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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1287387
This article is part of the Research Topic Emerging Technologies and Digital Innovations: Recent Research and Practices in Technology-enhanced Learning Environments View all 3 articles

A Focus Group Study of Students' Expectations of Digital Onboarding Tools in Higher Education

Provisionally accepted
Hannes Schilling Hannes Schilling *Stephanie Meyer Stephanie Meyer Simone Kauffeld Simone Kauffeld
  • Department of Industrial/Organizational and Social Psychology, Technical University of Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    In higher education, the array of roles performed by digital tools has been increasing rapidly. While some areas of higher education, such as teaching, already employ digital tools, the use of such tools in student onboarding has not yet been thoroughly explored. This study sought to develop a better understanding of student perspectives regarding digital onboarding tools through an investigation that built on the technology acceptance model and expectancy-value theory. The goal was to identify what students expect from digital onboarding tools concerning, for example, content and design. To this end, we examined the data from five focus groups using qualitative content analysis. The results revealed that students expect the design of digital onboarding tools to feature websites that are usable on mobile devices and that such a tool should be readily available for their use independently of time and place. Our study also found that digital onboarding tools can influence students' motivation to study. The learnings for higher education institutions are that digital onboarding tools should enhance easy information gain and provide opportunities that foster early socialization with fellow students.

    Keywords: Digital Onboarding1, Digital Onboarding Tools2, Focus Groups3, Higher Education4, students5

    Received: 01 Sep 2023; Accepted: 17 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Schilling, Meyer and Kauffeld. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Hannes Schilling, Department of Industrial/Organizational and Social Psychology, Technical University of Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.