Technology Usage Study (October 12, 2011)

Abstract

The paper presents findings from 560 interviews with undergraduates on 10 campuses distributed across the US, as part of Project Information Literacy (PIL). Overall, the findings suggest that students use a “less is more” approach to manage and control all of the IT devices and information systems available to them while they are in the library during the final weeks of the term. In the hour before we approached them for an interview, more respondents had checked for messages (e.g., Facebook, email, texts, IMs) more than any other task while they were in the library. A majority of respondents who had checked for messages during the previous hour had also prepared assignments and/or studied for courses. More respondents reported using library equipment, such as computers and printers, more than they had used any other library resource or service. Over half the sample considered their laptop their most essential IT device and most had a Web browser and, to a lesser extent, a word processing application running at the time of the interviews. Most students were using one or two Web sites at the time of the interviews, but there was little overlap among the Web sites they were using. A large majority of the respondents could be classified as “light” technology users, i.e., students who use one or two IT devices to support one or two primary activities (at the time of the interviews). A preliminary theory is introduced that describes how students’ technology usage may be influenced by locale (i.e., the campus library) and circumstance (i.e., crunch time). Recommendations are made for how campus-wide stakeholders—faculty, librarians, higher education administrators, and commercial publishers—can work together to improve pedagogies for 21st century undergraduates.

Preferred citation format: Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg (October 12, 2012), Balancing act: How college students manage technology while in the library during crunch time, Project Information Literacy Research Institute, https://projectinfolit.org/publications/technology-usage-study/

Media coverage

• “Alison Head on what students do in libraries.” A Radio Berkman podcast interview with Alison Head at Harvard’s Berkman Center with David Weinberger, December 11, 2011 (26:28 minutes).
• “Study of the day: Yes, students know when to put the tech away,” Hans Villarica, The Atlantic, October 21, 2011.

Related PIL resources

• “Peter Suber: The imperative of open access,” email interview by Alison J. Head, Project Information Literacy, Smart Talk Interview, no. 14, March 27, 2013.
• “Jeffrey Schnapp: Envisioning biblotheca 2.0: One of the most exciting design tasks of our era,” email interview by Alison J. Head, Project Information Literacy, Smart Talk Interview, no. 9, January 16, 2012.
• “Russell Poldrack: “May I have your attention? The brain, multitasking, and information overload,” email interview by Alison J. Head, Project Information Literacy, Smart Talk Interview, no. 10, October 3, 2011.
• Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, “College students eager to learn but need help negotiating information overload,” The Seattle Times, June 3, 2011.