Investigating First-Year Engineering Students' Educational Technology Use and Academic Achievement: Development and Validation of an Assessment Tool

Previous scholars have examined the use of educational technology as a strategy for improving student outcomes and skills. Generally, past studies of technology have focused on devices such as computers and cellphones or word processing and web-based software. Students have reported positive perceptions of educational technology as it relates to their learning, involvement and connectedness, to name a few. However, differences exist in undergraduate students’ reported technological skill and use by major, class rank, gender, and race/ethnicity. Since technology is ever-changing and context-specific, this paper describes the development and validation of a particular assessment tool – one focused on the specific types of and ways that educational technology is used by first-year engineering students (FYES). More specifically, the assessment tool was used in an investigation of the relationship between first-year engineering students’ perceived (a) knowledge, (b) usefulness, as well as (c) frequency and nature of use of educational technology and their academic achievement (i.e., grades). Differences were analyzed by race/ethnicity and gender. After distributing the assessment tool and collecting data from nearly 500 students at a single institution, results revealed there are significant racial/ethnic differences in FYES’ perceived usefulness as well as frequency and nature of use of educational technology. There are also significant gender differences in FYES’ perceived knowledge and usefulness of educational technology. Furthermore, FYES’ background characteristics significantly predict their final course grades in the second of two introductory engineering courses. Future work will explore the aforementioned findings in detail. However, this paper offers implications for practice, research, and theory surrounding the assessment tool.