Toys for the boys, tools for the girls? Gender and media usage patterns in higher education

Abstract

Since the introduction of digital media the fear of women being left out of the virtual world is expressed in various contexts. With the aim to establish if these gender differences still exist and, if they do, what form they take this paper investigates the use of digital media by male and female higher education students. 1,327 students enrolled at German higher education institutions completed an online questionnaire concerning the digital devices that they own or have access to, and their usage of media and e-learning tools and services for their learning. Using multivariate analysis, the study indicates that male students show higher acceptance values for more general web tools higher than female students, but when it comes to e-learning related tools women show higher acceptance values for a lot more different tools and services than men. The findings indicate that differences in media usage patterns between male and female students are not a question of having access, but of the attitude toward and the reasons for using digital media, and that the mentioned fear of women being left out did not come true.