Undergraduates’ Information Technology Use In Learning

With the informatization of human society, the use of information technology(IT) has made a profound impact on undergraduates’learning, and also puts forward new requirements to student’s cognitive development. The purpose of this study, is to examine the current use of IT in undergraduate’s learning, including not only the overall conditions and groups’(divided by gender, grade, subject, class of family etc.) differences of the computer and network infrastructure, the frequency of their use of IT and students’technology readiness, but also the relationships between IT use in learning and factors such as students’IT ability, research and cultural understanding ability, IT service satisfaction and teachers’IT use in instruction.This study is based on the data of4722undergraduates from sophomore to senior in Nanjing University2011SERU(Student Experience in the Research University) Survey With the help of a series of statistical methods, for example the descriptive statistics, T test, one-way ANOVA, factor analysis and multiple linear regression, the results are found as follows:Currently most of the undergraduates have personal computers which can easily get access to the Internet on campus, and their terminal equipments are quite mobile. Students’IT ability grows rapidly at undergraduate stage, and during this period, the ability gap between boys and girls is widening, so is the gap between the students from nature science and engineering subjects and the students from humanities and social science subjects. Meanwhile, the gap between the students from vulnerable groups and the others is reducing. Access to information(such as library catalogue and learning materials) is the primary network needs of undergraduates in their study. Although whose IT ability is significantly lower than boys’, girls use IT more frequently in their study because of their significantly higher learning engagement. Compared with the others, students from vulnerable groups are more passive and negative in using IT applications in their learning. The development of student’s IT ability and their habits of IT use are shaped by their curricula and instruction in a quite great degree. The growth of students’IT ability brings their optimistic attitude towards technology, and this attitude then promotes their technology practice in learning:there is an obviously benign interactive mechanism. The frequency of undergraduates’IT use in learning is influenced by three independent variables, which are students’learning engagement, teachers’IT use in instruction and students’technology readiness, of whom students’learning engagement is the most important.At last, undergraduates’IT use in learning has a promoting role in the development of their research and cultural understanding ability, that gives prove to the importance of the enhancement of under-graduates’IT education and the improvement of their IT ability.