Huggins, Richard

I come from Oxford Brookes, one of Britain’s new universities, in which discussions have been different from those in today’s sessions. We have less scope to consider some of the issues that have been focused on today. We have been asked deliver information technology, very rapidly, to support lifelong learning and professional development, rather than principally undergraduate and postgraduate work.

The Europaeum conducted a survey on Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) usage amongst students and staff. Given that this is a key area of change, we decided to take a look at it ourselves through a survey.

The first finding is that usage is high, which is good news: more than eighty percent of students own their own computer. Some people might consider that amazing, others might say it is not high enough. However, an important finding, which universities need to build into their planning, is that students still use the technology primarily for entertainment.