Students said they would generally rate their campus technology experiences favorably and are more likely to DIY their tech support, according to a new survey.
The EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research’s (ECAR) annual Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology aims to understand and map students’ campus technology use and experiences.
As the higher-ed community continues to explore the various ways students engage with technology, this year’s study aligns with previous years and shows high levels of student adoption of and satisfaction with personal and institutional technologies. The survey also reveals optimism about the benefits of technology-based instruction for student learning.
(Next page: 10 key findings)
1. Students rated their overall campus technology experiences favorably. Ratings of wireless network performance are highly correlated with the positive experiences students have with technology. Wi-Fi in outdoor spaces was the only item that students rated more negatively than positively.
2. When it comes to meeting technological support needs, students’ default modality is DIY. Students are more than twice as likely to figure out solutions to technology problems on their own, to search online sources, or to ask a friend than they are to use their campus help desk. Contacting the vendor or company to fix a technology problem is the last resort.
3. Students are remarkably savvy about keeping their technology secure. An overwhelming majority tend to secure their devices with passwords and PINs, using complex password protocols. Most students reported not sharing their devices and accounts with others, and only 1 in 10 have had devices stolen or accounts hacked in the past year.
4. Laptops are king, smartphones are queen, and tablets are on the way out. At least 19 of 20 students own a laptop or a smartphone, and 3 in 10 students own a laptop, a smartphone, and a tablet. Students view their laptop as critical to their academic success, and three-quarters of students said their smartphone is at least moderately important. Tablets appear to be in decline in terms of ownership, utility, and importance, in part because their functionality is duplicated by a combination of laptops and smartphones.
5. Students’ experiences with their instructors’ use of and approach to technology in the classroom are a mixed bag. A majority of students said most of their instructors have adequate technology skills, use technology to enhance learning, and encourage the use of collaborative technology tools. However, students said fewer faculty use technology for sophisticated learning tasks (e.g., engagement, creative and critical thinking), and relatively few faculty ask students to use their own devices for in-class work.
6. Students are overwhelmingly pleased with the student success tools available to them. At least 80 percent of students think that every student success technology we asked about—from degree audit, planning, and mapping tools to early-alert systems, self-service tools, recommendations for courses, and suggestions about academic resources and about improving performance—is at least moderately useful.
7. Students are choosing sides in the online versus face-to-face debate. For the fourth year in a row, the number of students preferring a blended learning environment that includes some to mostly online components has increased. The number of students preferring completely face-to-face or completely online courses continues to dwindle. The number of students expressing no preference has been cut by more than half since 2014.
8. Students are satisfied with features of their LMS…except when they aren’t. Students have favorable opinions about the basic features and functionalities of their LMS. But, the more sophisticated the task and the more engagement required of students, the less happy they tend to be. This may be a function of the tools, the instructors who use them, or both.
9. Students would like their instructors to use more technology in their classes. Technologies that provide students with something (e.g., lecture capture, early-alert systems, LMS, search tools) are more desired than those that require students to give something (e.g., social media, use of their own devices, in-class polling tools). We speculate that sound pedagogy and technology use tied to specific learning outcomes and goals may improve the desirability of the latter.
10. Students reported that faculty are banning or discouraging the use of laptops, tablets, and (especially) smartphones more often than in previous years. Some students reported using their devices (especially their smartphones) for non-class activities, which might explain the instructor policies they are experiencing. However, they also reported using their devices for productive classroom activities (e.g., taking notes, researching additional sources of information, and instructor-directed activities).