Educational Technology at a Distance: Is Access to Technology Enough?

The subjects in this research study were two groups of college juniors and seniors enrolled in an educational technology course, “Instructional Technology (Planning) and Curriculum Development.” This is a required course for all education majors. Course assignments included: an electronic portfolio designed with Microsoft PowerPoint; a lesson plan designed using Inspiration 6.0; a shared-reading assignment constructed by scanning a picture book into a PowerPoint presentation and shown with a laptop computer and LCD projector; a personal Web page designed using Microsoft FrontPage. Computer and Internet access were critical to fulfilling course requirements.

The two groups were preservice elementary school teachers. Group One had limited access to technology and Group Two had unlimited access to technology. For the purpose of this study, students were considered to have unlimited access to technology if they had the use of computers with Internet access at all times. Also, students were considered to have limited access to technology if they had the use of computers with Internet access only at certain times. Limited access meant that Group One (30 students) was a traditional face-to-face class conducted in an iMac computer lab on campus. Although 28 of the 30 students in Group One had never used an iMac before, this apparent stumbling block was not a significant factor in project completion or computer proficiency. The iMac computers used OS 9 with Microsoft Office 98.

Unlimited access meant that Group Two (22 students) was a distance education class conducted face-to-face and via interactive television using laptop computers with wireless connection to the Internet. The laptops were Windows-based with Microsoft Office Premium 2000.

Group Two was composed of two sections linked via two-way audio-video connection: one at the University of Texas Pan American (UTPA) campus (17 students), the other at a middle school located in a town 50 miles west of UTPA. Group Two main campus students had face-to-face instruction, as well as unlimited access to computers and Internet access. There were five distance students at the “remote” site who also had laptop computers with wireless cards for Internet connection.

The Curriculum & Instruction department wanted to give students at the remote site an opportunity to attend class without driving 100 miles per day. Unfortunately, neither distance education site had computers available for the educational technology course.

Fortunately, the director of a grant was able to furnish the solution to the computer problem. Through the grant resources, there were enough laptop computers (22) for Group Two. The laptops contained cards that allowed wireless connection to the Internet from the distance education rooms while class was in session and the students were allowed to keep the laptops for the duration of the Summer Semester course.

There were problems with the technology periodically—one late connection to the distance site, and the e-mail server went down twice. The Internet cards at times malfunctioned, causing the students to try four or five times before making a connection. Despite some minor technological glitches in getting set up, this project was able to go forward with no major problems.

This article reports on an investigation into the effects of unlimited access to technology. The researchers focused on a number of factors related to student attitudes and abilities. Two groups of students were assessed. One group had unlimited access to technology while the other group only had access in the computer lab on campus. Even though one group had unlimited access, the investigation lasted only six weeks, so the effects of access may have been limited. Students in both groups were predominantly Hispanic women from middle to low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Two surveys were administered during the third week of the course: a standard demographic survey given to most college students and a self-rated technology proficiency survey asking for levels of self-efficacy and attitudes towards technology in various areas. The demographic survey was adapted from the official website of Southwest Texas State University, while the basic technology proficiency survey was adapted from Student Uses of Educational Technology in Rural Utah.

Carr observed: “Teachers cannot prepare students to be information literate unless they themselves understand how to find and use information.” In her 1998 article, she advocated the integration of information literacy into teacher education programs and concludes that this event has not happened. Here is the implicit assumption that students in higher education institutions will have access to the appropriate technology needed to become information literate. Without faculty development and training and a significant dollar investment in the training, the instructors who prepare pre-service teachers will not have the equipment or the know-how to accomplish this goal. Even at institutions that attempt to prepare teachers to work with technology, problems arise. Project THREAD (Technology Helping Restructure Educational Access and Delivery) is an initiative of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the Clark County School District. The stated purpose is to prepare teachers to integrate modern technologies to fundamentally enhance teaching and learning in K-12 schools. By preparing pre-service teachers for tomorrow's technology-rich classrooms, Project THREAD seeks to weave together a mixture of learning opportunities. The goal of Project THREAD is to train teachers and pre-service teachers to integrate technology into K-12 classrooms. However, the authors (Strudler, Bendixen, Anderson, and Weiss) point out that, while university faculty (UNLV) give lip service to the importance of technology integration, they do not use it frequently in their own teaching methods. This holds for many other institutions as well. Students may be given access to technology, but unless they have seen technology used effectively, they may have trouble implementing it in their own classes.

Wonacott concludes his discussion of the delivery of career and technical education (CTE) via information and communications technology (ICT) by stating that the increased access to learning at any time, in any place for any learner overrides all other issues. Institutions of higher learning are increasing their offering of courses by ICT regardless of lack of access by certain segments of the student population. Students who do not have access to technology are shortchanged in a number of ways. For one thing, there is a greater use of online assessment. Wall notes that while most college students have access to online tests, some students do not have access due to income, race and location.

Davis and colleagues, discuss ways the human connection can bridge the digital divide. The authors suggest that minority-serving institutions (MSIs) are helping Hispanic, African-American and Native-American populations closest to them to close the technology gap because the MSIs have large concentrations of minority faculty, staff and students with the most advanced levels of technology training. Clearly, the border colleges and universities in Texas and other states can function as technological bridge builders with their overwhelming Hispanic majority populations and understanding of the local cultures. This was the goal in the current research of providing unlimited access to technology. However, access by itself may not be enough.

There were no surprises in this portion of the survey. The student population at the University of Texas Pan American is overwhelmingly Hispanic and the survey indicated that measure: 84.4% Hispanic. The gender split was 85% female. The demographic survey also revealed that 50% of the mothers of students did not finish high school and 42% of their fathers also did not finish high school. This fact would tend to imply that most of the students were not technologically oriented. Also, the vast majority (84%) of combined family income was below $60,000 per year and 67.5% of the families' income was below $40,000 per year. The students themselves indicated on the survey they had not had much exposure to technology until they took the course offered in their junior/senior year of college.

As early as 1987, researchers such as Hubbard pointed out that the information age requires all educators and students to develop a combination of technical skills and literacy abilities. These abilities include learning to think, to question, to weigh alternatives, to interpret inferences, to seek further data in order to judge the validity of information received via the Internet and other online sources. However, for students to develop these skills, they need access to technology.

Similarly, Zeszotarski stated that “Skills in accessing, manipulating, and evaluating electronic information sources and devices is necessary for student success in higher education and the working world.” Naturally, access to the equipment and training for acquiring computer literacy is assumed. Implicit in this article is the need for students to receive training before they arrive on campus, so that there is no significant time lag in completing coursework using the acquired skills.

Even when students are given unlimited access, as in the present study, other factors contribute to maintaining inequalities. For example, Neumann commented that “Technological equity is a complex issue in socioeconomic status, gender, ability level, racial and ethic identification, geographic location, and handicapping condition.” Since most of the students in the current study fit into the lower socioeconomic background and remote geographic region categories, they might not have had equitable access to technology. Thus, the unlimited access that the students had for six weeks during the summer would not have been enough to overcome the years of inequitable access to technology.

Several writers have suggested that income level plays a greater role than ethnicity in determining access to technology. For example, Chester (quoted in Nickell, 1998), executive director of the Center for Media Education commented: “It's not a question of race, it's a question of income.” Nickell added that economic status, not ethnic origin, is the creator of the digital divide. Access to technology and information literacy is a question of money, not minority status. Nickell stated that the situation will only worsen if the economically disadvantaged are not given digital access. Similarly, Kirby, quoted Jupiter Communications, which claimed that the digital divide is increasingly defined by income, not by ethnic background. The study released by the e-commerce research firm also predicted the 35-50 year-old age group would be the dominant force on the Net in five years. The reporter, Kirby, also talked to an East Palo Alto community technology center director who said that having an Internet connection doesn't mean that one has the skills to take advantage of the opportunities the Internet offers. So, availability does not necessarily mean access. This may have been the case with students in the current study.

Many of the students in this study were women. Brown states that lack of access, below level achievement in math and science, and emotional and social attitudes concerning computer abilities are factors that can cause women and minorities to avoid high-tech careers. This lack of access early on in their educational training could certainly account for underachievement in computer skills, when access is finally granted.

Bermudez and Palumbo point to other factors that could mitigate the effects of unlimited access: “Emerging technologies and their inherent need to constantly update information have created a new type of literacy which has widened the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots.” The “haves” in this instance are mainstream students, while the “have nots” are primarily language minority students. These “have not” categories are broadened to include women, ethnic minorities and the handicapped. The authors also state that access to technology for these groups has been substantially inequitable.

The researchers in the present study provided one group of teacher education students with unlimited access to technology and then contrasted their skills and attitudes toward technology with a second group of students whose access was limited to the computer lab. As the literature reviewed here suggests, it is important to provide access, and teacher education programs should prepare students to use technology in their classes. However, as a number of researchers have pointed out, simply providing access may not be sufficient, especially in the case of students from minority groups who have not developed good computer literacy skills. Even though the present study reports an attempt to help the “have nots” move into the circle of “haves,” it appears that providing access to technology may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for ensuring that students will improve their skills and develop more positive attitudes toward technology.

The self-rated proficiency study contained 41 variables and the attitudinal study 14 variables ranging in topics from technology skills to perceived importance of technology. There were an additional twenty areas of response concerning computer use and YES/NO questions about technology changes.

For the purposes of this study, the researcher will deal with only those variables important to the differences and similarities between students with limited access to computers and those with unlimited access. There were 38 variables relevant to answering the question about the influence of access on proficiency with and attitudes towards technology.

The following sections each focus on one aspect of the results of the technology portion of the survey. Students were asked to rate their technology skills. Table 1 summarizes the results for each group.

Table 1 gives a clear idea of the lack of expertise in multimedia and Web creation software and the overall lack of computer skills by both groups. Notice items “Skill in using computer,” “Skill in using multimedia,” and “Skill in using Web creation software” in Table 1. Group Two responses show that even with laptop computers available to them 24 hours a day, only 32% the students rated themselves as “advanced” users of computers. The difference is far greater when looking at skill in using multimedia: 45% of Group Two rated themselves as beginners. Also, a large majority (71%) of Group Two students also rated themselves as “beginners” in Web creation software. One possible explanation for so many students in Group Two rating themselves as beginners, maybe because the classes were not chosen by random sample, but by student selection according to their scheduling needs. Therefore there can be a wide variance in computer skills due to certain students being unwilling to take a distance education course and opt instead for a traditional class setting, while other students find the time of the class meeting more convenient.

The following section asked students how often they used a computer to accomplish a task or to spend leisure time involved in technology interaction. Table 2 deals with frequency of doing certain things with a computer: home use of a computer for various tasks including browsing the Internet and using email. The largest difference shows up in the daily use of personal computers. Group Two has a 24% difference in personal computer use (the first item), while Internet and email use (items 2 and 3) is relatively the same. This similarity of Internet and email use is perhaps due to the communications aspect of both items. Daily use of the computer for a myriad of tasks at home may be why Group One seems to be more comfortable with technology and more confident of their skills. Twenty-Four/Seven access seems to not play an important part in this area of questioning, other than Home Access for Group One (limited access at the University).

Table 3 deals with the nuts and bolts of student computer use, and this area would seem to be the place where 24/7 access could be most significant. In Table 3, activities with various elements of technology are questioned in a Yes/No response mode. It is clear that the bottom three items are nearly the same, while the first two items contain some interesting data. Group One, students with limited access to technology, are far ahead in researching assignments and creating multimedia presentations. By examining the items “Research for class assignments and Create multimedia presentations” in Table 3, one can see that Group Two, students with unlimited access to technology, has 10% less usage of the computer for research and 20% less usage for creating multimedia presentations. Also curious, is the fact that Group Two responses show only 91% of the students send e-mail, whereas Group One responded with 100%. This contradiction of common wisdom that says access is the key to students using technology may be explained in a couple of ways. First, the sampling of students may have been that those taking the distance education class and getting laptops (Group Two) were not as technologically advanced as Group One. A second explanation could be that due to the unfamiliarity of students in Group Two with the laptop computers, the group as a whole felt less confidence in their ability. Whatever the case, Group One, the limited access students, report using the computer more for research and creating multimedia projects.

Table 4 really gets to the heart of the matter when comparing attitudes towards technology. The ten items in Table 4 deal with attitudes. Several items are marked with asterisks to draw attention to the large differences between the group responses or to point out similarities. In Table 4's first item, “Required to use computer,” both groups respond with Agree or Strongly Agree almost 100% of the time, but the response of 96% Strongly Agree for Group One is quite revealing. Students with limited access to technology are emphatic in responding to being required to use a computer, while only 52% of students with unlimited access respond in kind. Also noteworthy is the next item, “Do not like to use the computer.” While Strongly Disagree and Disagree add up to 96% for Group One and 85% for Group Two, the Strongly Disagree response of Group One is exactly double that of Group One's response. The same phenomena occurs in the next response down, “Harder to use computer to do homework,” only this time the Strongly Disagree of Group One's response is three times that of Group Two's response.

The item, “I do more homework when I can use a computer,” seems to contradict the pattern established above: Group One (limited access to technology) responded more positively to the questions in the first three tables and the earlier responses in Table 4. On the homework issue, 100% of Group Two responded with Agree or Strongly Agree, while Group One has a 70% positive response rate. This anomaly is difficult to explain or categorize. One explanation might be that Group One puts forth about the same amount of effort on homework regardless of the technology used. Another viewpoint might be that Group Two has finally responded in the way that those students with access would have been expected to respond to the other survey items. This is just another unexpected result in a survey that clearly needs another trial to further investigate the access to technology question.

Both groups respond equally positively to using technology important for getting a job (Group One 92%; Group Two 85%). But curiously, 10% of Group Two disagree strongly with the statement. The common wisdom is that “technology is becoming pervasive (or already is) in our society, so the best thing for students to do is become familiar with technology in order to further their chances at securing a good job.” This wisdom is not accepted by all of the students who can and are taking advantage of all available technology.

The value of technology overrated item response is interesting: 54% of Group One and 67% of Group Two Agree or Strongly Agree with the statement. The percentages are unusual in light of the responses to the next item “Like to use technology more often.” Group One gives a 91% positive response, while Group Two's response is a 100% for Agree/Strongly Agree. Why do the students think the importance of technology is overrated, yet would like to use it more often? Although these may not be cause-effect items, the two items are related to each other because acceptance of the importance of technology in our lives would seem to suggest the greater use of it. The responses to the two items seem to be analogous to saying, “automobiles are overrated, but we want to drive more.”

Table 5 is an examination of where computers are most frequently used. It is here that we should really expect the students with laptops (Group Two) to be staying away from computer lab rooms and utilizing the laptops in various places.

The location of the computer that is used by students is the focus of Table 5. There are a few interesting differences between the classes. Almost three times as many responses to daily classroom work teams by Group Two than Group One. This response makes a lot of sense, because students can cluster around each other with laptops that would be impossible with the side-by-side setup with desktop computers in computer labs. Another response worth noting is the next item: Working in the computer lab by oneself. Here is something quite rational—67% of Group One (Limited Access) work by themselves in a computer lab, while only 27% of Group Two (with laptop computers and wireless connection to the Internet) work by themselves in a computer lab. A good explanation comes readily to mind: when students do not need a lab or Inter net connection in order to do work, they choose other locations. Yet the next item is somewhat puzzling: 84% of Group One works at home, while only 64% of Group Two (unlimited access) works at home. One possible explanation is that because Group Two can work anywhere they want to, they do not choose to or have to work at home.

The last table of items considered here is Table 6. This table looks at what students' perceptions about what technological changes have occurred since the various types of technology have been more available on college and university campuses.

Table 6 looks at the responses of students to changes caused by technology coming to campus. By examining the items closely in Table 6, one may discern the curious nature of this study. There are some anomalies to ponder over. Group One (Limited Access) responded that 71% of the students did more independent work with the advent of technology, while only 45% of Group Two responded with a Yes. One explanation maybe that Group Two had more options of choosing workgroups due to the mobility of the laptops. While Group One was “tied” to the lab technology that is more conducive to independent work (If you accept the hypothesis that labs are setup with independent work in mind.). Group Two seems to have more questions to ask, but not nearly as much research to do. An explanation might be that since they had access to the laptop computers for only three weeks when the survey was done, the Group Two students might have had more questions about technology and might not devote as much time to research as learning about their laptops. While the previous explanation may serve in this particular case, it is baffling that Group Two would be 28% lower when responding to technological impact globally. The expectation was that more research and writing would be the “normal” response for college students, especially ones who had wireless laptop computers with 24/7 access.

In the early stages of the technology revolution, many involved in the field predicted great benefits from access to technology. However, these early predictions proved to be overly optimistic. Stoicheva concluded her article on the digital divide and implications for language arts by writing:

The question the researchers investigated was whether providing unlimited access would result in improved attitudes and/or improved proficiency with technology. The answer seems to be no. Given the particular parameters of this study with the two groups of students taking the courses, providing unlimited access to computers and to Internet access has not improved attitudes or proficiency with technology. Further study does seem to be warranted with a larger sample and with tighter controls on student participants. The survey was given three weeks into the summer semester and the lack of familiarity could have caused some the unexpected results revealed by the study.

In closing, it may be noted that:

• Group One (Limited Access) may have been more focused when in computer lab, because they knew assignments must be done while on campus. They had help from academic computer services personnel in using the hardware and software that was necessary to complete the project assignments.

• Group Two (Unlimited Access) may have had many students unfamiliar with laptop computer characteristics, thus being uncomfortable with the technology. While there was in-class help available to this group, there was very little help from the university academic computing services personnel. For obvious reasons, when students left class, the vast majority of students did not congregate in a computer lab: there was not enough room to accommodate the extra computers and students and policies by academic computing services that forbid laptops being plugged in to the electrical system in computer labs.

• Group One may have had a higher percentage of students who were better time managers due to being older, non-tradi-tional students with families and more domestic responsibilities.

• Group Two may have been intimidated with the level of technology they were required to deal with at one time: videoconferencing and wireless laptops.

Whatever the reasons, another study will help refine the process and bring out more reasons for the apparent contradiction of popular technology logic that says the more one is exposed to technology, the more one's attitude will improve toward technology use and one's proficiency level will increase.

Thanks are due to Dr. David Freeman for editing and reviewing advice.