Shannon D. Smith and Judith Borreson Caruso, with an introduction by Joshua Kim. The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2010 (Research Study, Vol. 6). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2010, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.
Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) released the results of their 7th study of undergraduate information technology (IT) uses on campus for personal and academic purposes. These studies are usually conducted at 4 year doctoral public institutions and draws their conclusions from the results of several surveys. The study concluded that mobile computing and cloud basic applications are on the rise.
The various diagrams really helped me stay engaged. There was a wealth of data present, and had there been no visual representation many of the comparison would have been lost.I thought it was amazing how low the numbers were for use of netbooks at 13% and ebooks at 3.1. I guess this was just an urgency for these products created by corporate. I was also amazed to see desk tops are still popular despite the fact that laptops are so affordable. I also thought the reliance on handheld internet devices as an acceptable means of informational technology interesting. These “handheld devices” are smart phones inevitably. I cannot get any academic work done on my phone. I can check emails, but it would be tragic read a peer-reviewed article from my phone, or even try to edit a paper.
I wish more information had been present about the demographic and geographical location of participants. I thought it was insightful to provide ages, but we have talked about access before, and it makes me question how accurate of a representation is the article. It also may be nice to see the study conducted at a community college.
After reading this article as an instructor I really need to step it up. These students are going to continue to demand us to adapt our lessons to their daily experiences. It is one thing to use the same technologies socially or personally, but to create meaningful lessons with these technologies is challenging and exhausting.
This is a business opportunity for curriculum writers and software developers everywhere. Teachers need pre-packaged ideas to utilize these technologies in pedagogical strategy...SOS!!!
I too which they did break down the statistics further (however, can you imagine how long that text would be?!).
ReplyDeleteI think the fact that the study does privilege 4-year institutions does "say" something about what you are asking.
I too think we need to see some more pre-packaged ideas as professional development method (we could chat about that sometime!).