Introduction to the Survey Results
In addition to the technology questions we’ve been asking UVic Law students over the past ten years, we decided for the first year to ask more detailed questions about student use of tablets and e-readers for academic use, along with questions about their usage of “cloud” services for file storage and collaboration. This survey was completed by 126 incoming and transferring law students, which is a strong 90% plus response rate.
Executive Summary:
- 89% of incoming law students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet (up from 84% last year and 50% two years ago), with 48% of the total being iPhones, 29% Android and 11% Blackberry (Blackberry usage down from 27% last year).
- 31% of students own tablet devices or ebook readers, up from 19% last year.
- When it comes to reading school related documents, students report reading those documents in bound books 46% of the time, on laptops 35% of the time, on laser printed pages 16% of the time, and on tablet devices 3% of the time.
- 99% of students own laptops. 49% of laptops are Mac’s, and 48% Windows.
- The students’ average typing speed is 49 wpm.
- 68% of all students bring their laptops to school most days.
- 75% of students use laptops to take class notes, 63% use pen and paper, 6% use tablets and 3% use their cell phones.
- 53% of students use Gmail as their primary email account, 7% use UVic email and 20% Hotmail.
- 33% of students identified Google Drive as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing. 22% favor DropBox, 4% Apple iCloud and 3% Microsoft Sky Drive.
- 95% of students use Facebook (down from 97% last year, but up from 91% two years ago), 34% user Twitter, 21% Linked In, 10% Google+ and 4% no online social networks.
Smart Phone / Cell Phone Ownership
89% of students own “Smart Phones” or phones with built in web browsers that allow them to surf the internet on their cell phones. That is up significantly from 84% last year, and 50% of smart phone owners two years ago. Blackberry ownership dropped significantly from 27% last year to 11% this year.
On the other end of the spectrum, 4% of students do not own a cell phone at all which is up from 2% last year. This is still significantly lower than the 11% of our sample of all law students who reported no cell phone in the spring of 2010. Just as laptop owner ship has been close to 100% since 2007, cell phone is now almost 100% as well.
From the library and faculty’s perspective this is an important area to watch, as there are a number of interesting new technologies (like QR Codes, NFC, Mobile websites and Adaptive websites) that could potentially enhance the services that depend on library patrons having access to the internet on their mobile devices.
