Volume 4. No 3 Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis November 1995

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How Computer Literate are UC Davis Students?

The last time that question was studied, back in 1983, 46% of the students on campus were using computers and only 8% used personal computers. Now, a new survey reveals that virtually all incoming UC Davis freshmen say they had access to a computer during high school and that most plan to have a computer with them on campus.

Commissioned by Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology Carole A. Barone, the survey of incoming students was conducted by Student Affairs Research and Information. "The results of this survey are in keeping with the goals of our faculty who are clearly moving in the direction of assigning more out-of-class activities that involve computing," said Marina Estabrook of the Teaching Resource Center. Estabrook, who coordinated the 1983 survey, just completed a survey on faculty use of media in teaching.

The recent survey of 1,235 freshmen entering UC Davis in Fall 1994 questioned students about their computing experience, skills, and comfort level with computers.

The findings:

• 99% of incoming UC Davis freshmen in 1994 said they had had access to computers at home (81%) or at high school (94%). About three-quarters had access both at home and at school, while 18% said they had access to a computer only at school.

• Nearly half of the students from families with annual incomes below $30,000 said they had had access to a computer only at school, while among students from families with incomes of $60,000 or more, 6% had access to a computer only at school.

• Ethnicity was also a factor in access to home computers during high school. Among white students, only 8% reported having access to a computer only at school, while 46% of Chicano, 34% of Black, and 27% of Southeast Asian students said they had access to a computer only at school.

• Most of the students (83%) said they planned either to bring a computer with them to UC Davis, to buy one after they arrived, or both. That was true of 85% of the men and 81% of the women.

• Men prefer IBM/IBM clones; women prefer Macs. Some 68% of the men said they would bring an IBM/IBM clone to campus, compared to 53% of the women, while 30% of the women planned to bring a Macintosh to campus, compared to 23% of the men.

• Students with the lowest family income were the least likely to plan on having a computer at school. However, 74% of those who were worried about having enough money to finish school planned to own a computer while on campus.

• Almost all freshmen entering the Colleges of Engineering (89%) and Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (87%) planned to either bring a computer to campus or to buy one here. In the College of Letters & Science, 83% of incoming students planned to purchase a computer, whereas in the Division of Biological Sciences, 77% said they would have a computer on campus.

• Nearly all students (92%) said they used word processing programs at least two or three times a month.

• Spreadsheets were used less than other applications. Only 19% of all students reported using spreadsheets at least once a month.

• One in five of the students (22%) said they surfed the Internet or used other online services at least once a month during the last year of high school, with 29% of the men and 16% of women reporting such use.

• Most students (72%) said computers were not too technical for them to understand. Among men, 80% expressed that belief, compared to 67% of the women.

• About 75% of the students, an equal percentage of men and women, said that computers helped them complete work faster.

"We are in the position of being challenged by our own students to use computers more effectively in our teaching and in our service," Roddy added.

You may order a complete copy of the survey via that World Wide Web at http://sariweb.ucdavis.edu/

For further information call Roberta Grant in Student Affairs Research & Information at 752-3889.