Student Survey Shows Increase In Most Areas of Technology Use

Fall 2005

By Larry Gilbert

The latest Western Educational Longitudinal Study (WELS) report provides valuable information on student use of academic technology. Given the ubiquity of cell phones, laptops, and MP-3 players among our students, it should be of little surprise to anyone that Western's students continued to increase their use of technology over the last year. It's highly gratifying, though, to see that students also markedly increased their use of academic technology for learning.

The WELS Students and Academic-Oriented Technology study was completed in spring, 2005, with comparative data from spring, 2004 available for many measures. The survey indicated the following trends in student use of email:

• 75% of Western's sophomore class used My Western email at least once each week
• 50% used My Western email every day, up from 39% last year
• 81% of the students also use a non-Western email account, indicating that most students actively use both types of accounts.
• Only 49% of students claim to know about Western's official email policy for students

In other areas of academic technology, students indicated:

• 52% of sophomores used Western's wireless computer network at least 1-3 times during a quarter. Much of this utilization likely comprised the 57,000 checkouts of WWU wireless laptops that students use primarily for academic work.
• 44% of sophomores used the new Student Technology Center at least ësome' during the 2005 school year. Since the Tech Center concentrates its services on student academic work for class assignments, this is a strong indication that students are often using technology to support their learning.

Students indicated improvement in nearly every measure of comfort with the use of technology and information for instruction, when comparing the freshman with the sophomore year. This included measures of student comfort with finding information on the internet, using email, creating documents, understanding how to avoid plagiarism, and finding and using information using library databases.

Sophomores were much less confident in using information for research than in other categories of academic technology use, although one-third to one-half of the students were ëvery' or ëextremely' confident even in all of those categories. Areas showing the least confidence and comfort were:

• Finding information using library databases (59% ësomewhat' or less comfortable)
• Using library resources for research (59% ësomewhat' or less comfortable)
• Citing references for research papers (39% ësomewhat' or less comfortable)

Other, more informal, measures also indicate increases in student use of technology for academic work. For example, use of the dial-up student modem pool has decreased by an average of 20% each year for the last two years, likely indicating increased student use of broadband internet connections at home. Student utilization of the wireless laptops available from the Library, Viking Union, and other locations has increased by a similar 20% or more annually.

By all measures, Western's students are active users of technology for learning. Growing use of the Student Technology Center, coupled with a minority of students still showing discomfort with use of technologies both indicate that many students still need guidance in the use of such technologies. In particular, younger Western students appear to need further instruction in the use of technology to facilitate student research.