))
E-Mail: lim@deakin.edu.au
Chemical Education Research, Teaching/Learning Aids, Computers in Chemistry, IT literacy
The use of computers and information technology is becoming more widespread in chemical education and in the wider community and workforce. Universities are increasing the use of computers and information technology in their teaching and learning programs. The Australian situation, reported here, can be viewed as a microcosm, reflecting a world-wide trend.
The penetration of general IT literacy and ability amongst Australian undergraduate students is rising rapidly. This paper reports surveys of the detailed IT skills of Australian undergraduate students. To the best of our knowledge, apart from our own work, there have been no other published surveys of specific IT skills. Most students have some reasonable computer skills at the start of their university studies, but the level of skill is not uniformly high. In fact, many IT literate students lack a sufficient level of skill to use the new technologies, including full use of web-based flexible learning. There is an urgent need for IT training for university students in order to achieve successful learning outcomes using IT and to satisfy the needs of future employers.
This article, which is the second in a series (1) of investigations on the computer skills of undergraduate students at the start of university, is an expanded version of a paper presented at the World Chemistry Congress held in Brisbane (Australia) during 1-6 July 2001.
The use of computers and information technology is becoming more widespread in education and in the wider community and workforce (1-6): the same is true of chemistry and chemical education. Indeed, the recent World Chemistry Congress held in Brisbane (Australia), had "Chemistry by Computers" as one of its five major themes. Universities are increasing the use of computers and information technology (IT) in their teaching and learning programs (6-9). The Australian situation, reported here, can be viewed as a microcosm, reflecting a world-wide trend: see, for example, recent issues of this Journal, the Journal of Chemical Education and elsewhere (eg. 10). Also see recent issues of Chemistry International, which have reported on the use of computers in chemistry and in chemical education in less-developed nations (eg. 11).
While computers have been used for teaching and learning for a few decades, their wide-spread use dates from the mid-1980s with the advent of the Apple Macintosh, IBM PC and PC-compatible computers. At the end of the 1980s, the Australian Education Council, on behalf of the State, Territory and Commonwealth Ministers of Education, entered into a collaborative development of statements about the curriculum of all Australian schools. This included a vision for the use of computers in teaching and learning (12):
"Computers and calculators provide students with opportunities at a younger age than they might otherwise have [School] students should have sufficient experience of calculators and computers to be able to make informed decisions about whether to use them and to use them efficiently when they wish to do so" (12).
In 2001, students, who have encountered the use of computers throughout their entire primary and secondary (high-school) education are now entering university.
Government policy is being formulated on the assumption that (high-) school leavers and university graduates are computer literate. For example, the Australasian Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) has supported the broad directions of the Education and Training Sector Action Plan for the Information Economy, based on the assumption of IT literacy which is defined to be (6):
"The set of knowledge and skills needed to use information technology at a level appropriate to a person's position, work environment and discipline and the ability to continue to develop them into the future"(6).
Universities are also developing and implementing policy based on the assumption that students are computer literate. In 1996 and 1997, Pennell from the University of Western Sydney, and Blackhurst, Hales and Lahm from the University of Kentucky published a list of IT skills, which they believed were necessary for university students to benefit from the modern electronic-learning environment (8): Table I.
Around the same time, Zielinski and Swift published a list of IT skills for university chemistry students (9): Table II.
Unlike the arts- and humanities-based disciplines, science and chemistry in particular requires more than basic writing, keyboarding and word processing skills for report writing (13,14). Table III is an extract of a physical chemistry article showing the use of superscripts, subscripts, mathematical symbols, Greek letters and equations (15).
The above discussion shows that university policy and the use of information technology (IT) in university teaching and learning are implicitly based on the assumption that university students either already are computer literate, or are becoming computer literate. Indeed, this assumption seems to be supported by a number of studies, which suggest that the penetration of IT literacy and ability amongst Australian undergraduate students is rising rapidly (1-3): Table IV.
IT skills are generally high. However, we have anecdotal evidence that many students are having difficulties using the electronic electronic-learning environment, which seems to contradict the findings of references (1-3). Hence in 2000, we conducted a survey of beginning university undergraduate students enrolled in first-year chemistry at Deakin University, investigating the details of specific IT skills (1). This paper reports the continuation of our survey into a second year and extended to include undergraduate freshman medical students at the University of Western Australia (UWA).
To the best of our knowledge, our 2000 survey (1) is the only survey that investigates specific IT skills of university students (as opposed to general IT skills). Given the lack of hard data on specific IT skills, the current paper is an extension of our previous work (1).
The results of the surveys fall into three groups:
Details of the sample student demographics and survey administration the survey design can be found in Appendix I; Details of the survey design can be found in Appendix II.
The proportion of first-year-university students who have a general IT skill is listed in Table IV. It is clear that the percentage of university students who have knowledge of core IT skills in the areas of Web, email, and word-processing usage has increased in the last couple of years. Since the results for Sciences and Technology students at the University of Sydney were consistently 36% higher than the university average (3) we can expect approximately 90% or more of the overall university population in 2001 to have knowledge of these IT skills.
The extent of knowledge of spreadsheets is significantly lower than for the other general skills: Table IV. We postulate two reasons for this: firstly, the wide-spread use of graphing and programmable calculators in high schools may mean that spreadsheets may be due to the use of spreadsheets being less integrated into most high-school curricula than Web, email, and word-processing usage; and secondly there is a non-academic imperative for the use of the latter technologies for electronic communication with friends and relatives.
In a web document, such as this, a link to (eg) the RACI Division of Chemical Education web site can exist as a hypertext link. However, in a text-based document, the web address or URL (uniform resource locator) must be given as (eg) <http:/www.deakin.edu.au/fac_st/bcs/RACI_ChemEd/>. Table IV shows that while the general knowledge of overall Web usage is extremely high, in 2001, 1 in 8 students still do not know how to use a web address or URL. Table V shows that while the general knowledge of overall Web usage is extremely high, in 2001, 1 in 8 students still do not know how to use a web address or URL.
Electronic teaching materials and lecture notes are often disseminated to students as (Adobe Acrobat) portable document format (PDF) files (16). Table VI shows that between 1 in 2 and 2 in 3 students believe that they do not know how to read a PDF file. The effective knowledge base may be higher than this since over 90% of students have web skills and hence have unconscious knowledge of accessing a web-linked PDF file using a pre-configured web browser. Even with this caveat, it is clear that most students will encounter difficulties if the PDF file is distributed through a non-web medium (eg on diskette or CD-ROM).
In the modern e-learning environment, students are often asked to download electronic files from the world-wide web, bulletin boards, email attachments, instructional management systems, etc (8,9). Similarly, students are often asked to submit work as attachments to email, bulletin boards, instructional management systems, etc (8,9).
Table VII shows that approximately 1 out of every 4 students can not download files from the Web or use email attachments. While many students might have unconscious knowledge of accessing a web-linked PDF file, 1 out of every 4 students will have difficulty accessing other electronic files by any Internet medium. Approximately 1 in 2 students will have no difficulty accessing files by any medium, while the remainder may have difficulty depending on the medium of dissemination. A very large minority will be unable to submit work as attachments.
Table VIII shows that the students at UWA exhibit a clear preference towards paper-based written tests. Since negative student attitudes will adversely affect learning outcomes, the use of on-line testing will disadvantage the 1-in-8 students whose only preference is for written tests.
The current survey indicates that in 2001 almost all students (>95%: see Table IV) are able to use word-processing software. University of Sydney data in 2000 indicates that 83% of students felt that they had "fair" to "expert" keyboarding skills (3). Our study indicates that UWA students can type at the same speed as they can write, with a small but significant number expressing a preference to type rather than write.
The overall level of specific skills associated with word-processing is not uniformly high, which is consistent with our 2000 results. However and most surprisingly, these skill levels either consistently showed a consistent across-the-board decrease between 2000 and 2001 - see Table IX and reference (1) - although this may a slight year-to-year variation.
Surprisingly, 11% of the students claimed "I have not heard about putting superscripts and subscripts in documents". This claim is all the more the surprisingly when one considers the educational background of the survey sample - all the students have previously studied chemistry - and realises that superscripts and subscripts are part of the everyday language of chemistry: eg, O2, N2, SO42- and PO43- for oxygen and nitrogen molecules, and sulfate and phosphate ions respectively. This complete ignorance of superscripts and subscripts is an increase from the previous year (4%), and is part of a consistent across-the-board increase in ignorance and decrease in knowledge: see Table IX and reference (1). This decrease may be part of small-sample variability from year-to-year: future surveys are required.
While some disciplines may not require the use of superscripts/subscripts, special characters/symbols, equations and/or technical diagrams in their written work, but some or all of these features are required in the scientific and technologically-based disciplines. Thus Table IV and Table IX indicate that students are becoming more capable of producing a word-processed submissions, they are becoming less capable of producing an acceptable scientific submissions.
Most students have reasonable computer skills at the start of their university studies, the level of skill was not uniformly high: Table IV and reference (1). This general finding is consistent with the results of other surveys (1-3) However, the level of specific IT skills is very variable. What actions are required?
Firstly, teaching staff and university administrators must acknowledge that students entering university in 2001 are not fully prepared to benefit from the universities' use of IT in teaching and learning (5). This has been a major objective of our previous (1) and the current work.
Given the increasing use of Web-based and electronic teaching resources (see eg. 7,8,17) it then follows that there is an urgent need for IT training for university students in order to achieve successful learning outcomes using IT and to satisfy the needs of future employers. This is not as onerous as it initially seems to be. It can be simple and easy as using 5 minutes of class time to demonstrate how to type an URL into the appropriate box in a web browser, or to use the format font option to create a superscript or subscript. This needs to be done systematically across the curriculum. These 5 minutes of class time, if taken early in university studies, can be viewed as the proverbial "stitch in time" that prevents many problems latter in the students' academic career.
For example, one model for compulsory, across-the-board, student IT training is detailed in Table X. Within the chemistry curriculum, special emphasis should be placed on the IT skills listed in Table XI.
Most Australian students have reasonable computer skills at the start of their university studies in 2001, but the level of skill is not uniformly high. Although this study has concentrated on two cohorts of students at Deakin University and the University of Western Australia, these samples can be viewed as a microcosm, reflecting a wider trend within Australia and internationally.
Firstly, teaching staff and university administrators must acknowledge that students entering university in 2001 are not fully prepared to benefit from the universities' use of IT in teaching and learning. Secondly, universities need to implement compulsory student IT training systematically across the curriculum. This training can be simple and easy to implement, as discussed above.
This article, which is the second in a series (1) of investigations on the computer skills of undergraduate students at the start of university, is an expanded version of a paper presented at the World Chemistry Congress held in Brisbane (Australia) during 1-6 July 2001.
KFL thanks Ms Jeanne Lee (
) for
encouraging and helpful discussions; and Ms Anne Fernandez (UniServeoScience)
and Associate Professor Simon Carlile (Assistant Pro-Vice-Chancellor
(IT), University of Sydney) for providing a copy of Reference
(3).
AK thanks Dr Moira Maley for assistance in implementing the FlyingFish
survey at UWA.
Top
Abstract
CEJ Vol. 5, No. 2, Contents