research-article

Undergraduate fluency with information and communication technology: perceptions and reality

Authors:

J. Scott Hilberg,

Gabriele MeiselwitzAuthors Info & Claims

SIGITE '08: Proceedings of the 9th ACM SIGITE conference on Information technology education

Pages 5 - 10

https://doi.org/10.1145/1414558.1414562

Published: 16 October 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Students must be fluent with information and communication technology (ICT) to participate fully and confidently in the 21st century. However, there is growing concern that despite having grown up with computers and the Internet, today's undergraduates may not be sufficiently fluent with ICT. There is also evidence that suggests a discrepancy between perceptions and reality regarding students' ICT fluency.

This paper reports student's perceptions regarding their own ICT fluency and compares their perceptions with actual ICT assessment results. Approximately 200 undergraduate students enrolled in a computer information science (CIS) general education course were surveyed and asked to rate their proficiency performing tasks requiring the use of ICT. These students also completed an online scenario based ICT assessment in which they were required to actually perform tasks associated with accessing, evaluating, integrating and communicating information. The majority of students did not perform at their own perceived level. Results of the study have implications for information literacy, ICT education and assessment.

References

[1]

ACT. (2007). The ACT technical manual. Retrieved June 15, 2007 from http://www.act.org/aap/pdf/ACT_Technical_Manual.pdf

[2]

The Association of College and Research Libraries. (2000). Information literacy competency standards for higher education. Retrieved April 20, 2007 from http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/informationliteracycompetency.htm

[3]

Braddlee & Matthews-DeNatale, G. (2006). Fluency in information technology (FIT): Setting expectations and understanding students' learning needs. Retrieved on June 15, 2007 from http://connect.educause.edu/Library/Abstract/FluencyinInformationTechn/42229

[4]

Bruce, C. (2002). Information literacy as a catalyst for educational change: A background paper. White Paper prepared for UNESCO, the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, and the National Forum on Information Literacy, for use at the Information Literacy Meeting of Experts, Prague, The Czech Republic. Retrieved 10 January 2003 from http://www.nclis.gov/libinter/infolitconf&meet/papers/bruce-fullpaper.pdf

[5]

Ewing, M., Huff, K., Andrews, M. & King, K. (2005). Assessing the reliability of skills measured by the SAT®®. Retrieved May 15, 2007 from http://www.collegeboard.com/research/pdf/RN-24.pdf

[6]

ETS. (2006a). ICT literacy assessment. Retrieved January 15, 2006 from http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuitem.435c0b5cc7bd0ae7015d9510c3921509/?vgnextoid=b8a246f1674f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD

[7]

ETS. (2006b). College students fall short in demonstrating the ICT literacy skills necessary for success in college and the workplace. Retrieved April 21, 2007 from http://www.ets.org/Media/Products/ICT_Literacy/pdf/2006_Preliminary_Findings.pdf

[8]

ETS. (2006c). College students fall short in demonstrating the ICT literacy skills necessary for success in college and the workplace. Retrieved April 21, 2007 from http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuitem.c988ba0e5dd572bada20bc47c3921509/?vgnextoid=340051e5122ee010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD&vgnextchannel=d89d1eed91059010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD

[9]

Harvard Law School, The Berkman Center for Internet & Society. (2007). Glossary of terms: Information age. Retrieved April 30, 2007 from http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/readinessguide/glossary.html#I

[10]

Hoffman, D. & Novak, T. (1998). Bridging the racial divide on the Internet. Science, 280(5362). Retrieved March 20, 2007 from Academic Search Premier.

[11]

Hoffman, D., Novak, T. & Venkatesh, A. (2004 July). Has the internet become indispensable? Communications of the ACM, 47(7). Retrieved March 18, 2007 from ACM Digital Library.

Digital Library

[12]

Jones, S. (2002). The Internet goes to college: How students are living in the future with today's technology. Retrieved March 27, 2007 from http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_College_Report.pdf

[13]

Katz, I. (2005). Beyond technical competence: Literacy in information and communication technology. Educational Technology, 45(6), 44--47.

[14]

Madigan, E., Goodfellow, M. & Stone A. (2007). Gender, perceptions and reality: Technological literacy among first-year students. Proceedings of the 38th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE '07 Volume 38 Issue 1. Retrieved June 7, 2008 from ACM Digital Library.

Digital Library

[15]

McEuen, S. (2001). How fluent with information technology are our students. Educause Quarterly, 4, 8--17. Retrieved April 12, 2007 from www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm0140.pdf .

[16]

National Academy of Engineering, Committee on Technological Literacy. (2002). Technically speaking: Why all Americans need to know more about technology. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

[17]

National Research Council, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. (1999). Being fluent with information technology. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

[18]

Qureshi, S. (2006). Why is the information society important to us? The world summit on the information society in Tunis. Information Technology Development, 12(1), 1--5. Retrieved March 20, 2007 from Business Source Premier.

Digital Library

[19]

Stone, J., Hoffman, E., Madigan, E. & Vance, R. (2006). Technology skills of incoming freshman: Are first-year students prepared? Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 21(6), 117--121. Retrieved April 5, 2007 from ACM Digital Library.

Digital Library

[20]

Stone, J. & Madigan, E. (2007). Inconsistencies and disconnects: The gap between the perception and the reality of the technology skills of first-year college students raises questions about the role of stat curriculum standards. Communications of the ACM,50(4), 76--79. Retrieved April 17, 2007 from ACM Digital Library.

Digital Library

Cited By

Hendrigan HMukunda KCukierman DGiannakos MSindre GLuxton-Reilly ADivitini M(2020)A Case Study and Call to Action: Incorporating the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Undergraduate CS CoursesProceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3341525.3387401(198-204)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3341525.3387401
Stone J(2017)The impact of technology exposure on student perceptions of a 1Education and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-016-9541-622:5(2281-2309)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10639-016-9541-6
Chan WChai YAbang Abdullah A(2016)The use of information and communication technology among undergraduate students in dental trainingJournal of Education and Ethics in Dentistry10.4103/jeed.jeed_22_156:1(27)Online publication date: 2016
https://doi.org/10.4103/jeed.jeed_22_15
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Undergraduate fluency with information and communication technology: perceptions and reality
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing literacy

Recommendations

Information and communication technology and the sustainability of microfinance

Information and communication technology (ICT) is an important driver in the maturing microfinance industry. Microfinance providers, both non-profit microfinance institutions (MFIs) and for-profit banks, provide financial services to the poor that are ...
Fluency with information and communication technology: assessing undergraduate students
The impact of information and communication technology on relation-based governance systems

This study offers a new perspective to the analysis of the interface between information and communication technology (ICT) and corporate governance and how the interface differs across countries with different political and economic environments. We ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGITE '08: Proceedings of the 9th ACM SIGITE conference on Information technology education

October 2008

280 pages

ISBN:9781605583297

DOI:10.1145/1414558

General Chairs:
J. J. Ekstrom
Brigham Young University
,
Mark Stockman
University of Cincinnati

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGITE: ACM Special Interest Group on Information Technology Education

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 16 October 2008

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

SIGITE08

Sponsor:

SIGITE

SIGITE08: ACM Special Interest Group for Information Technology Education Conference

October 16 - 18, 2008

OH, Cincinnati, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 176 of 429 submissions, 41%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

13
Total Citations
View Citations
585
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)0
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 28 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Hendrigan HMukunda KCukierman DGiannakos MSindre GLuxton-Reilly ADivitini M(2020)A Case Study and Call to Action: Incorporating the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Undergraduate CS CoursesProceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3341525.3387401(198-204)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3341525.3387401
Stone J(2017)The impact of technology exposure on student perceptions of a 1Education and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-016-9541-622:5(2281-2309)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10639-016-9541-6
Chan WChai YAbang Abdullah A(2016)The use of information and communication technology among undergraduate students in dental trainingJournal of Education and Ethics in Dentistry10.4103/jeed.jeed_22_156:1(27)Online publication date: 2016
https://doi.org/10.4103/jeed.jeed_22_15
Dee M(2013)Using Information and Communication Technology to Maximize Workforce ReadinessTechnology Use and Research Approaches for Community Education and Professional Development10.4018/978-1-4666-2955-4.ch013(209-224)Online publication date: 2013
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-2955-4.ch013
Lotriet HMatthee MAlexander P(2013)Internet access as a structural factor in career choice: a comparison between computing and non-computing major studentsAfrican Journal of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education10.1080/10288457.2011.1074070815:2(138-153)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2013
https://doi.org/10.1080/10288457.2011.10740708
Greenberg IKumar DXu DSmith King LMusicant DCamp TTymann P(2012)Creative coding and visual portfolios for CS1Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/2157136.2157214(247-252)Online publication date: 29-Feb-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2157136.2157214
Alexander TSchoeman MDe Kock EAlexander BPiderit RBrown ISewchurran KSuleman H(2011)The influence of gender and age on choosing computing courses at South African universitiesProceedings of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists Conference on Knowledge, Innovation and Leadership in a Diverse, Multidisciplinary Environment10.1145/2072221.2072223(1-10)Online publication date: 3-Oct-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2072221.2072223
Uludag SKarakus MTurner SGoda BSobiesk EConnolly R(2011)Implementing IT0/CS0 with scratch, app inventor forandroid, and lego mindstormsProceedings of the 2011 conference on Information technology education10.1145/2047594.2047645(183-190)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2047594.2047645
Lavy IOr-Bach R(2011)ICT literacy educationACM Inroads10.1145/1963533.19635522:2(67-76)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1963533.1963552
Stone JClark TCortina TWalker EKing LMusicant D(2011)The impact of problem-oriented animated learning modules in a CS1-style courseProceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/1953163.1953182(51-56)Online publication date: 9-Mar-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1953163.1953182
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten