ECAR 2011 study released

electriclibrarian — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:55:12 +0000

The ECAR National Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2011 was released last month. Some interesting findings about students’ views on online learning (most don’t prefer completely online), use of/skills with creative technologies (many want to learn how to use these) and of course not so surprising findings about use of social networking. All interesting stuff!

Great article in Campus Technology – the “digital native” 10 years later

kidsarealright — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:48:23 +0000

Last month’s issue (Oct. 2011) of Campus Technology featured a great article: Will the real digital native please stand up? by John K. Waters. (Thanks for the tip, Kathy!) In it, Waters looks at Prensky’s idea of the “digital native” 10 years later. (Yup, it’s been 10 years since Prensky first coined the term!) So how does the term stand up today? I won’t spoil the article for you – go read it!

Check out The Chronicle this month – special report on Online Learning!

kidsarealright — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:03:21 +0000

Looking forward to reading The Chronicle of Higher Education’s special report – Online Learning (once the embargo is up on our library’s online subscription, grrr embargos!) Two articles look particularly interesting:

Why ‘Digital Natives’ Aren’t Necessarily Digital Learners by Brian Cowan and The Myth of the Tech-Savvy Student by Ron Tanner. (Thanks for the tip, Wee Librarian.) There are teasers on the website – check it out!

Nielsen Social Media Report released

kidsarealright — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 17:25:56 +0000

Nielsen’s Social Media report was just released – interesting that the average social media site visitor is a female aged 18-34. Just behind the 18-34 year olds are the 35-49 year olds with the 2-17 year olds a distant 5th (even behind the 65+ crowd!) Where are the netgens if not on the social networks and blogs??

Where as this blog [Net Gen Skeptic] been all of our lives?

electriclibrarian — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:58:57 +0000

Just catching up with this great blog – Net Gen Skeptic – where has it been all of our lives! Love this post in particular about the state of educational research, something we lamented in our article a few years back. Lots of great reading here…off to go read.

New report – do today’s students like e-learning?

electriclibrarian — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:51:31 +0000

Interesting to see this new report: The State of E-Learning in Canadian Universities: If Students are Digital Natives, Why Don’t They Like E-Learning? In my opinion, it’s more the implementation of e-learning and the various definitions of e-learning that we are all using that are at issue – but an interesting snapshot of student perceptions nonetheless.

Thanks for the tip from weelibrarian!

What Students Don’t Know

kidsarealright — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:05:05 +0000

This isn’t really news but interesting & important nonetheless:

News: What Students Don’t Know – Inside Higher Ed.

From the article:

The goal was to generate data that, rather than being statistically significant yet shallow, would provide deep, subjective accounts of what students, librarians and professors think of the library and each other at those five institutions [DePaul University, Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU), Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS)]. The resulting papers are scheduled to be published by the American Library Association this fall, under the title: “Libraries and Student Culture: What We Now Know.”

Exciting stuff! Also, check out the excellent ERIAL Project page!

How Does Age Affect Web Use? Great Infographics!

kidsarealright — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 18:13:11 +0000

How Does Age Affect Web Use? is a posting on SiteJABBER Blog from yesterday – they have taken the data from the recent Pew Study and displayed it graphically. Cool!

Generations Online in 2010 | Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

kidsarealright — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 17:56:18 +0000

Thank you, Pew – for another interesting study:

Generations Online in 2010 | Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

Some highlights from the overview:

“The dominance of the Millennial generation that we documented in our first “Generations” report in 2009 has slipped in many activities.

Milliennials, those ages 18-33, remain more likely to access the internet wirelessly with a laptop or mobile phone. In addition, they still clearly surpass their elders online when it comes to many communication- and entertainment-related activities, such as using social network sites and playing games online.

However, internet users in Gen X (those ages 34-45) and older cohorts are more likely than Millennials to engage in several online activities, including visiting government websites and getting financial information online.

Finally, the biggest online trend is that, while the very youngest and oldest cohorts may differ, certain key internet uses are becoming more uniformly popular across all age groups. These online activities include seeking health information, purchasing products, making travel reservations, and downloading podcasts.”

Thank you, resourceshelf for the heads-up!

Report Findings from Pew Internet: 8% of Online Amercians Use Twitter On A Daily Basis

kidsarealright — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 19:29:29 +0000

Great post at Resourceshelf about the new Pew internet study just released that reveals t hat only 8% of American use Twitter daily:

ResourceBlog Article: New: Report Findings from Pew Internet: 8% of Online Amercians Use Twitter On A Daily Basis.

Thanks, Resourceshelf!