Measuring information technology (IT) practices, knowledge and attitudes of first year business students

This paper describes a study of IT skills, practices and attitudes of students enrolled in introductory undergraduate computing at UNITEC New Zealand. Varying levels of student computer literacy in introductory computer courses provide challenges to instructors who teach courses with a computer component. Previous studies have indicated that students are becoming more computer literate. The main aim of this study is to determine students' access to IT, what software applications students have access to and use, and how confident students feel using IT. Most importantly this study investigates student's actual knowledge of the Internet, e-mail, word-processing, spreadsheets and databases to see if the variance in computer literacy among tertiary students is diminishing.