This paper reports on a study conducted in 2006 with more than 2,000 incoming firstyear Australian university students. Students were asked about their access to, use of and preferences for an array of established and emerging technologies and technology based tools. The results show that many first year students are highly tech-savvy. However, when one moves beyond entrenched technologies and tools (e.g. computers, mobile phones, email), the patterns of access and use of a range of other technologies show considerable variation. The findings are discussed in light of Prensky's (2001a) notions of the 'Digital Natives' and the implications for using technology to support teaching and learning in higher education.
Previously assumed to be a homogenous and highly skilled group with respect to information and communications technology, the so-called Net Generation has instead been shown to possess a diverse range of technology skills and preferences. To better understand this diversity, we subjected data from 2096 students aged between 17 and 26 from three Australian universities to a cluster analysis. Through this analysis, we identified four distinct types of technology users: power users (14% of sample), ordinary users (27%), irregular users (14%) and basic users (45%). A series of exploratory chi-square analyses revealed significant associations between the different types of technology users and the university that students attended, their gender and age and whether the student was local or international. No associations were found for analyses related discipline area, socio-economic status or rurality of residence. The findings are discussed in light of the rhetoric associated with commentaries about the Net Generation, and suggestions about their implications for teaching and learning in universities are offered.
Wikis are widely promoted as collaborative writing tools and are gaining in popularity in educational settings. However, while wikis include features that are designed to facilitate collaboration, it does not necessarily follow that their use will ensure or even encourage collaborative learning behaviour. The few empirical studies that have considered this issue report equivocal findings. We assessed students collaborative behaviour based on their contributions to a wiki-based shared writing task using a variety of text and time based metrics. We found little evidence of collaboration despite adopting a learning design that was intended to support it. While overall participation was high, a relatively small proportion of students did the bulk of the work and many students' contributions were superficial. Students made little use of the wiki's commenting feature -a critical tool for contextualising and coordinating their contributions for and with others, and the majority of contributions were made very late in the task, making the possibility of extensive collaboration unlikely. These findings are discussed in relation to factors that may lead to the more successful integration of innovative, technology based learning activities into broader undergraduate curricula.
Internet usage logs captured during self-directed learning sessions were used to determine how undergraduate medical students used five popular sites to locate and access biomedical resources. Students' perceptions of each site's usefulness and reliability were determined through a survey. Google and Wikipedia were the most frequently used sites despite students rating them as the least reliable of the five sites investigated. The library-the students' primary point of access to online journals-was the least used site, and when using Google less than 40% of pages or resources located by students were from 'high' quality sources. Students' use of all sites' search tools was unsophisticated. Despite being avid users of online information and search tools, the students targeted in this study appeared to lack the requisite informationseeking skills to make the most of online resources. Although there is evidence that these skills improved over time, a greater emphasis on information literacy skills training may be required to ensure that graduates are able to locate the best available evidence to support their professional practice.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.