677-5573, clehmann@usd.edu
1 October 1997

Dear Professor

This letter will explain to you a survey of computer use among our undergraduates and request your help in administering it.

When I talk about work I have my students do on the World Wide Web, I'm often asked whether it makes them better historians/students/writers. A desire to find information to answer such questions prompted me to draft a survey for our undergraduates. Mark Pike of CIDD, several of whose members have helped me prepare it, has agreed to help in the distribution of the survey, but I need faculty members to administer it to our students.

The purpose of the survey is to acquire data that I can use to describe computer use among our undergraduates and to analyze the correlation between amount and type of computer use and success as students. I want a cross section of all undergraduates at all levels and in all majors at USD, not only those in classes that do use computer-assisted instruction. I have randomly selected about thirty instructors to distribute it in their classes. I hope to have about 500 students take the survey. It took one student seven minutes to complete.

More particularly, I want to find out, first, to what extent and in what ways professors are using computer technology in the classroom and/or requiring their students to use computers; second, whether students find computer-related activities useful in terms of learning; third, to what extent and in what ways students are using computers; and, finally, whether there is a correlation between academic success (measured in GPA or ACT) on the one hand and amount and type of computer use by professors and by students inside and outside the classroom on the other. I shall collect other data (sex, age, year in school, major, etc) to provide the opportunity to examine other kinds of correlations. If an initial survey at midterm is not too burdensome, I expect to give it every semester for a few years so that developing trends become evident.

I enclose a copy of the survey. Please comment on it, suggesting changes to the questions, additions, and deletions.

If you are currently teaching courses with undergraduates in them, I ask you to agree to give the survey in all of those classes. You will have to plan a block of time, no more than fifteen minutes, during each class in the week after midterm (27-31 October) to administer the survey. I shall report the results to you, and the entire data set will be available on-line.

Please respond to this request by mail (Department of History), phone (5573), or e-mail (clehmann@usd.edu), including the number of undergraduates in your classes. I shall contact you by telephone if I do not hear from you in a few days.

Sincerely,

Clayton Miles Lehmann