A mixed-methods exploration of off-task use of educational technology in class: An affordance-based analysis of two quantitative studies and one qualitative study

The main contribution of this article-based thesis is increased knowledge about how certain patterns of interactions combined with conditioning contextual factors are in-volved in students’ off-task use of educational technology (ET) in class. The thesis shows how students’ out-of-school use of connected technologies is involved in in-school use of ET, and in the actualisation of unsanctioned off-task use of ET. Moreover, the thesis indi-cates how the technology itself, as well as social and institutional factors, play important roles in students’ off-tasking. Furthermore, the empirical findings suggest that students’ appreciation of school plays a key mediating role between teachers’ efforts to help and the outcome of their efforts. Overall, the thesis advocates an interpretation of off-tasking as an outcome of an imbalance of how students perceive the overall potency of the combined mitigating factors relative to the combined risk factors, turning certain classroom events into triggers of procrastination. This implies that systemic, multilevel approaches are re-quired to address students’ off-task use of ET in class.