There’s a new paper out about Internet use among U.S. college students. It’s short and sweet (fully readable in one quick sitting). I tend to enjoy research studies that observe, record, and number-crunch as a phenomenon is happening. Seriously, I’m the one on the tour of Monticello who’s way more amped about what Jefferson was planting every year and what his household shopping lists consisted of than seeing yet another copy of the Declaration of Independence (not that I have anything against freedom).

Sometimes mankind has to work backwards, dig up the past and put the pieces back together so we can make sense of it all. Taking note of what’s happening today seems so obvious and uninteresting, but first- and second-hand in the present tends to be a tad more precise than having everyone try to recall what happened decades ago and then attempt to form a few good theories.

By “replicating and extending” their 2002 study, Steve Jones, Camille Johnson-Yale, Sarah Millermaier, and Francisco Seoane Pérez have found that U.S. college students are still all over that Internet action. Their usage has certainly increased since the 2002 study, especially as compared to non-college student Internet users in the U.S. The generation that was born with a keyboard at their fingertips is also, not surprisingly, faster than the rest of us at finding, understanding, and implementing new Internet applications and tools.

The paper was just accepted in September, and was published in the October 5th, 2009 edition of the online peer-reviewed journal, First Monday. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

While ours is not a traditional diffusion of innovations study, it is important to generate a broad, comprehensive portrait of Internet use amongst college students to understand what they are doing online and what the implications of their use may be for other Internet users.
This study therefore examines how college students are using the Internet, compares their use to that of college students as reported in 2002 and to the general population. To guide our comparisons to the findings of Jones’ 2002 report, we pose broad questions regarding student Internet use: What kinds of things are today’s college students doing online that are different than what students were doing five years ago? What points of similarity and difference can we identify between the role the Internet plays in students’ social routines now and in 2002? To what extent are college students using new online tools such as blogs, Facebook, and MySpace? Tracking the evolution of students’ Internet use can help to illuminate trends in online life and help us look forward as the Internet increasingly informs aspects of everyday life.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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I love it when people find new and exciting ways to use their information-aggregating skills. Virgil Griffith is a busy guy, and he still found time to whip this up. You can read more about him and his brainiac antics in the New York Times Magazine, in Wired, and on this WSJ blog.

His site lists all the cool talks, presentations, etc. he’s given, all of which are smart and interesting. But, honestly, my favorite bits (besides Musicthatmakesyoudumb and Booksthatmakeyoudumb) are his contributions to college students in the CalTech and MIT areas: Freefood at MIT and Freefood at Caltech. Effing genius.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

While I’m usually one to veer away from technology, I have always maintained that it does have its place in the education realm. Kids these days (is there any way to avoid sounding like my grandmother when I use that phrase?) rarely separate themselves from technology, and as much I adore a Ticonderoga #2, they tend to see paper and writing implements as inefficient and old-fashioned. It’s fortunate that I’m a confident enough girl to not take umbrage at what that may imply about me and my doddering 35-year-old-ness.

Technology is not my favorite item on the menu, but I absolutely see its usefulness, especially in terms of educating the tech-savvy younger generations. Kaplan has just launched a Facebook application for their SAT prep tools that melds nicely with the whole education/technology/whippersnappers-glued-to-their-laptops era. It saves trees, and users can challenge each other with the “Challenge a Friend” feature.

I’m not a proponent of standardized testing, but as long as the tests are being used, the technologically adept teenagers of today may as well have access to as much digital test prep as possible.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Again I say: there but for the grace of All Things Holy go I. A phone call to my parental units might be in order so I can thank them excessively for bringing me into this world at a time when computers took up entire rooms, tiny technology was available only in science fiction books, and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook hadn’t yet been conceived of.

By no means was I an over-the-top party girl in high school or college, but I feel confident that had the technology been in place, I could have certainly captured some detrimental moments for posterity. Any number of which, I can guarantee, would somehow, somewhere, have been unearthed by a prospective employer.

Bowling Green’s online newspaper has an article up about the increasingly standard use employers make of sites like Facebook and MySpace to screen job applicants. I don’t agree with the practice, and part of me feels like it’s an invasion of privacy for employers to go digging around online for information. Which brings me around to the impossible-to-refute point that nothing posted online where the whole world can see it can be considered personal or private.

It sucks that teens and twenty-somethings have to work harder that any other generation since the Victorian age to mind their reputations, but all this technology is probably here to stay. Don’t put s**t out there that you don’t want people to see. Like all things logical, it’s elegant in its simplicity. So either keep your proverbial pants on or mark the “friends only” box on your chosen social networking site. Good luck.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

UCLA does an annual survey of incoming American undergrads.

The CIRP Freshman Survey is part of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) and is administered by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. The 2007 freshman norms are based on the responses of 272,036 first-time, full-time students at 356 of the nation’s baccalaureate colleges and universities. The data have been statistically adjusted to reflect the responses of the 1.4 million first-time, full-time students entering four-year colleges and universities as freshmen in 2007.

The 2007 results came out recently and the info on helicopter parenting has me concerned. Either we’ve all been wrong about helicopter parents and their over-involvement in their kids’ education, or the young’uns in question like being helicoptered. Here’s what the survey found out about

Parental Involvement:

While college officials nationwide say they have seen an increase in parents who are heavily involved in the college experiences of their children, a strong majority of today’s college freshmen believe their parents are involved the “right amount,” according to UCLA’s annual survey of the nation’s entering undergraduates.

The report suggests freshmen show a dependency on parents when making college-related decisions.

“When parents intervene in their children’s college life and decision-making, students may not necessarily develop their own problem-solving skills, which may limit developmental gains in their learning experiences,” said John H. Pryor, a co-author of the report and director of CIRP.

A majority of freshmen considered their parents’ participation in their college careers to be the “right amount,” with 84 percent reporting the “right amount” of parental involvement in their decision to go to college, 80.5 percent in their decision to attend the college at which they enrolled and 77.5 percent in dealing with college officials.

Conversely, nearly one in four freshmen (24 percent) report that their parents displayed “too little” involvement in helping them select college courses, and 22.5 percent say their parents were not involved enough in helping choose college activities.

Along with parental involvement, the survey also covered:

“Habits of Mind” for Learning:

The report identifies a troubling pattern in students’ study habits for lifelong learning. While a large majority of freshmen report that they use the Internet on a daily basis to seek information, only a few within the classroom are cultivating the essential “habit of mind” of checking the accuracy and reliability of the information they receive.

“Students’ frequent use of the Internet shows a preference for information that is easily accessible, but that information is not necessarily reliable and accurate,” Hurtado said. “Learning how to evaluate knowledge claims is an essential part of a liberal education, and we expect that colleges will have to be more intentional about integrating information literacy in the education of college students today.”

Impact of Social Networking Sites:

While the popularity of social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace runs high — 86.3 percent of incoming freshmen report that during the last year of high school they spent at least some time on such sites each week — students still spend relatively more time in an average week studying, working and “live” socializing.

Time spent on social networking sites appears, however, to be related not to less “live” socializing but to more time spent in other social activities. Students who used social networking Web sites more often were also more likely to socialize with friends and attend parties. This did not seem to have any significant impact on the number of hours a week students spent studying.

Diversity-Related Issues:

Attitudes about diversity continue to change among incoming first-year students: 36.7 percent of students expressed the personal goal of helping to promote racial understanding, a 2.7 percentage-point increase from 2006 and the highest this figure has been since 1994. Not surprisingly, the figure escalates among students at black colleges and universities, where 64 percent see this as an essential or very important personal goal.

Interest in the global community is advancing as well. When this item was first placed on the questionnaire in 2002, following the attacks of Sept. 11, 43.2 percent of students reported that they had an interest in improving their understanding of other countries and cultures; in 2007 that proportion became a majority, at 52.3 percent.

Freshman support for same-sex marriages has expanded steadily, from 50.9 percent 1997 to 63.5 percent in 2007. The issue, however, reveals a wide gender gap: 55.3 percent of male freshmen report that same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status, compared with 70.3 percent of female students. Gender differences appear on other issues, as well: More than half of all males (53.7 percent) agree with the statement that undocumented immigrants should be denied access to public education, compared with 43.5 percent of all female students; 43.3 percent of males and 39.2 percent of females at black colleges agreed.

Reasons to Attend College:

Academic quality remained the top reason for choosing a college, cited by 63 percent of students — a 5.6 percentage-point jump from 2006 and the highest this figure has been in 35 years. And college affordability is now more than ever a priority for students, with the importance of being awarded financial assistance increasing 5.1 percentage points from 2006 to 39.4 percent in 2007, also the highest this figure has been in 35 years.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Thanks to the Internet, we all have an infinite number of options for screwing over our future selves. This is probably the only exception to my general crankiness regarding the timing of my birth. Being born in the 70s means I am less inclined to be physically or emotionally attached to my MacBook than a tween, teen or twenty-something would be. Added to that, I’m probably more aware of the negative implications of the Net only because it’s more of a new and strange occurence in my life than it would be for someone born safely on this side of the Polyester Era. I notice it because for most of my life it wasn’t there at all. I typed my book reports on a damn typewriter. A manual one. You had to be a man (or a tomboy girl) to whang those keys hard enough. Too hard, and the periods would make their point right through the paper. I know. Old school minus any hint of the ‘cool’ connotation.

I had a Mac Classic II when I was a freshman in college. The one with the postcard-sized screen. Badass, I’m well aware. And, no, it was not hooked up to the Internet. I swear on all things sacred that I had never sent an e-mail by the time I hit the dorms. And yet, I’m here to tell the tale. Did you get that that was sarcasm? It’s hard to get sarcasm across on the Internet. I need a special Sarcasm Font or something.

But do you know what’s super easy to get out there into the world so’s everyone can take a gander? Drunken nakedness, foul language (the title I originally wrote for this article had a very bad (and much funnier) word) and overall stupidity can be recorded for posterity so easily and then sucked into the Net, easily retrievable by anyone who takes the time to search out the dirt on idiotic, drunken freshman you.

Once again, I reel with the closeness of that call. I’m thanking the fates and sheer dumb luck that my ungraceful moments came and went before they ended up on the Internet. Because now, being so mature and wise beyond my years I never act rashly and do things I might regret.

Anyway, if you’re young and foolish and tend to say or do things you later wish you hadn’t (or can only vaguely recall), please remember that you and everyone you know with a computer and a recording device will be capable of making you either infamous or incredibly uncomfortable someday when your parents/kids/voters/prospective boss/potential mate cyber-vet you into cringing oblivion. Yes, I was dumb. But no one recorded it, so only a teensy fraction of the population has to know. And they were less than sober, too, so their recall would be lacking.

More stuff to read about cyber-vetting:

The rights and wrongs of cyber-vetting

The world of work: how cyber-vetting catches job liars

Ever been cyber-vetted?

‘Cyber-vetting’ and your ‘net rep’

Your digital dirt can come back to haunt you

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Entrepreneurs Are H-O-T

If you have a yen to make a dollar (holy bad joke, Batman) by joining the entrepreneurial ranks (the badness of that is still hurting me), then you are in luck, my friend. Being young and hip and using your noggin to come up with the next new thing is now considered perfectly respectable. So much so, that High Point University is now offering a Bachelor of Science in Entrepreneurship.

“The Entrepreneurship major is intended for people who are interested in becoming owners of small businesses, working in a family-owned business upon graduation, or who are interested in the unique concerns of managing a small business. Students will learn to deal with the issues of starting a new business venture and also the management issues unique to the small business.”

Which means that you might possibly be able to work it so the ‘rents will pay for you to learn how to kick some entrepreneurial booty. Or, if your parents won’t fork out the tuition, student loans are more easily obtained than business loans. I’m just saying.

You can look at all the entrepreneurial hype as intensely frustrating competition if you’ve already been slaving away in your basement for years working on that digital shoehorn. Or you can look at the new wave as inspirational information (I‘m rolling my eyes, too). Glean what you need, and try to remember that competition makes the world…shinier?

Here are some interesting articles that will either make you sing with inspiration or flare your nostrils and close your eyes while you try to keep the anger inside.

If you want to wonder what in the hell you’ve been doing with all of your spare time, be sure to read about the bright young things, all age 25 and under, who are considered by Business Week Online to be the best young biz whizzes in America. This includes the kiddos from YouTube, Digg and Facebook. And Ben Casnocha of Comcate, who you can just tell is incapable of turning his brain off. I think he just never stops.

Not on that list: Ramit Sethi. Is he under 25? Not sure. But he’s ridiculously smart, and it’s impossible for me to not have absolute respect for someone who has a ranting blog called Things I Hate. It doesn’t matter how foul my mood or how not funny my life is at the moment; if I read one line of Things I Hate, I’m laughing so hard I’m crying (and also snorting, which is certainly unfortunate and not at all polite).

An article on the blog gradschoolstory.com lists one of the top ten reasons for going to graduate school as the perfect place to start starting up your startup. It’s late, and yes, that was satisfying to write.

The Guardian has several articles in their technology section about a whole slew of Web entrepreneurs.

Web 2.0 in general
Bebo, Michael and Xochi Birch
Blogger/Odeo, Evan Williams
Craigslist, Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster
Del.icio.us, Joshua Schachter
Digg, Kevin Rose
Feed Burner, Dick Costolo
Flickr, Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield
Last.fm, Martin Stiksel
Netvibes, Tariq Krim
Technorati, David L. Sifry
Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales
WordPress, Matt Mullenweg
Writely, Sam Schillace

And if you just want to look at something pretty and be able to think to yourself (in a totally non-competitive way) “That’s genius! Why didn’t I think of that? Of course! A dance floor that generates usable energy!” then you should take a gander at Springwise.com. It’s one idea after another, in streamlined and well-lit perfection. Yes, it’s the rainy season in Seattle and I require well-lit websites.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

College | College Education