What is YOTS?

The Your Own Technology Survey (YOTS) is a (free) tool to help schools and researchers better understand the digital technology available to their students at home, and how that technology might be utilized to enhance educational outcomes. It can help you answer question such as:

  • What proportion of your pupils has Internet access from home?

  • How many of your students have an Internet enabled mobile device?

  • What proportion of your students would be allowed, able and willing to bring their mobile device into school on a regular basis?

If you are thinking about moving to a 1:1 computing strategy or are considering Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) or Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategies then you need to know the answers to these sorts of questions.

We know of one school that discovered that 15% of their students already owned an iPad, which meant that they needed to provide 150 fewer devices when they moved to a 1:1 iPad strategy.

Our aims

YOTS aims to:

  • Provide schools with a mechanism to survey the digital technology available to their students and as a result inform strategic decision-making regarding their models of technology provision.

  • Provide our researchers with access to data that maps students' availability of digital technology across England to better inform research and recommendations regarding the use of digital technology.

How does YOTS work?

Simply register your school and then send the unique survey link that we provide to your students or their parent/guardian. Once they have completed the survey you can review and analyse their results from your school's dedicated YOTS dashboard.

Who runs YOTS?

YOTS is part of the EdFutures.net initiative, which is dedicated to helping change our current education system to make it fit for the 21st Century. YOTS was established in 2013 by Vital, a professional development programme part-funded by the Department for Education (UK) and provided by The Open University (UK).

What data does YOTS gather?

YOTS is primarily concerned with gathering information about the digital technology your students have access to at home. This includes finding out about their Internet access, the hardware they use or share (for example a mobile phone or laptop), and whether they are allowed, able and willing to bring that technology into school on a regular basis.

Permission & Informed Consent

Permission:

Before you register your school with YOTS you must ensure you have the approval of an appropriate member of your senior leadership team.

Informed consent:

When asking pupils to fill in the survey you must obtain their informed consent. This means that you must make sure that they:

  • Understand what the survey is for and how the data will be used.

  • Have permission from their parent/guardian to complete the survey.

  • Are free to choose whether or not they wish to complete the survey.

Liability:

We do not have any control over the quality or accuracy of the data that respondents provide to the survey. We cannot be held liable for any inaccuracies or damage caused as a result of inaccuracies in that data or the reports that the website provides.

Privacy

What data is stored about students?

YOTS stores the age (but not date of birth), year group and gender of each student responding to the survey. Individual students are not identifiable.

We ask for the student’s first name, initial and date of birth at the start of the survey. This data is converted to an anonymous form before it is stored in our database. The original data cannot be read or retrieved after encoding. The anonymous data is only stored to help ensure that we do not include duplicated responses in your report.

Terms and Conditions

Use of the website is governed by our Terms and Conditions.