Involvement and Engagement

To expand on the themes of involvement and engagement, Arend (2004) looks at how technology not only presents more opportunities for student-faculty interactions but also how those interactions promote a deeper and richer understanding of the course material. However, there is very little additional research citing the effect of technology on the broader construct of student development outside the classroom. Lloyd, Dean, and Cooper (2007) created a meta-analysis to fit into the context of their review of literature in their research regarding technology’s effect on peer relationships, academic involvement, and healthy lifestyle choices. The authors’ used the Student Technology Use Survey as their tool to answer the question regarding the correlation between technology use and the psychosocial development of the student. They found those technologies that were interactive and those technological interactions that were connected to cultural and social development were more likely to increase a student’s development in peer relationships, academic involvement and personal health, which leads back to Chickering’s discussion of achieving competence, establishing identity and especially developing purpose (Chickering, 1971).

This development of online and mediated literacy and the skills sets associated with this development can be developed by student development professional as a way of analyzing and assessing the impact of student development on campus (Eberhardt, 2007). Online social networks can reveal an individual student’s (or students as an aggragate) ability to cope with the first week of college, their level of stress associated with a particular class or their emotional/phyiscial health. All of these issues will be addressed in the dissertation research.