Friday, June 10, 2011

Report: Information seeking behaviours of doctoral students born between 1982-1994

Tech-savvy doctoral students increasingly look to open web technologies

The UK’s largest survey of the information seeking behaviours of doctoral students born between 1982-1994, commonly dubbed generation Y, shows a ‘modest increase’ in the students’ use of web technology in the last year.

Compared with a sample of older students, more of the generation Y sample had used at least one kind of open web or Web 2.0 technology with only 8% saying they had used none at all.

The report shows that passive use of these open web technologies is more common than active use. Researchers are reading wikis and blogs without adding to them; they make passive use of internet forums for research, and few blog themselves. For example, while 29% made passive use of internet discussion forums, only 13% were active on them.


Source: British Library/ JISC

Download full pdf report
| Link to reports site that includes video interviews

No comments: