Examining the Attitudes of Students from State and Foundation Universities in Turkey towards the Computer and WWW (World Wide Web)

Abstract

Today, universities’ investments in computers and Internet technologies used to process information and to present this information to students are increasing incrementally. In addition, it is seen that higher education institutions which could plan their students’ education processes by integrating technology into these processes have increased the quality of education. Determining the university students’ levels of knowledge about computer use as well as their attitudes towards the Internet and computer will help determine their technology use. The purpose of this study was to determine the computer experience of students at state and foundation universities and their attitudes towards the Internet and computer. For this purpose, in the study, the “Personal traits, Computer Use, Computer Attitude Scale and Web Attitude Scale” developed by Liaw (2002) was used. The participants of the study were students from Bahçeşehir University (n=645) and from Dicle University (n=1538) in the Spring, Winter and Summer Terms between the academic years of 2008–2010. In the study, the related attitudes of the students from state and foundation universities were observed. The results revealed that the difference between the attitude scores of the students from state and foundation universities regarding their attitudes towards the Internet and computer was significant at p<0.05.