Barriers to student computer usage: staff and student perceptions

Ensuring that all graduates are able to exploit new technologies is a primary goal of all UK universities and a variety of assumptions have underpinned policies designed to promote this goal. This paper explores some of these assumptions through the findings of a longitudinal study involving a cohort of over 800 university students. The study adopted a student perspective to examine the factors affecting their use of computers over a three year period. Unsurprisingly, the results indicated that situational factors (e.g. access, training and time) influence the extent to which students use computers, but a disparity was found in the importance attributed to these factors by the academic staff, who focused on the needs of their department, and by the students, who focused on their individual needs. Results suggest that increased attention to a student perspective may lead to improved strategic planning in students’ use of computers.