Data used for the analysis of the issues mentioned above, were gathered within the research project “Mobile
Technologies at the University. Social Practices, Challenges and Opportunities in the First Year of University”,
framed within the tradition that attempts to understand social phenomena. That is the reason why constructing data
techniques was selected so as to let students express their own assumptions and analyze their social practices,
without the goal of covering all of them nor generalizing the results. The tools selected were semi-open surveys to
students and faculty, semi-structured interviews to faculty and finally focus groups with students. These data were
later triangulated with each other (Denzin, 1978; Jick, 1979) and with usage statistics of the computer laboratories of
the institution, so as to understand the social processes linked to the object of study, and enrich the analysis (Flick,
1998) with the combination of different approaches from the acknowledgement of the diverse perspectives that
converge in the present research.