Students' skills and practices of using ICT: results of a national assessment in Finland

The purpose of the study was to investigate Finnish elementary and high school students' skills and practices of using the new information and communication technologies (ICT). Beliefs about the importance of ICT were also assessed. Five hundred and ®fteen students responded to a self-report questionnaire. The students attended 25 schools that used ICT intensively and represented all provinces of Finland. From the analysis, there emerged three factors that represented these students' relationships to ICT. Characteristic of the ®rst factor was a belief that computer supported learning makes learning more meaningful and encourages one to make more e€orts to study. Self-reported competence in using ICT was strongly loaded on the second factor, together with intensive reported use of ICT at home as well as networking with expert cultures and coaching of other people to improve their ICT skills. The third factor represented intensity of using ICT at school and appears to be determined more by the availability of equipment and the extent to which ICT is used in the school than by a student's expertise in ICT. 7 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.