learning - Academic Conferences Limited

Jake Leith et al.
Figure 2 below shows the interesting diversity in the popularity of internet-based services: for example
social networking sites (e.g. Facebook) were used regularly by the vast majority of students, whilst
Twitter was used regularly by only 3 respondents. This demonstrates that we should not take for
granted students’ use of social media across the board.
Figure 2: Levels of usage of internet based services across both cohorts (Level 4 + Level 5)
The popularity of social networking sites might explain the responses to a later question about
organising group assignment activities, where communication by Facebook was more popular than
the group discussion areas set up in the VLE, particularly amongst the second year students where
no respondents used these.
6.2 Levels of confidence in the use of technology
Students in the sample expressed varying levels of confidence in their use of technology, but fewer
than 10% across both year groups considered themselves unconfident as shown in Figure 3:
Figure 3: Levels of confidence in the use of technology
Most students saw themselves as technologically literate. However, some criticism of the way the VLE
worked (see comments below) is likely to come from their own experience with more “user friendly”
social networking sites. We therefore need to recognise the need to educate students on the use of
403