Assessing the Technological Adeptness of University Students in Mauritius

The new generation of students who have grown up surrounded by technology, are often referred to as 'digital natives'. Living in a digital world, it is quite normal for our young population to use emerging technologies in their daily life, be it the regular use of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter or increasing number of videos being uploaded on You Tube or access to computers, laptops and mobile phones, to name a few. We find a similar growing interest in our young population in Mauritius. This has led to a debate whether there is a need for a change in our pedagogical models to integrate these emerging technologies in our teaching and learning process. There are limited empirical studies on our student population's access and use of technological devices in education. This paper has as objective to get the answer from the target concerned. A survey of university students from public as well as private institutions in Mauritius was conducted to understand how technology is influencing their social and academic experiences. The results show a varied outcome in terms of usage and adoption of technologies by our young population in their daily activities compared to its use in their studies. While a certain portion of our so called 'digital natives' have adopted technologies in their regular activities, there is still some who are non-adopters. Educators and policy makers need to ponder over such diverged results as this may influence their decision while adopting online learning. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.