This study looks at which devices and technologies students check out for loan from college libraries, presenting detailed statistics on their use of laptops, tablets, smartphones, cameras and camcorders, mics and audio recorders, tripods, external hard drives, calculators, headphones and headsets, student response systems or “clickers”, mobile device chargers, presentation technology and other devices and technologies.
The study also presents results of an open-ended question through which students make known their wish lists for technologies and devices that they would like to see available, or more available, from their academic libraries.
Data in the report is presented in the aggregate and then broken out separately for fifteen different variables including but not limited to: college grades, gender, income level, year of college standing, SAT/ACT scores, regional origin, age, sexual orientation, race & ethnicity, college major and other personal variables, and by Carnegie class, enrollment size and public/private status of the survey participants institutions of higher education.
Just a few of this 110-page report’s many findings are that:
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By a ratio of nearly 2:1 females were much more ardent borrowers than men of student response systems or “tickers” technology: 3.46% vs. 1.72%. Gay students were also more than twice as likely as straight students to borrow this technology; 6.93% vs. 2.35%. Use also tends to correlate with high ACT or SAT scores, the higher the score, the greater the likelihood that a student has borrowed a clicker from their college library.
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The tendency to borrow calculators was lowest among students specializing in mathematics, computer science, statistics and engineering.
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Private college students were four times more likely than those at public colleges to borrow tripods.