Audrey Watters | ReadWriteWeb
Want to know what the future workforce thinks of technology, how it uses search engines, social networking, and online collaborative tools? The recently released ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology gives some excellent insights into trends in college students' technology ownership, perceptions, skills, and habits.
The 2010 report was recently released by EDUCAUSE, a non-profit organization that supports the advancement of technology in higher education. The report is based on a survey from the spring of 2010 of over 36,950 freshmen and seniors at 100 four-year institutions and students at 27 two-year institutions.
Student Ownership of Technology
EDUCAUSE has been conducting these surveys for almost a decade now, so the results offer an interesting look at how students' attitudes to technology have changed - and haven't changed - over time. Consistent with previous years, for example, about half the respondents say they consider themselves to be mainstream adopters of technology. But about half of the male respondents see themselves as early adopters while only a quarter of females described themselves that way.
For the past four years, the percentage of respondents who own computers has stayed roughly the same: around 98%. But desktop ownership has declined by more than 25% over that period, with laptop ownership increasing accordingly. In 2010, 89% of students said they owned either a laptop or a netbook. More than half of respondents said their computers were less than a year old.
Despite the prevalence of laptops, eReaders have yet to make much in-roads with the college set, with only 4% owning a dedicated eReader. But two-thirds of the respondents say they own an Internet-capable handheld device.
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