Freshquest is a project that looks at the "technological careers" of UC Berkeley freshmen.

Project staff: Megan Finn, David Schlossberg, Paul Poling

The FreshQuest project aimed at increasing our understanding of the technology mediated communication habits of freshman students at U.C. Berkeley. Specifically, we wanted to better understand how students adopt and use information and communication technologies, considering student's socio-economic status and social networks.

Research Questions

• What do the "technological careers" of Berkeley Freshmen look like?
• How do Berkeley freshmen use technology to support their social networks?
• How have the social networks of Berkeley freshman supported their technology adoption and use?

Methods

Interview, focus group and survey data for this project was collected from 18 and 19 year old UC Berkeley Freshmen from February 2005 to April 2006. The quantitative and qualitative data provide a rich picture of the “technological careers” of freshmen at UC Berkeley. Qualitative data gives in depth stories about the young people while the quantitative data made it possible to see trends across the Berkeley campus population. The findings reported on below is from 22 interviews in March of 2005 and 8 focus groups that included 32 people in March of 2006. Additionally, we report on data collected by Berkeley's Office of Student Research in a survey in August of 2005 to incoming UC Berkeley freshmen.

Insights

HOW STUDENTS NEGOTIATE THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THEIR LIVES: Many UC Berkeley freshmen are thoughtful about the technologies that they use and the influence that technology has on their lives.

• Berkeley freshmen use communication technologies to manage their relationships with other individuals and groups. Different kinds of relationships demand different levels of interaction, and students make many conscious and unconscious decisions when choosing to use these technologies.
• Students are aware of people behaving differently online and offline. Sometimes students feel they or others are more comfortable saying things online than offline. Some students have made friends online, although this is seen as a questionable practice.
• There is a variety of students' levels of awareness about information quality issues online. For example, students have a different ideas about the origin of the contents of Wikipedia.
• Some students have delusions of privacy on the web. Other students are very concerned about privacy online and are careful to use privacy settings.
• Communication technologies were often described in negative terms as a distracting waste of time. Some students feel that they should self-regulate their access to technology.
• Many students alluded to there being a social stigma attached to being online all the time.
• Students felt that some technologies were "addictive" particularly video games. Other students described communication technologies such as Facebook addicting.
• In some cases, students have appropriated technologies they use for casual communication for coordinating group work. Students also bring technologies they use for socializing or entertainment into classes.

THE ROLE OF THE TECHNEMENTOR Students rely on their social network in the technology adoption process. Oftentimes a family member, or friend plays a pivotal role in supporting the adoption of one or several technologies that a student may become comfortable with; we call these guides technementors. The technementor doesn't have any knowledge about a technology in the sense that it is easy to characterize all technementors, however, relative to the individual that they might mentor, they have enough knowledge to provide some guidance. Additionally, the technementor is not an absolute position of power; within one set of relationships someone may be a technementor, within another, they may not. Additionally the mentorship might not be in the tradition of mentorship where one individual seeks out another with questions, the learning or help might be far more subtle – in the form of observation.

DIGITAL DIVIDE AND TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION Using interview and focus group data, we considered the internet adoption process for UC Berkeley students from families that make less than $35,000 per year. Adoption of the internet takes place within a "communication infrastructure" including the people and places that an individual acts in. Thus, “adoption” of a technology does not necessarily have the same consequences for everyone. The following are observations about adoption of a computer connected to the internet for students from these lowest income families:

• Students from the lowest income families were the catalyst for getting a computer or the internet.
• The computer and internet were generally purchased primarily for educational purposes in the lowest income homes.
• The lowest income students were more reliant on teachers to show them how to use the internet than higher income students who relied more on their parents.
• Lowest income student did not typically have much guidance from parents with regards to technology use. Sometimes the lowest income students acted as proxies for their parents when their parents wanted to use a computer.
• It is more challenging to study the adoption of a specific technology with computing technology because technologies are often bundled together.
• However, it seems that income level doesn't explain the activities of students today.

The Freshquest project site contains more information including research methodology, project data and reports.