The Results

This paper presents the results of a survey of several hundred composition students responding to questions regarding their practices in reading and composing with technology. Here are some of the preliminary results:

• Demographics: Nearly 500 composition students completed the survey of which 58% were female, 88% were freshmen, and 93% were 21 years of age or younger.
• Nearly all respondents (87%) consider themselves "regular" or "heavy" users of technology.
• More than three-fourths of respondents (77%) use technology about the same, more, or much more at school than away from it; however, only 6% have taken online courses.
• While most students (percentages always greater than 70%) know how to conduct online searches, IM, email, and use both course management systems and common MS applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), less than one quarter of students know how to use web building applications like MS Front Page (23%) or Dreamweaver (8%) or how to make websites public (17%).
• Students are regular or heavy consumers of web technologies including email, IM, gaming, group websites and wikis, web-based audio and video, and Internet searches.
• Other than word processing, students are rare users of composing technologies. Further, most student respondents (82%) never create and publish their own web sites or publish documents created with other technologies online.

To view the complete survey results, click here.