The use of technology tools and learning experience: Insight from business school students

The researchers present the analysis of an empirical study on the use of technology tools and student learning experience and the potential impact on their learning engagement. As described by the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) - quality education suggests an education that embraces inclusive and equitable quality education and promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all students. The presentation covers three main areas, indicating future-focused education.

First, the continuous change in the education landscape and the indicators for COVID-19 recovery have placed the use of digital technology in education in a more prominent role than ever in the UK higher education sector and worldwide. The higher education sector's continuous effort to enhance education quality requires students to
play their part. However, students in this sector need help to engage with their education. Moreover, 'digital exclusion', which includes technology poverty, has been seen as one of the barriers to student learning engagement. Therefore, the researchers analyse the survey and focus group results regarding students’ use of technology tools, their experiences, and the cause and effect of technology poverty/digital exclusion on learning engagement. This could address higher education inclusion and student engagement issues.

Second, the business school education model has changed globally (Krishnamurthy, 2020), due to recent phenomena, such as the green revolution, the energy crisis, and COVID-19. In the post-pandemic period, as businesses are prepared for business transformation models using technology at the backdrop, graduates are to be prepared not only with the basics of computers and IT but also with sophisticated tools that use artificial intelligence and data sciences (Tarabasz et al., 2018; ICAEW, 2018; McKinsey Global Institute, 2022; Gietzmann
12 / 14 and Grossetti, 2021). Therefore, this presentation provides insight into students’ recent experience of using and the nature of technology tools, which could assist in innovative training and curriculum designs aided by technology for students and staff.

Third, universities need to redesign their courses, infrastructure, and human resources to meet the new expectations. The budget size requires an entirely new look in business schools. While stand-alone accounting applications are available to train students before they are qualified for professional roles, the same with finance (e.g., Bloomberg terminals) and other areas of business education, business schools require a new budget size to meet the expectations of the technology-driven business transformation the organisations and society so required. Consequently, the researchers suggest a new set of determinants of students learning engagement and behaviour (see Fig 1) with these new technology tools in this new era. The study from which this finding is presented aims to fill this gap by introducing the Higher Education Institution (HEI) Digital Poverty/Exclusion Solution Framework in Fig
2.