Teacher education students and computers: Gender, major, prior computer experience, occurrence, and anxiety

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to identify patterns of computer experience and attitudes of teacher education students. During a mandatory computer awareness course, the students provided information on their major, gender, and prior computer use. They also responded to a 20-item computer anxiety instrument. This information was collected from 914 teacher education undergraduates over a four-year period. Some of the findings include that over the course of four years, an increasing number of students entered the mandatory course with more experience—during Year 1 more than 50% had no prior computer experience whereas during Year 4 only 33% had no prior experience. Although programming experience remained relatively high throughout the four years, there was a trend of a decrease in computer use—from 33.5% in Year 1 to 28.2% in Year 4. The major areas of increase were CAI (from 6% in Year 1 to 21.6% in Year 4) and CMI, or applications software (from 10.2% in Year 1 to 17.4% in Year 4). A significant ...