Changes in the basic ICT skills of freshmen between 2005 and 2009: Who's catching up and who's still behind?

  • Authors:

  • Kurt Wit;Dirk Heerwegh;Jef C. Verhoeven

  • Affiliations:

  • Office for Educational Policy, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium 3000;Business & Decision Life Sciences, Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe, Belgium 1200;Centre for Sociological Research, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium 3000

  • Venue:
  • Education and Information Technologies
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

In the last decade, ICT use has expanded enormously in most Western countries. In line with this development, we hypothesised that freshmen at university would not only have mastered more ICT skills, but would also use computers more often than their counterparts of 5 years previously. To compare students' opinions and behaviour between 2005 and 2009, responses to two online questionnaires (N驴=驴714 in 2005 and N驴=驴1529 in 2009) offered at a large university were compared. The main variables of the Technology Acceptance Model (as well as facilitating factors, study motivation and some contextual variables) were used as predictors to explore the possible changes between 2005 and 2009 in the mastering of 19 ICT skills, and the frequency of the use of computers for six different tasks. The results of the study show that freshmen became more proficient in some ICT skills, while proficiency in other skills did not change or even dropped. Gender is still an important factor to predict ICT skills and the frequency of using computers, but it is shown that for some skills female students have caught up with their male counterparts.