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

Alignment And Transfer Of Learning

• Studyit.co.nz is part of a broader network of learning contexts and learning goals in students’ and young people’s lives.
• As such, the service must ultimately align with and support learners’ wider education endeavours, and in this section we explore this alignment.
• We will also explore the impact of online as a resource used by students in their learning endeavours more generally
  

Study Behaviours

The study behaviours of students can effectively be investigated by understanding the number of hours dedicated to various study activities at various points in time. Another important area to understand are the behavioural differences between regular school term and exam periods – to guide the Studyit site to tailor content to accommodate the appropriate ‘seasonal’ needs.

During regular term (outside of exam periods), students appear to be dedicating relatively little time to study outside of school hours. On average, students are spending just over four and a half hours per week studying outside of school hours (4.68 hours per week) and the majority of students using the Studyit service (61.4%), study for approximately 4 hours or less in any given week outside of school hours (only 11.5% study for more than ten hours per week during regular term time). Interestingly, males report dedicating more time to study outside of school hours than females, spending approximately five and a half hours studying compared to less than four and a half hours for females (Males 5.51 hours vs. Females 4.29 hours per week).




During exam time, the number of hours spent studying increases significantly. The chart below outlines the number of hours students spend studying outside of school hours each week during exam time. They spend, on average, almost eleven hours per week studying at exam time (10.91 hours) - more than double the time dedicated to the same activity during regular term. Additionally, 41.4% study for 10 hours or more during exam time – representing a large increase compared to the 11.5% spending the same amount of time during regular term (and only 25.9% study for less than 4 hours during exam time compared to 61.4% during regular term).





While the number of hours dedicated to studying outside of school is markedly increased during exam periods, a considerable number of students are also conducting study activities at school during exam periods. Over one third of student visitors to Studyit report studying during free periods at school (35%) and 13% report studying at lunchtime during school hours when in exam period. The majority of students, however, report to conduct their study activities weekdays after 6pm (59.3%) or on the weekend (54.7%). This is consistent with their patterns of usage of Studyit across weekdays and weekends.

Students aged over sixteen years display a greater inclination to study after 6pm on weeknights than their younger, 10-15 year old, counterparts (80.3% older students vs. 76% younger students). The table below outlines the time of day when students do their homework and assignments by age group and highlights that older students, in particular, are taking advantage of free periods and study periods at school, while younger students are more likely to do homework straight after school than older students:

 

Again, this is reinforced in the specific Studyit behaviours – 16 to 19 year olds are far more likely to use the site in the school library as well as the classroom – than 10 to 15 year olds.

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 highlights that 15 to 17 year olds are increasingly becoming daily users (just over 30% in 2003 to over 35% in 2005), as highlighted in red. This group also exhibit similar patterns to adult users.  A less pronounced increase has been seen in daily uptake among the secondary audience (13 – 14 year olds), as highlighted in green.





Students’ overall time spent on the Internet for any type of activity or purpose is, on average, approximately eight hours per week (7.9 hours).  Of all students, 14.9% are spending less than one hour a week on the Internet overall, while more than one quarter of students (27.7%) are spending more than 10 hours a week or more on the Internet. 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.

On average, male students report using the Internet (for any purpose) for longer in a given week than females. Males spend just over ten hours per week using the Internet (10.11 hours) compared to less than eight hours of Internet usage for females (7.81 hours). Older students are using the Internet only marginally more than younger students (8.52 hour vs 8.15 hours). These findings are fairly consistent with young New Zealanders generally - Nielsen//NetRatings’ eGeneration study of July 2005 found that 15 to 17 year olds were spending an average of 8 hours each week online and 12 to 14 years 5.9 hours per week.

Students from lower decile schools (1-3) spend less time per week accessing the Internet compared to students from mid to high decile schools (6.92 hours vs 8.61 hours for mid decile students and 8.53 hours per week on average for students in high decile schools). However, they are accessing the Internet from school to a greater degree than those at higher decile schools, and those lower decile students with access from home use the Internet proportionately more for school purposes, than their counterparts from higher decile schools.

Home-Based Usage

The chart below illustrates the number of hours Studyit visitors spend using the Internet at home for any purpose in a typical week.

On average, students report spending just over seven hours per week on the Internet at home (7.1 hours), close to their total time online in any location.

More than one third of students (35.4%) use the Internet for three hours or less per week while a similar proportion (35.5%) are connecting between three and seven hours a week and 29% connect for more than seven hours a week.





Younger students are more likely to spend more time on the Internet at home than older students which is in contrast to the total hours spent online (higher among older students). Students aged between 10-15 years old spend, on average, 7.8 hours a week compared to 6.8 hours for those over 15 years of age. This could be explained by greater school-based usage among older students.

Male visitors to Studyit spend more time using the Internet at home than their female counterparts, on average just under nine hours per week (8.7 hours), compared to slightly more than six hours for females (6.4 hours). This is consistent with the profile of young New Zealanders generally, with 57% of highly active Internet users under 16 years of age being male¹².

Students in low decile schools are spending approximately five hours per week using the Internet (5.14 hours), which represents over two hours less per week than students in mid-decile schools (7.34 hours) and more than two and a half hours less time than students from high-decile schools (7.68 hours). This finding may directly relate to the disparity in home Internet accessibility across the various deciles of school, rather than a decreased preference for Internet use amongst students from lower decile schools compared to others. Reasonable access for all students is optimally desired, as it is widely believed, and supported by this current research, that the Internet is playing an increasingly important role in the acquisition of information and as a tool for learning amongst young New Zealanders.

For school-related activities, students are spending, on average, almost four hours per week using the Internet at home (3.9 hours) which represents over half of their total time spent online each week. Two thirds of students (66.4%) are connecting to the Internet for up to four hours per week for school related activities while one third are higher users.

Female students spend slightly more time using the Internet at home for school-related activities than males, four hours a week compared to approximately three and a half hours for males (3.6 hours). This represents a greater proportion of their total online usage than males’ (62.9% of females’ Internet usage is spent on school activities compared with only 41.7% of males’).





Not surprisingly, older students spend slightly more time at home using the Internet for school related activities, with those aged between 16-19 years spending on average approximately four hours a week accessing online content for educational purposes (3.9 hours) compared to less than three and a half hours a week for younger students (3.4 hours).  This is an interesting finding given that younger students are dedicating more of their leisure time to the Internet so, similar to female students, school activities comprise a greater proportion of online time for 15 to 17 year olds.

An interesting finding is that students in low decile schools are spending more time per week accessing the Internet at home for school related activities (4.38 hours), than those in mid (3.67 hours) and high decile schools (4.03 hours). This indicates that while students from lower decile schools display lower levels of home Internet access, those who do have access make use of the medium for school work to a greater extent than their counterparts at higher decile schools. More than four fifths of their home Internet use is spent on school related activities (85%) compared with just over 50% among higher decile students.

School-Based Usage

While relatively lengthy periods of Internet access are observed amongst students outside of school hours, overall, students are spending less time online during school, just as they spend far less time using the Studyit site at school.

Students are dedicating approximately two and a half hours per week, on average, to using the Internet at school (2.47 hours) for any activity, while only 26.5% use the Internet at school for more than three hours in a given week. The level of school Internet access among males and females is comparable but older students spend more time on the Internet at school compared to younger ones (2.54 hours vs 2.1 hours for students aged 10-15 years).

Students attending a low decile school are spending marginally more time accessing the Internet at school compared to students in mid to high decile schools which is again consistent with findings highlighted earlier in the report – lower decile students are more likely than others, to access Studyit from school.

Use And Perceptions Of Study Resources

Understanding the resources currently used and preferred by students is important for educators to direct students to appropriate materials, whether online or offline. When looking at students’ usage and perceptions of various resources for school related activities, online resources initially emerge as heavily used and preferred tools (used for the acquisition of information). However, upon closer inspection, it appears that students are drawing upon a variety of resources, both online and offline to assist in their studies and they are using these resources in different ways.

Identifying the current behaviours amongst students in the area of resource consultation provides direction and context for the Studyit service, in understanding how the service fits in amongst the wide range of services available, which can enable the provision of content relevant for needs and usage patterns.

The survey reveals that over nine in ten students are using search engines such as Google to track down information for homework, assignments and exams (91.2%) and more than two thirds of students list search engines as their favourite online method of finding information for the same purpose (67.2%).

Search engines are clearly the preferred online tool for the search of information with the next most preferred option, ‘websites about specific subjects’, preferred by only slightly over one in ten students (11.7%). 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.

While search engines are preferred as a means of acquiring information online, students still engage actively with offline resources. Over half of all students use the school library for help with schoolwork (54.9%). Help from the family and using the public library are also very important resources for students with 45.9% of students seeking advice from family and 43.7% using public libraries as resources.

While students report consulting a variety of resources, both online and offline, for assistance with school-related projects and work – the perceived importance of each resource does differ to the usage reported. The most important resources perceived by students are private tutors and study groups. More than eight out of ten students believe that tutors and study groups are either ‘important’ or ‘very important’ as study resources (83.8% for tutor and 83.4% for study group). This bodes well for Studyit’s online forums which in some ways, can be regarded as a study group style of learning from peers.

While search engines are the most widely used resource for these kinds of activity, they trail other resources on importance and are ranked fifth overall out of all the resources measured. Resource importance rankings are outlined in the table below:

Rank	Resource	‘Important’ or ‘Very important’13
1	Tutor	83.8%
2	Study group	83.4%
3	General educational/study websites	74.1%
4	Websites about specific subjects (e.g. Maths)	74.0%
5	Search Engines (e.g. Google)	67.6%
6	Student forums / chat rooms	67.4%
7	Family	65.7%
8	Public Library	60.3%
9	School Library	52.4%
10	School's website	49.4%
11	Online article databases	45.6%
12	General forums / chat rooms	35.0%
13	Library websites	30.0%

The table below compares the average frequency of using particular resources over a month (measured in the number of times a particular resource is consulted) by students’ age and gender. It is interesting to note that across the range of resources available,  students are most frequently consulting family members for help (average 8.83 times per month) while the popular website search comes a close second – it is easy to ‘dip in and out’ of search resources quickly.

Despite perceiving family assistance to be of lesser importance than many other resources, it is an easily accessible resource for most, and provides some indication that accessibility can be considered to be an important contributing factor to the uptake of any learning resource. When considered in the context of the online medium, increased accessibility amongst students will almost certainly increase the uptake of Internet usage and may have a positive impact on the medium’s frequency of use and perceived importance.

*Caution small sample size
	All students	10-15 yrs	16-19 yrs	Males	Females
Family n=172	8.83	8.81	8.89	9.03	8.73
Search Engines n=342	8.63	7.92	8.67	9.11	8.41
Study group n=42	7.21	8.80*	6.99	9.31*	6.69
Student forums/chat rooms n=49	6.05	11.79*	5.10	2.88	7.18
School library n=206	5.47	4.72	5.62	5.42	5.49
A tutor n=80	5.39	4.74	5.58	6.68	4.76
School's website n=75	5.30	3.06	5.97	8.06	4.48
General educational/study websites n=139	4.57	5.02	4.47	3.5	4.96
Websites about specific subjects (e.g. Maths) n=177	4.46	3.04	4.70	4.27	4.55
Public library n=164	3.40	3.89	3.24	3.69	3.31
Online article databases n=57	3.23	3.40	3.19	4.68	2.73
Library websites n=60	3.13	2.73	3.22	3.19	3.10

Footnotes

12. Nielsen//NetRatings New Zealand eGeneration Report 2005/06
13. A five point scale was used: Very important, important, neutral, not important, not at al important