New Study of Undergraduates and Information Technology

The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, a study conducted by The Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR), was released in December 2006. The third in a series begun in 2004, the study asked undergraduates to comment on their behaviors, preferences, and satisfaction in regard to information technology (IT). Educause is a non-profit association that promotes the intelligent use of information technology.

The study surveyed 28,724 undergraduates at 96 two- and four-year institutions. Approximately 84% of the students surveyed were enrolled in public institutions, and close to 40% were enrolled in institutions with greater than 15,000 students. Sixty-three percent of the respondents were female.

Overall, this study reveals that the majority of undergraduates like IT and use it in many aspects of their lives. However, a substantial minority of students report not liking IT or not using it extensively. The study refers to these two groups as “Wired and Wonderful” and “Wired and Tired”; the authors note, moreover, that those in the former group are likely to be male and pursuing majors in business and engineering, while those in the latter group are likely to be female and pursuing majors in the humanities.

Additional highlights of the findings include the following:

Students’ Academic Uses of IT

• When students arrive on campus, they typically have confidence in their skills at using IT for social and recreational purposes; however, they have not yet become adept at using IT for academic purposes.
• Student respondents report using IT for a variety of academic purposes, with 99% using IT to write documents, 91% to create presentations, and 94% to search the Web for Internet and library resources.
• When they own laptops, students prefer not to take them to class.
• Nearly 3 out of 4 respondents (73%) have used course-management systems. Students who use course-management systems more extensively than their peers are more likely to report satisfaction with those systems.

Student Preferences and Perceptions of Teaching with Technology

• Most students prefer a “moderate” amount of IT in their courses. Younger and female respondents prefer less IT in their courses than other students.
• Sixty-four percent of the students surveyed believe that technology is improving their learning, largely because they perceive it to improve convenience in communicating with the professor and other students and in keeping up with course requirements.
• Two out of five students (40%) believe IT increases their engagement in a course.
• More than two-thirds of the respondents (69%) believe that IT helps their instructors give them prompt feedback.

Need for More Training

• When asked how they would choose to spend their institution’s IT dollars, older students tended to ask for additional computer labs and training opportunities, including help learning to use the software necessary for the creation of required course work such as documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
• Younger students tended to ask for more network speed and access to music, underscoring their experience with IT predominantly for social and recreational purposes.
• Students also cited the need for faculty to obtain additional training on how to use IT.

Plenty of Gadgets and Time Spent Using IT

• Nearly 98% of the surveyed students report that they own a computer; most prefer laptops to desktop models.
• Ownership of other electronic devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), smart phones, and MP3 players, is increasing sharply.
• Students report spending an average of nearly 23 hours per week online.
• Most students (71%) use IT to download music and videos and to visit social networking sites like facebook.com. Seventy-three percent play computer and video games.
• More than a quarter (28%) report using IT to create or edit video and audio files, and 29% report that they create Web pages.
• All (99.9%) of the respondents use email regularly; a large majority (80%) use instant messaging as well.

Note: The key findings of the ECAR study may be found here. (PDF)