EXPECTATIONS OF UNIVERSITY LECTURERS AND STUDENTS ON SMART LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Education in the 21st century has become more technology integrated, and the shift from conventional modalities of teaching to technology-assisted teaching methodologies accelerated during the pandemic years. The current study employed a qualitative research design (n=12) to explore this shift and the expectations of these novel teaching modalities from both facilitator and learner perspectives in urban higher education settings in India. An inductive thematic analysis of the qualitative data revealed that there is a significant gap in lecturers’ and students’ definitions and expectations of smart learning environments. The themes that emerged from the data were bifurcated into lecturer and student perspectives on smart learning environments and included innovative nature, novelty and complexity, student excitement, and limitations of content. Based on the findings, lecturer and student expectations of SLE platforms had points of convergence and divergence which are unique to the socio-cultural positions of the participants. The current study argues the need to devise methods to improve the efficacy of SLEs in developing economies. Keywords: smart learning environments, augmented reality, virtual reality, qualitative study