[Air-L] Internet Use in Public Universities

[Kevin Guidry]

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 6:48 AM, Shrwan Khanal <shrwan1976 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  I am researching on "Internet Use among the students in Public Universities:
>  A case study of University of Zambia". I am basically looking at the factors
>  affecting internet use, purpose and knowledge of internet (at the moment two
>  major factors Gender and School-hard science vs. art and science). Could any
>  one give me some suggestion or information about similar studies done in
>  other universities.

   I can only speak from the American context but I'm a higher ed PhD
student so my viewpoint may be helpful.
   One relatively recent source of data may be the work coming out of
the Net Generation survey led by Rey Junco.  Rey and Jeanna
Mastrodicasa published a book ("Connecting to the Net.Generation")
with many of the results although it's aimed at higher ed
practitioners so it's light on many methodological details in which
you may be interested.  I know that Rey is working on articles using
the same data set but I don't know if any have yet been published.
   The work done by EDUCAUSE, particularly the CORE data survey, may
be informative; Chapter 4 of the current CORE data survey report
(http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ers0706/rs/ERS0706w.pdf)
discusses student use of technology.  I'd also look at the work done
by the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative as much of their work tends to be
more qualitative and different in nature than much of the other
EDUCAUSE research that is aimed at IT professionals in higher ed.  The
EDUCAUSE research group, ECAR, may also have some good information but
access to their resources is rather limited.
   A few other publications from the higher education literature that
may be useful or insightful:

Flowers, L., Pascarella, E. T., & Pierson, C. T. (2000). Information
technology use and cognitive outcomes in the first year of college.
The Journal of Higher Education, 71(6), 637–667.

Flowers, L. A., & Zhang, Y. (2003). Racial differences in information
technology use in college. College Student Journal.

Lloyd, J. M., Dean, L. A., & Cooper, D. L. (2007). Students'
technology use and its effects on peer relationships, academic
involvement, and healthy lifestyles. NASPA Journal, 44(3), 481–495.

Sax, L. J., Ceja, M., & Teranishi, R. T. (2001). Technological
preparedness among entering college freshmen: the role of race, class,
and gender. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 24(4), 363–383.

   There may be other resources in my bibliography
(http://mistakengoal.com/wikindx3/) that may be useful; feel free to
search through it all and let me know if I can help!


Kevin