A few comments on comments  by Clara:

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It did get me wondering if it’s not jut about the tech preferences students might have but about the implications technology has for the roles of teachers and students.  E.g. moving from traditional transmissive model of learning to a more collaborative, coproduced one where students have to take more responsibility for their learning (which might seem like taking on the teacher role, losing the authority of a subject matter expert etc).
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Exactly my line of thinking. In my view the technological options should be chosen carefully in order to make such a collaborative pedagogy possible. One example I came along a while ago was were Open Journal Systems (software to enable the publishing of electronic journals) was used in a class project. Students could take on several roles: write articles, review articles, (copy)edit articles, publishing articles. The product of the project were several issues of a journal being published (openly) on the web, adding yet another realistic twist.

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I’m amazed you have done all the reading.  You know, you only need to do the core reading and one or two secondary readings.  :)
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I like reading, the more you read on a subject, the more it makes sense to you.

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So, having read so copiously, how would you draw the literature together?  What kind of overarching argument might you make about the nature of online students?
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There is no overarching argument one can make about the nature of online students, so one should be careful with assumptions. ICTs are only enablers to achieve pedagogic goals. Good teachers work backwards from these goals to design challenging learning environments and choose technologies carefully.