In Norway, as in the rest of the world, the development is constantly moving towards more and more automatization and digitalization. Increasing the efficiency of tasks by leaving them to computers and implementing modern technology in the private and working sectors is becoming. Digitization is about using the technology to innovate, simplify and improve tasks and to offer new kind of services that are easy to use, efficient and reliable. Digitalisation in the higher education is about facilitating the use of digital tools and technological solutions to emphasize learning and to create new opportunities for learning and teaching processes. Times are changing, and institutions in the higher education sector need to create a learning model that blends curriculum with changes in the society, receiving and adapting technology and varying expectations of the students. When studying, you want to get an education that is relevant, quality assured and provides the opportunity for a good job afterwards. One challenge for the higher education sector is to adapt new kind of learning design to modern students and technology. Lectures are undoubtedly an important part of the learning process for the students, which the school system is based on, but the lectures do not provide an automatic professional competence in an arena. To hear about something or to follow a recipe for a task is not the same as having knowledge, skills and being self-reliant. What is important that students take responsibility for their own learning, and that they are active, mentally active. To do so, students need to be motivated for learning. We think that the solution for learning with or through digital tools have a potential for improving the efficiency and quality of teaching and research. In order to succeed in exploiting this potential, teachers should know more about how their use of digital tools affects students' learning patterns and motivation, something we would like to explore further. This paper will be based on our previous experiences and research on what teachers and students think about using digital tools for learning. In this project we will compare teaching with or through digital tools at different institutions for higher education. We would like to find and analyse how students studying and university colleges, in different cities, with different subjects are affected by teaching with or through digital tools and how does it affect their study patterns and motivation for learning.

In today’s world, education in higher education institutions needs to use digital technologies to reach students without them being in the same room as the teacher. The “classical lecture”, with a teacher talking and writing on a blackboard interacting with students, has been in many ways exchanged with different digital or hybrid solutions. On one hand, it allows teachers to challenge their practices and try new ways of engaging students to learn, but on the other hand, it can be challenging to master different digital solutions in a way that ensures a clear message for the students. When the whole world went into lockdown, the education at all levels needed to emergency transform learning in classrooms to learning through digital platforms. New structures had to be made, new routines, and new approaches. For some subjects it was not enough to move from sitting in a lecture room to sitting in front of a computer, it was necessary to develop solutions for presenting different programs or motivating students to be active, even if they were without a camera or microphone. Some teachers needed a blackboard to write and draw on while they talk, others needed to change between different programs to show different representations or purposes. In some cases, the digital lectures were synchronous, with teachers and students meeting at the same time to discuss a topic both in small and big groups, other times the digital lectures were asynchronous to give the students more time to prepare themselves and to activate their learning by giving them a responsibility to study individually (self-study). After few months of trying different solutions, the teachers from Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL) and Volda University College (HVO) have investigated the student’s views on the different solutions they have experienced. The students were asked to answer an anonymous questionnaire of their opinion, views, and experiences with different digital solutions. The results were categorized and analyzed to select some tools or approaches that most of the students found either better or worse for their learning.

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