Monday, September 16, 2002

Students Embrace the Internet, but Not as Replacement to Classrooms, Study Finds By VINCENT KIERNAN A surprising number of college students say they regularly use the Internet for academic purposes, but they see cyberspace as a supplement to -- not a replacement for -- traditional classrooms, a team of researchers reported Sunday. In a survey of 2,054 college students conducted this spring, 79 percent said that the Internet has had a positive impact on their college experience, according to a report on the study, which was financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts' Pew Internet & American Life Project. The students in the survey said they most often sent e-mail messages to faculty members to make appointments with them, discuss grades, or ask for clarification about assignments. Three-fourths said they use the Internet more than the library when searching for information. Sixty-eight percent said that they had subscribed to academically oriented mailing lists. "The degree to which they are using it for academic purposes is impressive," said Steve Jones, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago who is the lead author of the study. "I didn't expect that at all." But the college students are not abandoning the classroom. Only 6 percent of the students said that they had taken an online course for credit, compared with 5 percent of the general public. What this suggests, Mr. Jones said, is that "today's college students really value traditional classroom settings." The students are looking online for supplements to traditional instruction, such as Web sites and discussion boards, Mr. Jones said. Such use of technology can enrich students, he said. "It brings the classroom experience out into the rest of the day," he said. The researchers warned against ignoring the possible educational benefits of some recreational online activities, such as instant messaging and downloading music. "Learning how to manage a file-sharing system or navigate in a real-time chat can be complicated tasks that teach college students valuable technical skills they might need in the workplace," the researchers wrote in their report. The survey was randomly distributed to students at a range of two- and four-year institutions from March to June. The survey respondents were demographically similar to the American college population as a whole, the researchers said. The margin of sampling error for the results is plus or minus two percentage points, according to the researchers. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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