Learning Environment Architecture Development Project
Student Needs Assessment Summary


A student survey was administered October 1999 through e-mail. In addition, a student focus group was consulted during the Fall LEAD Think Tank.

Survey Statistics

Population for survey:
Sample size for survey:
Respondents/Response Rate:		 10,000 students who had used IT labs during fall quarter
2,500
477 (19%)


Computer access and ownership patterns

The trend of increased computer ownership by students continues -- over 86% report that they own a computer (of that number, 73% are desktops, and 16% are laptops). The median age of these student computers is 2 years. With regard to peripherals, almost 80% own printers (Ink Jet - 59%; Laser printer - 19%). Of those who own computers, a large percentage of respondents (93.2%) have CD-ROMs. When asked "If the campus expected students to have personal access to a computer that can connect to the Internet, and to this end recommended that students own a computer, would you purchase a new computer?" over a third answered no (the most common reason given was that the one they already had was too new). Fourteen percent said yes, but only if the purchase were subsidized by financial aid. A little over 13% responded yes.


Computing platforms in use/preferred

Of those responding to the question about which computer platform they own, over 83% reported PC; slightly more than 10% reported Macintosh. (Preference maps to ownership patterns: 82% prefer PC, 12% prefer Macintosh, slightly more than 2% prefer Unix, and almost 3% prefer Linux.)


Internet use for class-related purposes

Over half report at least one on-campus Internet session for class-related purposes per day. A similar percentage reports at least one off-campus connection. Over 30% use modems that are 28.8K or less for their off-campus connections while only 13% have high-speed access for off-campus connections (ISDN, DSL, or Ethernet in apartments). Almost 60% still use UCD modem services for their off-campus connections.

Over 46% report an hour or more per week on-line time required by their instructors to carry out their assignments. Almost 80% of the respondents are enrolled in classes that require that they use electronic mail; over 85% use e-mail to work with other students (almost as common as face-to-face at 89.7%, and more common than telephone contact). Almost three-quarters of the respondents report required course web pages. Required use of other on-line resources (MELVYL, databases, on-line research resources) hovers around 30% for all types. Around 20% use specialized software only available in campus labs; a similar percentage are required to download specialized software for classes. An increasing number of students are using real-time electronic communication (almost 20% report use of real-time messaging) for working with other students.


Importance of the course web pages

For those students whose courses had web pages, over half indicated that it would affect their grade adversely if they weren't able to access the pages for some reason (e.g., there are resources that are only available on the web page, and the page is not available because of hardware problems); less than a quarter reported that it would not affect their grade adversely.

Students rated the usefulness of course webpage features on a scale from 5 ("Very useful") to 1 ("Not useful). All features were seen as useful (the lowest mean response was 3.73 for class e-mail archive). The top five rated features were sample tests, course notes, general information, on-line ungraded quizzes, and interactive exercises.


Priorities for future service/software development

On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 being "very useful"), students rated the potential services or tools as follows:

Description % of respondents who rated it 4 or above in usefulness % of respondents who wouldn't use the service
Ability to access electronic documents from anywhere (home, on-campus lab, traveling) 85% 1.5%
Shared electronic file space (Students could share and access documents for collaborative projects) 55% 17%
Ability to submit assignments electronically to instructors 74% 10%
Obtain assignments and handouts electronically 82% 5%
Personal web page 37% 32%
E-commerce (obtain and pay for UCD services on-line, e.g., tickets to events, transcripts, registration fees, parking services, housing payments.) 64% 17%


Student skill and understanding of technology

On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 being "advanced", 3 being "competent" and 1 being "none"), students evaluated their skills and understanding of technology as follows:

Description % of respondents who answered "competent" or above % of respondents who answered "none"
Using a modem 87% 4.0%
Electronic mail 96% 0.4%
Web searching 94% 0.8%
Web page development 37% 40.0%


The primary means of acquiring these skills was "informally, on my own," with 23% responding "ask someone else (e.g., fellow student) who was already knowledgeable". Only 13% learned the skills through formal classes (at UC Davis, or elsewhere).


Importance of technology

Students evaluated the importance of the use of information and computer technology to their university experience as follows (on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being "essential," and 1, "not at all"):

Description % of respondents who answered 4 or above % of respondents who answered "not at all"
With regard to access to information 89% 0
With regard to computer literacy 81% .6%
With regard to academic success 78.4% .2%
With regard to supporting different learning styles 37% 1.7%


Over 42% of students felt that they would use computers and technology for just about everything in their planned career, while less than 1% didn't think they would use them for anything.


Preferred Learning Styles

Because technology does support different learning styles, the Teaching Resource Center devised several questions to gauge different learning styles. Students were asked what their preferences were for learning, and told to choose only the one activity that best represented their preference, for each row. Their responses were as follows:

Choice % choosing "vs" Choice % choosing
Take notes 87.2% Interact 6.1%
Listen 69% Discuss 12%
Receive ideas 60% Create ideas 15%
Instructor's pace 46% Student's pace 29%
Spectator 48% Participant 26%
Memorize 20% Understand 63%


In an effort to gain more information about learning styles, students were asked to evaluate their preferences with regard to each of the following learning environments (5="helps me to learn," 3="ok for learning," and 1="can't learn.")

Description % of respondents who answered 3 or above % of respondents who answered "can't learn"
Informal study groups 84% 3.1%
Class-assigned collaboration and group projects 74% 5.2%
Lecture (50 students or less) 92% .8%
Lecture (50-100 students) 78% 3.0%
Lecture (over 100) 56.2% 11.3%
On-line class 31% 31.0%
Mix of on-line/lecture 47% 20.0%
Hands-On Lab 82% 2.5%
Applied community service projects 59% 7.3%


The "helps me learn" ratings dropped rapidly as the size of the lecture class increased: from 35% for lecture class size under 50, to 6.5% for lecture 50-100, to 4.4% for lecture over 100.

Students responded to a question about what they would do if they couldn't register for a class for the quarter in which they wished to take it as follows: almost three-quarters would wait, only 6% would take it in a summer class, 3% would take the course elsewhere, and 13% would take it on-line.


Comparisons between faculty and student perceptions, experience and expectations

Both faculty and student usage indicates that the single most important on-line resource is electronic mail, for communication between faculty and students, and communication between students.

With regard to course web pages, faculty and students consider general, static information (posting of general course information such as the syllabus, or examples) to be the highest priority. A key difference is that most faculty members see these course materials as purely supplemental (and available elsewhere), while a majority of students see them as essential (their grade would be adversely affected if they couldn't access a course web page). This difference influences how robust and reliable the course web page support structure should be, and whether 8 am ­ 5 pm, M-F support schedules are adequate, or a more "mission-critical" approach should be taken (support 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, with failover and frequent backups).

Students' ratings of the importance of information technology to their university experience are higher than those of the faculty. Over three-quarters of student respondents rated technology as important with regard to their academic success, while less than half of the faculty rated technology as important to improving pedagogy. Almost 90% of students found access to information through technology to be important to their academic success; the number of faculty rating this as important was two-thirds.

When learning environment preferences were mapped against actual experience at UC Davis, in all cases, the percentage of students preferring the more active participation (interact, discuss, create ideas, understand, and proceed at students' pace) was greater than the percentage actually having those experiences. There also appears to be a difference between faculty ranking of the benefits of lectures to learning, and students' ranking of importance. From a list of learning environments, the highest percentage of students (92%) ranked lecture classes of 50 students (or less) as helpful to their learning; however, once lecture classes were larger than 100 students, a higher percentage of students found informal study groups, hands-on labs, class-assigned collaboration and group projects (in that order) to be more helpful to learning than lectures.