So how much time people spent on Gopher in nineties?

While I was asking a question today about how the Gopher was used back then, someone already asked the same question (16-23.02.1994) and wrote down the answers back then. These are not just any data, because the questionnaire was made in accordance with the art and was published as a scientific article.

It is also interesting that the survey was conducted within a group of secondary school and college teachers. So where we expected a lot of interest in Gopher. Additionally, school teachers in the US and their counterparts in the world were listed.

We can read all survey in [Journal of Science Education and Technology 1995-09: Volume 4, Issue 3.]. I wrote down the most interesting fragments.

The survey shows what came out of the earlier responses collected today. Of all the activities on the web, Gopher was far from the most popular. BBS surpassed the popularity of Gopher in every category. Additionally, universities outside the US appear to have the slightest interest in Gopher.

It can be suspected that outside the academic environment, the data would be even lower for Gopher, and higher for others.

An Exploratory Study of Science Educators' Use of the Internet

Carol Landis, Tony Murphy, Teresa Schretter, and David L. Haury

[...] The Internet survey was posted to 27 news groups on February 16, 1994, with responses re quested by February 23, 1994. See Table I for the list of newsgroups. Respondents to the Internet sur vey were asked to reply to an e-mail address of one of the researchers and were assured of confidenti ality. The survey responses were then printed for analysis. [...]

Electronic Survey

ARE YOU A SCIENCE TEACHER?

A group of us are interested in finding out about science teachers' use of electronic networks. Any science teacher that responds to the following short survey will subsequently be provided access to electronic resources of interest to science educators. When responding, please enter your answers after each statement or question. If possible, please respond by Wednesday, February 23rd. Your responses will remain confidential. Thank you.

Send your completed survey to: amurphy@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu [...]

9. How would you categorize your time (by percentages) online?

% of time on e-mail? % of time using bulletin boards?

% of time gophering?

% of time doing other things? (please list and give %6)

Fig. 2. Internet survey instrument.

Table III.

Question (See Fig. 2 for complete questions)

U.S. secondary (N = 11)

-----------------------

9 % of time using

e-mail (5%-100%)

5 @ 5-30%

5 @ 40-50%

1 @ 100%

bbs (5-60%) 7 users

gopher (5-40%) (7 users)

other (i.e., ftp, exploring, newsgroups, Archie, Mosaic, word processing, online notebook)

International secondary (N =4)

------------------------------

9 % of time using

e-mail (20-80%)

3 @ 20-30%

1 @ 80%

bbs (0-70%)

(0%, 10%, 50%, 70%)

gopher (10-40%) (0%, 10%, 10%, 40%)

2 "exploring" (15% and 40%)

U.S. college (N = 8)

--------------------

9 % of time using

e-mail (10-90%)

5 @ 10-40%

1 @ 80%

1 @ 90%

bbs (5-80%)

(6 of 7 users reported bbs use) 4 ranged from 5% to 25%

gopher (5-40%) 5 users reporting

1 @ 80%

other (i.e., ftp, exploring, newsgroups, telnetting, research database use)

International third level

-------------------------

9 % of time using

e-mail (10-95%)

4 @ 10-33%

1 @ 60%

1 @ 95%

bbs (0-50%)

(5 of 6 users reported bbs use) (0%, 5%, 20%, 33%, 50%)

gopher (0-20%)

2 @ 0%

3 @ 10%

other (i.e., ftp, articles, writing)

[Journal of Science Education and Technology 1995-09: Volume 4, Issue 3.]

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tags: #gopher, #archive