COMPARISON OF INTERNET USAGE HABITS IN TWO

GENERATIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS

A Case Study

Rosalina Babo, Carla Teixeira Lopes, Ana Cláudia Rodrigues, Mário Pinto

Ricardo Queirós and Paulo Coelho de Oliveira

IPP, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 712, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal

Keywords: Technologies Usage, e-Learning, Higher Education.

Abstract: To understand the importance of technologies like the Internet and Learning Management Systems to

Higher Education students’ learning activities, this study characterizes the Internet access behaviour of

Polytechnic of Porto (IPP)’ students. Student’s habits were obtained through a questionnaire that was

answered by 10% of all IPP students. Our analysis is focused not only on the global Internet usage profile

under the Polytechnic of Porto, but also on the differences between the students born before and after 1980.

International trends are confirmed in this Portuguese Higher Education institution.

1 INTRODUCTION

Don Tapscott (Tapscott, 1999) introduced, in the late

90’s, the term net generation to characterize a whole

new population born after 1980, that grew in an

environment where technological artefacts and

digital culture were a part of their everyday life.

This population “speaks” technology language,

moves naturally in a virtual world, communicates

and collaborates through electronic platforms

intuitively and uses social networks as a way to

establish professional and personal relationships

(Prensky, 2001). On the other hand, the working and

learning processes tend to develop some particular

environments, like multitasking, visual learning,

hypertext and compact information (Kenedy, 2009;

Simões, 2009).

Considering this scenario, this paper attempts to

characterize the Internet access behaviour of Higher

Education students, by conducting a survey in

Polytechnic of Porto (IPP

). The second section of

this paper focuses on the new Web paradigm and the

third section describes the research methodology

adopted in this study. The fourth section presents the

survey results and the data analysis. The fifth section

draws some conclusions and points some directions

to future researches.

In Portuguese: IPP – Instituto Politécnico do Porto

2 e-LEARNING

The Education was one of the areas where Internet

boosted, changing the paradigm of the face-to-face

learning to distance learning. The confluence of

education with technology allows the appearance of

the concept of electronic learning (eLearning). This

concept can be defined as the delivery of educational

content via any electronic media including the

Internet, satellite broadcast, audio/video tape,

interactive TV, CD-Rom and others (Tastle, 2005).

In its first generation, eLearning systems have been

developed for a particular field of learning and had a

monolithic architecture (Harasim, 2006). Gradually,

these systems have evolved (Williams, 2005) and

become domain independent, with reusable tools

compliant with several standards (Friesen, 2005) that

could be effectively used in any virtually eLearning

course. One such case is the Learning Management

System (LMS) that aims to simplify the management

of learning within an organization (Harman, 2007).

In this type of system, students can plan their

learning and collaborate with colleagues, while

teachers may associate educational content and

monitor, analyze and report progress to their

students. Typically, these features are available

through several tools included in the system (by

default or by subsequent inclusion), such as forums,

chats, resources, glossaries, tests, and workshops.

415

Babo R., Teixeira Lopes C., Cl

audia Rodrigues A., Pinto M., Queir

os R. and Coelho de Oliveira P. (2010).

COMPARISON OF INTERNET USAGE HABITS IN TWO GENERATIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS - A Case Study.

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 415-418

 SciTePress

These tools will recreate classroom learning and

allow different types of interaction, from

synchronous to asynchronous, between the student

and teacher.

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This section describes the methodology adopted in

this study.

3.1 Study

To characterize Internet usage patterns in Higher

Education students, we conducted a descriptive case

study with students from IPP.

The Internet usage patterns were analyzed in 3

components: type of Internet usage (e.g.: location,

frequency, type of use, motivation), communication

tools (e.g.: social networks, chat, e-mail: which

frequency, activities, benefits) and insights on the

role of the Internet in education (e.g.: LMS, chat, e-

mail: frequency, ease of use, perceived importance).

3.2 Data Collection

Data collection was done through an online

questionnaire distributed to students of five IPP

schools

: ESEIG, ESTSP, ESTGF, ISCAP, and

ISEP. In the first week of June of 2009 a pilot test

was carried out with 15 students from various

programmes and academic years of ESEIG. This test

validated the questionnaire’s objectivity,

understanding and also the web form’s accessibility.

We began the dissemination of the questionnaire

in the second week of June. The announcement was

done by news on the school website, news on the

school learning management system, e-mail

messages sent to students and teachers (so they

would ask their students to answer the questionnaire)

and requests to teachers, who used computers in

classrooms to free class time so students could

complete the questionnaire. The questionnaire was

open from June 5th until the end of July.

3.3 Population and Sample

Similar to what is done in other studies (Walker,

2007), we adopted the case study methodology.

Students from five IPP schools compose the

www.eseig.ipp.pt; www.estsp.ipp.pt; www.estgf.ipp.pt;

www.iscap.ipp.pt; www.isep.ipp.pt

universe of this study. The study included students

from technological specialization programmes and

from undergraduate and graduate programmes. In

1416 answers, 1396 were considered valid (11%).

ISEP, the biggest school in IPP, got 30% of the

answers while ISCAP got 21%, ESTSP 10%, ESEIG

17% and ESTGF 6%.

Most of the students are undergraduate (94.6%).

Only 5.2% are graduate students. The remaining

0,2% are students from technological specialization

programmes. Concerning gender, 51% of students

are female and 49% male.

As expected, there are more students born in and

after 1980 (Youngest students - YS) than those born

until 1980 (Oldest students - OldS). However, there

is a significant percentage of older students (26%)

since IPP also hosts working students, which are

older than ordinary students.

The proportion of working students in the

population is 25%. From these, 32% answered the

survey.

4 DATA ANALYSIS

The data analysis focused on the type of Internet

usage, communication tools and insights on the role

of Internet in education. Besides a descriptive

analysis of the sample, the association of the

students’ generation (born until 1980/born in 1980

and after) with several variables was also tested

using the Chi-square test.

4.1 Type of Internet usage

The majority of the students access Internet at home

(91%) and at school (80%). Only 24% says to

possess mobile Internet access. Most students access

Internet several times a day (65%), 32% connect

daily and the remaining 3% connect monthly,

weekly and even more rarely. In average, 52% of

students are connected to the Internet between 1 and

3 hours. It is also observable that the student’s

generation is associated to the session’s duration (p-

value0,000). Youngest students stay connected for

longer period of time. An explanation for this factor

could be the professional duties of the oldest

students, which prevent them from a more lasting

usage.

In average, 48% of the time spent in the Internet

is for personal leisure (the standard deviation is 23,

the mode is 50%). The most used Internet’s tools are

email (97%), search engines (95%) and instant

messaging (59%).

CSEDU 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

416

Students’ generation is related with their instant

messaging (p0,000), social networks (p0,000),

forums (p=0,009) and games (p0,000) habits.

With the two independent samples t-test, it was

also verified that YS use more Internet applications

(p-value=0,000) than OldS.

School is associated with the two main reasons

for Internet usage: research concerning class works /

study (94%) and access documents in Moodle or

another LMS (79%). The other motivations differ in

the two generations of students. YS use it to contact

with friends, download music and movies, share

information (documents, music, movies, etc.), visit

friend’s webpage in social networks, play games,

and participate in forums. OldS use the Internet

mainly to visit the LMS to obtain documents,

exchange emails, read the news in newspapers,

magazines and portals, be informed about themes

unrelated with their studies, and to shop. Unlike the

YS, they have the economic means that enable that

attitude(Kwak, 2002).

It is noticeable that YS are more enrolled in

activities of Web 2.0 like socialization and sharing

(O'Reilly, 2007). On the other hand, OldS engage in

activities of the Web 1.0 using the Internet as a mean

to obtain information. This finding is consistent with

several studies conducted in this area (O'Reilly,

2007;Kenedy, 2009)

4.2 Internet’s Communication Tools

It is observed a huge usage of social networks

among IPP’s students, mainly among the YS, 77%

of those have a profile in a social network. The

importance of social networking is minor among the

other group (46% do not have a profile).

Almost all students (91%) have a profile in Hi5,

followed by Facebook (23%). About 33% of the

students use social networks to connect with new

friends.

Although 91% of IPP students have a Hi5

account, the YS have, in the whole, more accounts

in social networks than the OldS. Among YS it is

observed a more frequent use of social networks.

In social networks, students see photos

(p0,000), find what their contacts are doing

(p0,000), do comments (p0,000), talk with other

people (p=0,003), share information (p0,000):

photos, films, music, get information about

companies (p0,000) and actualize their CV

(p0,000). Activities with p-values are statistically

related with students’ generation.

In order to connect synchronously, 98% of the

students use MSN, while Skype and Google Talk

have little shares (15% and 11%, respectively). 34%

of the students use instant messaging several times a

day and 28% use it at least daily. Again, YS are

more frequent users.

Email usage is more adopted than instant

messaging. 52% of students use email several times

a day and 39% at least once a day. Unlike the

observed with the results of Internet’s session time,

social networks and instant messaging usage, OldS

do a larger use of email (71% use it several times a

day against 48% of the YS). Professional reasons

might explain this.

4.3 The Role of Internet in Education

Concerning LMS’s usage, Moodle is used by 98% of

the students. 14% of the students visit Moodle more

than once a day, almost half the students (46%) visit

it daily and 29% only visit it on a weekly basis.

There are barely any differences between the two

generations regarding LMS’s usage, which shows

that this system is valued equally by the two

generations.

OldS visit with greater frequency the eLearning

platform (“several times a day”). When it comes to

usability, 45% of the students consider Moodle

“relatively easy to use” and 32% consider it “very

easy to use”.

More than a third of the students consider

Moodle to have a "very important" role in

education/learning, and 41% consider it "relatively

important". 42% of the OldS say LMS has an

important role in education (against 34% of the YS).

We think this may be explained by the usefulness of

Moodle to working students that have less

availability to attend classes.

According to students, IPP’s professors also use

additional Internet tools. Email usage was

emphasized (91%), followed by search engines

(38%) and forums (24%). It is noticed that some

professors also use games, social networks, blogs

and wikis. The way professors interact with students

is changing as Internet tools like instant messaging,

forums and wikis become popular.

Emailing and instant messaging with colleagues

and professors is considered “very important” or

“relatively important” in the education/learning

process. However, the exchange of emails is still

considered more important (46%) than instant

messaging (30%).

COMPARISON OF INTERNET USAGE HABITS IN TWO GENERATIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS -

A Case Study

417

5 FINAL REMARKS

There are not many studies about the Portuguese

Internet usage rates and habits and even less studies

comparing Internet habits among two student’s age

groups. The described results are not a complete

surprise but are original in the population they

characterize, Portuguese higher education students.

They reveal that Internet access is made

preferentially in school or at home. The majority of

students access the Internet one or more times per

day and the average time of each session is between

1 to 3 hours. It can also be observed that YS tend to

use the Internet more frequently and in longer

sessions than OldS. They are also more enrolled in

activities of Web 2.0 like socialization and sharing

(use internet for contacting friends, download music

and movies, share information, visit friend’s

webpage in social networks, play games, and

participate in forums). On the other hand OldS

engage more in activities of the Web 1.0, using the

Internet as a mean of getting information (for

visiting the eLearning platform to look for new

documents, exchange emails, read the news in

newspapers, magazines and portals).

The data collected reveals that most students

have, at least, one profile on a social network, and

one third of respondents usually meet new people

through these platforms.

The vast majority of students use e-mail and

synchronous conversation at least once a day (91%

and 62% respectively). However, we note that YS

rely more often to chat synchronously, while OldS

use e-mail more frequently. This is a sign, perhaps,

of a shifting paradigm in interpersonal

communication, where synchronous communication

- faster and more immediate - tends to gain

relevance to asynchronous communication,

especially among younger generations.

Most students access to the eLearning system,

Moodle in IPP, at least once a day. It appears that

the majority of students do not find difficulties in

using Moodle and think that this platform is an

important tool in their learning process. It appears

that for OldS this platform has a greater importance,

probably because they work and have less physical

presence in the university.

Finally, teachers use essentially the e-mail to

communicate with students. The Web 2.0 tools such

as wikis, forums or blogs still have little importance

in supporting the teaching and learning process.

In the future, and also based on data collected in

this study, we seek to analyze the habits of Internet

use according to the gender and scientific field. It

would be also interesting to study the habits of

Internet use of Higher Education teaching and non-

teaching staff and compare the faculty habits with

the habits students state they have.

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