Legal Research

UVic Law Student Technology Survey

By Simon Fodden

Hot off the presses from Rich McCue, sysadmin at UVic Law: UVic Law Student Technology Survey 2010. There were new questions on this year’s survey concerning the mobile technology that UVic students arrive at law school with. Here’s the executive summary:

• 30% of students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet.
• 97% of students own laptops, and over 60% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
• 39% of student laptops are Mac’s.
• The average laptop price dropped to $1,200 from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
• 82% of students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
• 86% of students own MP3 players capable of listening to recorded lectures.
• 54% of students use Gmail as their primary email account, 18% use UVic email and 15% Hotmail.
• 58% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing.  27% chose Google Docs, 5% OpenOffice Writer & 10% “Other”.
• 100% of students now have access to high speed internet at their homes.
• 86% of students use Facebook and 65% of those students would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar of events.  

The student comments in the section on Facebook are particularly interesting. If any other law school has done a similar survey, we’d be pleased to hear about it.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on March 20, 2010 (boomark / email).