes to enable them to manage time and their research projects. As in the above excerpts, they referred to categorising documents, searching for resources, undertaking analysis, managing data, and producing the thesis itself.
In working out one’s system or flow, this student highlighted the need to know about the affordances of ICT and how others had made use of them.
…you do need to know a bit about each of the individual … capabilities of the different systems to know what's even possible… but alongside that you're kind of reading other people's ideas of how they did it, and you think that bit might work for me oh, but that bit won't… so then you can kind of mix and match a bit.
The drawing in Fig. 3 highlights the “flow”. Absent of all words, this illustration draws attention to the movement of ideas, thoughts, processes and actions, from a number of different points but all ultimately converging or contributing to the one path.
There was a hint that at least one of the supervisors saw the need for a workflow in this same vein: “So long as [the students are] happy with what they’re using – they should use ‘a’ system,”
In summary, this assertion highlights that what is important with respect to ICT and the doctoral process is how it all comes together within one’s flow. That flow incorporates active effort on the part of the individual in finding ICT and practices that suit the individual’s approaches as well as their project demands.
Assertion 4: ICT are not neutral; there is a two-way interaction between technologies as artefacts and the use of them to achieve ends. ICT and the person are intricately linked through multiple active, practical, goal-oriented connections.
This assertion draws attention to the nature of technology as a phenomenon; that technology is not an impartial tool that has no influence on the way humans act and react. This assertion presents ICT as an artefact of technological design activity; as a source of improving efforts to achieve an endpoint; but also as an influencer and even determiner of the thinking and practices of the person interacting with the ICT (e.g., Baird, 2002).
On what could be argued a superficial level, this student noted some active connection between the person and the software application, beyond simple use, when he commented:
I think it goes both ways, the product has to be intuitive and you’ve got to have a little bit of inclination to try out different things.
Others went beyond the superficial to describe more in-depth relationships between themselves and the ICT they were using. When discussing her use of software to help her manage her project and her time, this student talked about how the ICT she was using supported and enhanced her thinking.
Using the application] really changed the way I started to think about [my research]. I started to be less worried about the big overwhelming long term stuff that was out there and just think, okay, this week, what am I going to do this week, how am I going to be really efficient and targeted, and I think that really helped me.
Following is another example of how ICT helped solve a problem while simultaneously having an influence on behaviour; in this instance with organising notes, ideas and documents.
“… and it's the same with my note-taking because [the programme] that I use has a similar sort of functionality that it can search text that you've written but also search notes and PDF docs and those kind of things, so it means that when you've had a random thought and put it somewhere you can find it again. Which is huge for me, so I guess that … the power of the search engine is probably the thing that drove me to become paperless, so it helps me to organize myself much better. … filing paper is a skill that I have not mastered whereas filing digital stuff is not as important because you can always just find it again.
Figure 4 illustrates this intricately intertwined interactivity among person, purpose, project, ICT and outcomes.
While we did not find strong evidence for supervisors’ thoughts about this integrated and embedded notion of ICT, one supervisor did note “I could probably build them into my system, but I just never have”.
In summary, Assertion 4 highlights the integral role that ICT can be perceived to play in doctoral research processes. This is more than the working-alongside connection illustrated by Assertion 2 and the complementary partnership characterised by Assertion 3.
Assertions 1 and 2 highlight that individuals hold assumptions about, and have expectations of, ICT use; and those expectations and assumptions influence and determine their judgements about ICT and their use of ICT. The assertions point to connections between perceptions and practices. Assertion 1 describes a perception that ICT are separate from the person and the task-at-hand, while Assertion 2 presents a perception in which the person and the ICT are working alongside each other in harmony or at least in a loose partnership. Both assertions focus on endpoints, but the endpoints vary according to the perception of where ICT fit into the journey towards their achievement. For Assertion 1-type expressions, there is one major endpoint. For Assertion 2-type expressions, there are multiple, shorter-term endpoints that build towards achieving the major goal of completing the thesis.
Building on Assertions 1 and 2 are Assertions 3 and 4, which highlight what may be argued as more complex levels of perceiving and working with ICT. Both assertions give some focus to inter-connections, where people and ICT partner or collaborate. Assertion 3 depICT a perception that is about complementarity; where ICT affordances are seen as worthwhile when they support and enhance the work of the individual in ways that make sense to that individual. Assertion 4 builds on Assertion 3 by bringing to light the relationship in which the person alters and changes thinking or practices because of the influence that ICT affordances can have. No evidence was found to support a possible additional claim that as well as ICT causing individuals to alter and modify thinking and behaviours due to their existence, ICT, in turn, are perceived to be able to alter their ways of responding to the people who use them. This is not out of the realms of possibility of course, with ICT increasingly being designed and built to be able to respond to users’ needs.
It is also worth mentioning that the ‘types’ of ICT and the extent of their use by the participants was not the focus of this study. However, the findings suggested that the participants’ ICT use, regardless of their PhD phase and broad discipline background, might have reflected their inability to realise the advantages of learning how to use current ICT-related devices, tools, and applications to enhance the process of undertaking their doctoral research. The evidence that emerged in this study indicated that participants’ perspectives of ICT determined their adoption practices in general (i.e., as illustrated through the four assertions). The boarder higher education context including the specific institution and supervisors, might have neglected the explicit support of PhD students’ ICT capability development in this process.
In addition, while there is no similar study being found thus far, the insights gained from this study are actually similar to the findings in the research studies into the role of ICT in undergraduate education (Butson & Sim, 2013; Sim & Butson, 2013, 2014). Results in those studies, demonstrated students’ low levels of ICT use, may be an indication that digital devices and digital tools do not play a significant role in daily study practices. Researchers such as Esposito, Sangrà & Maina (2013) also show that the PhD students’ learning to become researchers in the digital age is much more complex than is often suggested (e.g., the skills of Prenksy (2001) “digital natives”). Becoming a researcher involves developing a complex set of knowledge, intellectual abilities, techniques and professional standards. The Researcher Development Framework (Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC), 2010) illustrates one useful attempt at mapping out that complexity. It could be that both students’ and supervisors’ adoption of ICT for academic purposes has been overshadowed or taken for granted as a consequence of their advanced academic level.