Last fall we surveyed and posted some information about the students and instructors in our study, including their experiences with certain communication technologies and mobile devices. This term we conducted a similar survey, and I thought I'd share again some information to give a picture of our students' and instructors' experiences.
This term we are conducting the pilot project in three courses: Patricia Gael's undergraduates technical writing class, Stuart Selber's graduate seminar in rhetoric, and Stuart's class for new teachers of technical writing. We received responses from 17 undergraduates, 8 in the graduate course, and 7 instructors in the teaching course. For aggregation purposes (and since the classes are smaller), I'm going to combine the data from Stuart's two classes (15 people):
Undergraduates (17)
- All 17 own computers.
- Of them, 12 use Windows and 5 use Mac OS X.
- 13 students already had iTunes accounts.
- 15 of them access their PSU email through webmail, and 2 forward their PSU email to another service and check it online.
- 11 own iPods, 3 own iPod touches, 1 owns an iPhone, 1 owns a Kindle, and 1 owns a Netbook. 3 reported not owning any mobile devices.
- 9 use instant messenger clients like AOL IM; 3 have blogged before; 3 have Twitter accounts; and 1 has made an electronic portfolio before.
- 16 have wireless at home.
Graduate students and instructors (15)
- All 15 own computers.
- 10 use Windows, 4 use Mac OS X, and 1 uses Linux.
- All 15 have iTunes accounts
- 11 access their PSU email through Webmail; 2 use PSU email and download it to a desktop client on their computer; and 2 forward their PSU email to another service and access it online.
- 8 own iPods; 1 owns an iPod Touch; 1 owns an iPhone; 3 own Netbooks; 1 owns a Kindle; 2 reported owning other mobile devices. 1 student already owns an iPad. 4 reported owning none of the above.
- 9 have blogged before; 5 have made electronic portfolios before; 7 use instant messaging like AOL IM; and 2 have Twitter accounts.
- 12 have wireless at home.
This data gives a sense of prior technological and literacy activities for our students and instructors in the study. Of interest to me, as someone who taught the undergraduate course last term with the iPad, is the amount of undergraduates who reported having wireless at home. Last term, few students did, so this might affect iPad usage. Many of my students last term reported that they found the iPad less than functional because they couldn't use many of its features at home.
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