Racial differences in information technology use in college

In an article from the CBS Business Network available on line, research has proven that racial differences do exist in terms of information technology use in college. While use by black students was just below that of white students, ethnicity did play a role in the use of technology. Ethnic affiliation of Hispanic,Asian, American Indian or from the Pacific Rim showed that use of technology is less. There are obvious reasons including availablilty, funding and awareness but in a college environment the use is less. The authors, Flowers and Zhang, indicated that a student's race and ethnicity also impacted information technology use for two-year and four-year college students. Their research showed that computer use resulted in significant increases in student learning outcomes.

An example of the research includes the amount of time undergraduate students spent using e-mail to communicate about course-related matters. This data is typical of the research by Flowers which showed that all ethnicities show heavy use the computer. With this chart, I found that the Asian use was the top ethnicity who used the computer "often" (96.8% overall) while the white usage at the "often" level was 59.4% (92.8 overall)

Another example of the research showed the time spent using electronic chat rooms for class discussion or homework. Data shows that Asians used the chat rooms either sometimes or "often" 45.9% of the time while whites used the chat rooms either "sometimes" or "often" 24.5% of the time. What does this say? Well Asians might be further from home and family so I don't feel this is a surprise.


The link for this article has additional information and provides interesting reading.