Elahi Hossain

Attending university is an important time for many young people's social lives. But changes are afoot with new innovative digital higher-education experiences being built, shifting students' social lives further online. However, it is unclear how a longer-term shift to a digital university ecosystem will impact students and their social relations and how current technologies could amplify their social experience. We report a focus group study investigating the impact of a primarily digital university experience on the social relationships of incoming undergraduates. In line with existing research, we demonstrate how technology-mediated communications can benefit some aspects of students' social relations and less so for others. Our novel contribution is evidence of students' remarkable adaptiveness when facing an online-only university experience. Crucially, our participants identified and utilised the nuances of different online platforms to start and maintain new relationships. This way, they preserved their ability to nurture social relationships, even when dealing with an unexpected learning environment. We provide design recommendations for future metaversities and discuss students' resilience in sustaining personal relationships that can inform online-centric university models.