Students' attitudes towards computer: statistical types and their relationship with computer literacy

Abstract

The results of the diagnostic analysis on students' computer literacy are presented in the article. The study involves students from Lithuanian universities and colleges (N=1004). Based on the study results attempts are made to identify and define the existing statistical types of students in connection with their attitudes towards a computer (emotional - motivational relationship with a computer) as well as to disclose some link with the factual computer literacy. The study data showed that the idea of using cluster analysis to identify statistical types in the student population based on differences in computer literacy and other important variables has been fully justified. The actually existing student types have been identified and described by their attitudes towards computer. It would be important to describe such "pure" statistical groups by qualitative terms and to identify their percentage in general population, as this information could and should be used for optimising and increasing efficiency of the computer literacy development process. In that case the choice of the existing and/or development of the new educational strategies and methods of computer literacy development would be based on targeting not some abstract, "faceless" student, but very concrete and actually existing types of students.