Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and University Freshmen

Abstract

Young people who grow up with the Internet are called the Net generation and they might be more impressively technologically literate, more accepting new technology and more technically facile than the former generations. The Net generation is very fluent with ICTs to participate and meet the demands of the 21st century. In this context, this study is an attempt to see the level of ICT literacy of new entrant undergraduates to Sri Lankan universities by examining their usage of digital technologies and communication tools, self rated skill levels on digital technology related activities and finally their perceptions of the impact of ICT on academic work in the universities. The study is compiled with data from questionnaires, placed with 1601 first year students, in thirteen universities of Sri Lanka. Questionnaire for the study was designed to gather data in three major areas; background Information, access to ICT and perceptions on the impact of ICT on academic experience. The data collected from the questionnaire was analyzed using the Minitab® Release 14.1 and the SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Scientists) 13.0 for windows, occupying a variety of statistical techniques. Descriptive statistics was used to produce statistics for each variable or for subsets within a variable. Chi-square test, Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance test and Friedman test were employed was occupied to reach the objectives of the study. The results reveal that there is a rapid trend towards becoming university freshmen as much as be digital literate. Most of the first year students use the computer applications and have indicated that they are much more skillful with them. Results also reveal that ICT usage frequencies and the self rated skills of ICTs are greater for the male students than females. First years who belong to urban communities believe that they are more skillful and use ICT more frequently. ICT skills and usage amongst students of the Arts streams are somewhat lower than the rest. The majority of freshmen believe that using ICTs is likely to help them to improve their learning in the university and are willing to use ICTs to search for information for academic purposes. They wish to have more access to Internet/E-mail facilities and ICT related equipment such as laptop computers, pen drives. It is recommended that more facilities and ICT related training are provided for freshmen, and at the village level literacy is improved by providing more facilities.