Evaluation of Student Facing Web-Based Services: WickED (Nielsen/NetRatings)

Alignment And Transfer Of Learning

• This section explores the types of resources, both online and offline, used by students generally and those used specifically for schoolwork
• It ascertains WickED’s ‘fit’ among these tools and the perceived importance of resources as well as the frequency with which they are used

Use Of The Internet For Leisure And Learning

Young New Zealanders are, for the most part, using the Internet actively, and it is being embraced as a tool for learning and leisure alike. Today’s New Zealand youth live in a world enveloped by communications technologies, the Internet and mobile communications as central forces that increasingly have become a central component of daily life.

In recent years Nielsen//NetRatings has observed an increase in the number of adopters of the Internet, amongst other technologies, across several countries and the range of age categories. Not only is there an increasing number of Internet users, but also the variety of technologies available for young people to use in support of research, entertainment and learning has grown rapidly over the past decade.

The recent proliferation of communications technologies enables a variety of methods and channels by which youth can communicate with one another as well as access information for personal or school-related purposes. The Internet plays a central role amongst the range of technologies readily available amongst today’s youth, and the chart below reveals the upward trend toward daily Internet use among 10 – 12 year olds as well as a general upward trend across all age of user in New Zealand generally¹.

Student users of WickED are spending an average of 8.43 hours on the Internet in total, for any type of activity or purpose; slightly higher than the 7.9 hours averaged by the older, teenage audience of Studyit.  This represents fairly substantial Internet usage duration amongst many students, providing further indication that the online medium is realising considerable up-take amongst young New Zealanders for a variety of purposes.

Home-based Usage

The chart below displays the number of hours that WickED users spend online at home for any purpose, in a typical week. On average students spend 5.6 hours a week on the Internet at home, far higher than the average 2.8 hours spent online at school each week.

However, a reasonable proportion (12%) of students have Internet access at home but do not make use if it while 37% are spending between 1 and 3 hours online and 20% claim to spend more than 10 hours a week or more online at home.

Total hours spent using the Internet at home

There is no significant difference between the time spent by boys and girls (an average of 5.76 hours a week for boys vs 5.63 hours a week for girls).

Students in higher decile schools are spending more time on the Internet at home than other students - 6.29 hours a week on average compared to 5.6 hours for students from low decile schools and 4.97 for students in mid decile schools. This is likely explained by the higher incidence of broadband Internet in the homes of higher decile students (71% vs 52% of lower decile students) which affords ‘always on’ convenient access and multiple connections, as well as a faster online experience.

Students are spending, on average, 3.5 hours a week for school-related online activities at home – less than half their total time spent online in a given week. This represents a lesser proportion than that found for Studyit users which is not surprising given the increasing intensity of school assignments and exams for older students in secondary school compared with that for WickED’s target audience.

As seen in the chart below, 50% of students are spending up to two hours a week using the Internet at home for their schoolwork.  Girls spend more time doing so than boys - girls spend on average 3.6 hours a week compared to 3.1 hours for boys and 63.9% of girls’ total time spent using the Internet at home is focused on a school-related activity which is significantly higher than boys with just 54.5% of their total home usage focused on a school activity.

This gap is also evident among students attending different types of school – students at low and mid decile schools spend 62% of their time on the Internet at home doing school related activities, higher than students in high decile schools at 55%.

Hours spent using the Internet at home for schoolwork

School-based Usage

While relatively lengthy periods of Internet access are observed among students outside of school hours, students are online at school for an average of 2.87 hours a week. 6.9% claim they do not use the Internet at all at school and 40.5% use the Internet at school for less than an hour. This means that use of the WickED site forms a greater proportion of users’ online usage at school than it does from home – not surprisingly. Students attending a high decile school are spending more time accessing the Internet at school compared to students in mid and low decile schools - 3.05 hours per week vs 2.59 a week for students from mid decile schools and 2.46 hours per week for those in low decile schools. This is interesting given that there is little difference in access to the Internet at school across the three groups but indicates that teachers at lower decile schools could encourage greater use of the medium and introduce more online tools, like WickED, into their lessons.

Girls’ and boys’ average time spent using the Internet at school is comparable - 2.82 hours a week for girls compared to 2.97 for boys.

Hours spent using the Internet at school

Online Activities For Young Users

Fun activities (entertainment) and communications dominate young users’ time spent online while the proportion claiming to use the Internet for school work appears extremely understated given that the sample for this survey is only those students who have used the WickED website. This may indicate that WickED is perceived by students as a fun, learning resource and not classified as ‘school work’ – a very positive finding!

Activities Undertaken Online

Students from low decile schools are more likely to play on-line games and use search engines than other students while those from high decile schools have a higher occurrence of using Instant Messaging, chat / forums, email and posting photos on the Internet, than other students. Again, this may relate to their greater access to a fast connection at home which can facilitate a more positive experience for these activities.

	Students N=146	Low decile N=31	Mid decile N=41	High decile N=49
Played on-line games	79.5%	87.1%	78.0%	75.5%
Search engine (e.g. Google)	69.2%	80.6%	65.9%	69.4%
Email	60.3%	54.8%	61.0%	65.3%
Listened to music over the Internet	44.5%	45.2%	41.5%	46.9%
Watched a video over the Internet	39.0%	41.9%	39.0%	34.7%
Instant messaging	38.4%	38.7%	22.0%	44.9%
Chat room/ forums	33.6%	29.0%	29.3%	38.8%
Posted a photo on the Internet	24.0%	16.1%	19.5%	32.7%

While games is the online activity most likely to have ever been undertaken, the use of search and communications stimulates more frequent use, as seen in the chart below. The figures represent the average number of days students make use of these activities in a given month.

Frequency of Online Activities Undertaken

Use And Perceptions Of Study Resources

Online Resources

Understanding the resources currently used and preferred by students is important for educators to direct students to appropriate materials, whether online or offline. Isolating only online resources, search engines are the most widely used resource which is consistent with the means by which many Internet users (young and old) locate websites and information of relevance and interest. The same is true when students are locating information to support their school work. This finding is consistent with Nielsen//NetRatings’ eGeneration report amongst young New Zealanders, which found that the search engine Google is the most preferred and recognisable online brand amongst 6 to 17 year olds.

As seen in the chart below, search engines are also the most favoured online resource for school work (by more than half of all students) while the WickED website is favoured by just over one in ten and over one quarter of student users claim that it is the only online resource that they use.

Please note that ‘other’ did not allow survey respondents to actually list the specific website to which they were referring.

Types of Website Used for Schoolwork

The above pattern is mirrored by Studyit users though a greater proportion (91%) had used search engines for school work / study and 67% favoured this online resource, while only 8% had only used Studyit (vs 27% who have only used WickED) and only 20% of Studyit users had made use of their school’s website compared with 47% of WickED users.

Among those students who make use of other websites in addition to WickED, just under half feel that WickED is as useful or more useful than the other online resources they have used: 22% feel WickED is more useful, 24% feel it is just as useful, 25% less useful and 29% are unsure. Boys are much more likely to feel Wick    ED is less useful than other websites used while one in three girls are unsure: this correlates with boys’ lower levels of satisfaction with WickED overall, as explored in the first section of the report.

How WickED Compares with Other Sites - Gender

Students above the core target age for WickED are also more likely to find the site more useful than other websites used for school work – 30% compared with 18% of those aged 7 to 12 years. However, a very large proportion of 7 to 10 year olds are unsure where WickED fits in comparison to other sites and only 16% of this group felt the site was less useful than others (vs 30% of 11-12 year olds and 25% of those aged 13 and above).

Attitudes are also slightly different among those attending schools of different deciles. Indications are that students at lower decile schools find WickED relatively more useful than those in mid and higher decile schools, which is consistent with the greater proportion of higher decile students who are ‘very unhappy’ with WickED.

How WickED Compares to Other Sites - Decile

Other resources

Many students are drawing on a variety of resources to help with their school work in addition to the use of the Internet. Traditional tools like friends and family, school library and teachers are used by more than half of WickED users.

Other resources used to help with schoolwork

In addition to its popularity, help from family is perceived as the most important resource among students (88% feel this tool is ‘important’ or ‘very important’ in helping with schoolwork) though search engines come a close second and just edge out public libraries and teachers.

It is positive to note WickED’s position in this list – as the second highest ranked online resource for its importance for helping with schoolwork. Two in three student users feel WickED is important or very important and very few feel it is not important.

The chart overleaf plots the average number of times a resource is used in a typical month. Asking for help from a family member is the resource students use most often at 17.9 times per month, with students asking friends for a help the next most used resource at 15.0 times a month and chatrooms / forums (though less popular) as well as search engines, the most frequently used online resources. This compares with less frequent use of the WickED website and identifies an opportunity to encourage greater use among students to benefit their learning.

Other resources used to help with schoolwork

When comparing the frequency of using these resources specifically for schoolwork and overall use of the resource, it is interesting to note that search engines are used for school-related activities almost every time they are visited and chat rooms or forums appear to be used predominantly for schoolwork.

As seen in the table below, boys are more frequent users of Internet search engines such as Google than girls, similar for library websites and libraries generally, while girls spend more time than boys using chat rooms or forums as well as their school’s website, specific subject sites, general learning sites and drawing on friends for help.

	Students	Boys	Girls
Search engines (e.g. Google) N=110	13.6	16.3	12.4
My school's website N=61	9.6	8.2	10.2
Library websites N=44	11.2	14.9	9.8
Specific subjects websites (e.g. Maths websites) N=59	12.0	10.9	12.5
	14.3	12.8	15.4
General learning websites N=58	11.0	9.3	11.8
School library N=80	10.1	11.7	9.1
Public library N=59	10.0	11.4	9.3
Work with friends N=80	15.0	13.4	15.7
Tutor N=8*	7.6	3.8	10.7
My teacher N=80	14.1	14.1	14.1

*Caution small sample size