The impact of technology exposure on student perceptions of a 1:1 program

Many school districts across the United States have enacted one-to-one (1:1) programs to boost students’ “21st Century Skills”. These programs provide a laptop or other personal digital device to every student, with the expectation that teachers will employ modern instructional processes and students will benefit from greater access to knowledge, tools, and both collaborative and individualized instruction. The transformative potential of 1:1, along with the varied contextual variables, makes program implementation difficult. This paper discusses the partial results of a year-long 1:1 laptop program evaluation in one Pennsylvania district. The study employs multiple methods to obtain an initial view of the programs’ impact on students. The study found that, overall, students did not have positive perceptions of the 1:1 program or its impacts, and a significant decline was found for many indicators between semesters. Regression analysis of the collected data suggests that greater use of the 1:1 laptops, along with a robust IT infrastructure, significantly predicts the perceived level of impact a 1:1 program has on students. The information obtained from this case study provides further insight into how attitudes, behavior, and perceptions of students are impacted by these programs.