Impact of Technological Advances on Student Life

Introduction

Initially when given the project title of “student life”, our immediate concern was the seemingly inevitable overlap between our title and social life/education, which in truth could be argued to encapsulate the very essence of student life by definition. However upon consulting with our partners in Köln, our approach altered significantly, with the new theme of our collaborative work being “a narration of the quality of student life”, as opposed to our original concept which could perhaps be best described as a quantitative approach. Although our project still places significant emphasis on quantitative measures, the underlying goal is to establish a conceptual link between the quality of student life and changes in the college over time. In order to achieve this, we decided to concentrate on four primary areas which tend to have a strong influence on student life, these being: technology, student support and fees, the development of student numbers and infrastructure and lastly the opportunities afforded by the continued growth of international ties with partner universities. (Benjamin, 1994) stresses the need to consider “various on- and off-campus contexts if efforts to assess student satisfaction and happiness are to be meaningful”. With this in mind, use of contemporary analysis of these four areas and their correlation to the quality of student life in varying contexts in both Cork and Köln forms the basis of our comparative study and will hopefully provide an insightful platform for better understanding both the social and educational groundings of “student life” in our respective cities.

Impact of Technological Advances on Student Life

Advances in technology have undeniably played an integral role in changing the overall quality of student life in UCC. Firstly and perhaps most obviously, the practical applications of the internet from a student point of view have forever altered how we learn, socialize and interact with our peers. In terms of dealing with college work, online lecturer/student platforms such as Blackboard in UCC provide students with the ability to interactively view online notes, recommended readings, assignment details and module information. Whilst convenience is a clear advantage of Blackboard, there are some who argue that it is counter intuitive as it acts as a disincentive for students to attend lectures. In order to examine the effect which the availability of notes on Blackboard has on student attendance of lectures, we carried out an online poll amongst our Commerce and German class in our Facebook group. We decided upon using Facebook as opposed to a physical survey as to make use of the multimedia aspect of this module and although our sample size was relatively small, with 14 out of our class of 16 voting, the results of our poll (see below) seem suggestive that our class’ attitudes generally reflect that of what would be expected of the entire student population.

Our methodology was a simple quantitative poll which offered three options. The most popular option in our poll (gaining 79% of total votes) was “I may be less likely to attend certain lectures if I feel the notes available on Blackboard are all that is required to pass”. Eleven out of fourteen students choosing this option can be seen to have a strong correlation with the results of a similar MIT study carried out in 2006 (see graph below). According to this survey, students rated “availability of lecture material from printed sources” as a 3.43 on average, in influencing their decisions on attending lectures. This was measured on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being “not at all important” and 5 being “extremely important”. This decisional factor is essentially the same as the “effect of notes on Blackboard” in our study, although in the MIT survey, the option is posed as “printed sources” whereas ours offers “online sources” as an option. When paralleled, although the MIT survey had a greater sample size, with 47 undergraduate students participating, the results are in fact quite similar. Despite the MIT survey measuring in more detail the very concept which our survey addresses, a 3.43 out of 5 reflects a 69% impact on attendance, only 10% less than UCC students answered. However the MIT results also emphasize the perceived importance by students of quality lectures as the most important factor in influencing attendance. Therefore a combination of poor or unclear lecturers and high availability of lecture material will invariably result in lower attendance, whilst logically the opposite will cause higher attendance numbers. From the perspective of a UCC student with several modules, determining how important each factor in this combination is, can in itself be a challenge, especially when balancing the workload of more difficult modules and easier modules simultaneously. Undoubtedly most students try to attend lectures however according to (Clay & Breslow, 2006) “miss them from time to time as the result of academic, extracurricular, or personal conflicts”.

Relative Importance of Factors Used to Decide on Lecture Attendance

1 = Not at all important; 5 = Extremely important

The second most popular option in our poll, gaining 21% of total votes was “I attend lectures regardless of whether the notes are available online”. Although this option accounted for only a small number of votes, three in total, it does highlight how certain students will always make use of traditional approaches despite the convenience which technology provides. The reasons for this may be due to individual socialization being influenced by traditional household values, or perhaps an entrenched mentality that personal interaction overcomes digital interaction with regard to academic material. However interestingly of the 14 students surveyed, the three who chose this option are perhaps the biggest users of the internet in our group. Lastly the third option, “I rely almost entirely on Blackboard notes to study for exams and rarely attend lectures as I feel it is unnecessary” gained zero votes, which perhaps evidences that the belief common to the group is that digital learning must be supplemented by personal interaction. (Clay & Breslow, 2006) suggest that students attitudes toward lectures vary widely, from “I never miss them” to “they’re worthless,” with most responses falling somewhere in between, which reflects the results of our Facebook poll. It can therefore be concluded that advances in technology causing the availability of learning resources to be more easily accessed, is resulting in certain students relying upon these resources outside of a lecture setting as an increasingly important tool which is now forming an integral part of their university learning approach.

Whilst the benefits of technology are more widely discussed in the media, it is also important to note that although many people may associate technology with increased quality of student life, it can also be argued that advances in technology are strongly linked to many modern day social issues. (Yeap et al. 2015) for instance outlines how “The university student population has been regarded as one of the most susceptible to developing Internet addiction among all demographic groups of Internet users”. Although internet addiction may in itself not be regarded as a serious social problem, the associated psychological conditions which may arise as a result of internet addiction have caused it to be an issue of growing international concern behind a backdrop of increasing suicide rates among University students. (Niemz et al. 2005) found in a study of 371 British students that “18.3% of the sample were considered to be pathological Internet users, whose excessive use of the Internet was causing academic, social, and interpersonal problems”, whilst this internet addicted cohort also displayed “lower self-esteem and were more socially disinhibited”. From these figures it is clear to see how essential it is that UCC have in place proper facilities and supports for students who are finding it difficult to cope with the challenges and pressures which the technological era has heralded.