Since 2006, UMBC has participated in EDUCAUSE research examining how undergraduate students usetechnology and how technology shapes teaching and learning. These surveys provide a long-term view of changes in student technology ownership, access, instructional practices, and preferences.
UMBC participated throughout most of this period, with no UMBC student results available for 2014. Historical results have been reconstructed in accessible spreadsheet format wherever the underlying source material could be recovered.
Access the historical survey data here.
The archive contains the available annual UMBC survey results, organized by study year. Source and archival information is included with each dataset.
What the Surveys Show Over Time
The surveys document a major change in the role of technology in students’ academic lives.
During the first decade of the study, the most visible change was the rapid spread of mobile computing. UMBC reported that smartphone ownership among students rose from 6% in 2006 to 97% in 2016, while laptop ownership had reached 98%. By that point, nearly two-thirds of students owned three or more network-connected devices.
As access became nearly universal, the questions increasingly shifted from whether students had technology to how instructors and students should use it. Students consistently viewed learning-management systems and other digital tools as important to their coursework, while UMBC also documented differences between student and faculty views about mobile-device use in class.
Instructional-modality preferences changed substantially following the COVID-19 pandemic. In the 2018 and 2019 surveys, an average of 69% of UMBC respondents preferred all or mostly face-to-face instruction. By 2022, that figure had fallen to 53%, while 18% preferred mostly or fully online courses. Seventy-two percent of respondents with online or blended experience said they were as likely or more likely to take a course in a similar format again.
The 2023 results continued this movement toward flexibility. Thirty percent of respondents expressed a preference for online learning, while 88% agreed or strongly agreed that students should be able to choose the instructional modality that works best for them.
A Long-Term Shift: From Access to Choice
Viewed together, the results suggest three broad periods.
The first was an access and adoption period, as laptops, smartphones, wireless networking, and other connected devices became nearly universal.
The second was an integration period, when the central questions increasingly concerned how instructors used learning-management systems, smartphones, and other technologies and whether students and faculty viewed those uses similarly.
The third is a flexibility period, accelerated by the pandemic, in which access to technology is largely assumed and the more important questions concern choice: where learning occurs, which modality works best for a student, and how institutions support reliable access across those environments.
The historical surveys therefore provide more than a record of changing devices. Taken together, they show how technology moved from being an additional academic resource to becoming part of the basic infrastructure through which students experience their courses.
About the Archive
The historical source material includes a mixture of PDF reports and older HTML tables. The accessible data archive preserves recovered survey results in a consistent spreadsheet format.
No results have been inferred for years or tables for which source data could not be recovered.