Information and communication technology (ICT) is changing our perceptions of place, time, and space in higher education (HE). A distinction between digital and physical classrooms is no longer meaningful because they are interwoven. The smartphone, learning platform, and apps are now part of HE, shaping pedagogical spaces and practices. Often, teachers' and students' learning activities occur across multiple spaces where the digital, material, biological, and social converge. This opens for a revision of how spaces are used for pedagogical activities and necessitates rethinking the boundaries of teaching and learning in higher education.

In this study, we examined two fully online courses in teacher education intending to identify students' preferences related to a digital learning space. What qualities do students perceive as beneficial for their studies? The boundaries and content of learning spaces are particularly interesting to investigate among teacher education students. They are pursuing an education with a continuous focus on didactic and pedagogical considerations and are likely to have conscious reflections related to their own learning space.

The research question is: What kind of learning space do students seek? The aim is to expand the teacher's understanding of students' self-organized digital and non-digital practices.

This study is based on a sociocultural learning tradition where cultural, communicative, and cognitive activities are closely linked to a social context. We advocate for a reconceptualization of the learning environment to include the student's digital space in the real world and their sociocultural environment. This approach involves combinations of digital and non-digital resources that together create a learning environment. From such a perspective, the properties of learning spaces are mediated by social and cultural factors. For example, young students' communication practices in social media.

This article describes the perceptions of 18 student teachers (aged 19–28, of whom two-thirds were women) from two different Norwegian universities, who completed a semester in a fully digital learning environment. Through a qualitative analysis of interviews with the students, the descriptions of the necessary facilities for a digital study routine are discussed.

Findings show that students seek spaces that allow them to be both observers and participants in the process of constructing knowledge. They wish to collaborate and work individually, and in both working modes, they need both professional and personal support around them. These findings provide added value and insight into what student teachers believe is important. The findings show how students, as cognitive individuals, need support to develop through self-study, self-regulation, and self-development. The findings here can contribute to a more sophisticated and sought-after understanding of the complex intersection between home, university, work, and community.

For teachers facilitating online studies and digital learning spaces, the complexity of didactic work increases as students want to maintain the social dimension of learning while remaining focused on an individualized learning culture. The student voices in this article can enhance the understanding of what digital learning spaces mean to students and thus provide important insights for improving the quality of higher education in the digital age.

Keywords: Digital learning spaces, teacher training, online, hybrid, social learning.