[Air-l] Question about computer/Internet surveys/experiments in a class

[mboudour at upatras.gr]

Dear all,

Next month I'm charged with a one semester course of introduction to
computers and the Internet for first year Biology students. This is not a
"theoretical" course but it aims to convey very elemenantary knowledge
about computers and the Internet and for this purpose it will be given at
a computer lab so that there is going to be an extended interaction
between students and instructors.

What I was thinking to do in parallel with this course is some survey or
experiment which would investigate the students' perceptions about
computers and the Internet in terms of whatever they're doing (course
work, soliciting or providing technical assistance, social involvement,
relations, cultural preferences, political engagement etc.).

For this purpose, I would like to ask you if you could suggest some works,
papers, questionnaires, experiments etc. of this type of surveys that I
could use in what I'm thinking of doing. Any sources of a detailed
description of the structure of such a survey would be very important for
me because I should say my background is mostly from quantitative
methodologies and I have a limited experience in qualitative research
(although I wish I could manage to do some sort of ethnographic work in
this case).

In fact, there are some works I have in my mind realtive to what I'd like
to do in my class but the problem is that these works are focused on a
different context. For instance, I'm thinking of Caroline Haythorntwaite's
work on distance learners. But perhaps what is closer to what I'd like to
do is Eveland's and Bikson's survey of how work group structures are
transformed by new media. So, I would be interested in this category of
experiments that are splitting the total group into two subgroups which
are given similar tasks but different media or technologies to use.
Could anybody suggest me more surveys of this type and technical details
about their structure?

Cheers,

--Moses

  M.A. Boudourides
  Associate Professor
 
  Department of Mathematics
  University of Patras
  265 00 Rio-Patras
  Greece

  Tel.: +30-610-996318
  Fax:  +30-610-992965

  http://www.math.upatras.gr/~mboudour