Survey: 20% of Japanese students don't know any keyboard shortcuts, 40% unfamiliar with...

[midian182]

Facepalm: How well do you know your shortcut keys? Do you use Ctrl + Shift + T to reopen a recently closed browsing tab? What about Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the task manager directly? Maybe not, but surely most computer users are familiar with the long-used and universal Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V for copying and pasting, respectively? Not in Japan, where a new survey shows 40% of students are unfamiliar with these keys, and almost 20% don't know any shortcut keys at all.

Menter, part of White Inc. Japan, conducted the survey to discover how familiar students in the Asian nation are with some of the more popular keyboard shortcuts.

The most well-known of these was Ctrl + C, with a still surprisingly small 62.6% knowing it was used to copy data. Even more surprising is that a lower percentage, 59.2%, knew that Ctrl + V is used to paste the copied data.

Check out: Computer Tips & Tricks Everyone Should Know

The third best-known shortcut among the students is the undo recent action shortcut, Ctrl + Z. Just 30.6% of participants said they are familiar with this combo, half the number of those who know how to copy and paste using keys.

The next four entries on the list – Ctrl + X (cut), Ctrl + S (save), Ctrl + A (select all), Ctrl + P (print) – were all known by around 27% of those surveyed. While Ctrl + N, used to open a new window, document, etc., is bottom of the list, familiar to just 16.8% of students.

The final question asked how many students knew no shortcut keys at all, not even copy and paste. It turns out that 19.8% of students in Japan have no idea what any of them do.

It should be noted that the survey sample size is quite small at 519 students, and 5.8% said they own neither a laptop nor a desktop.

The copy and paste keys are so heavily used by some professions that it led to programming website Stack Overflow creating The Key. Originally an April Fool's Day joke, the 3-key keyboard consisting of Ctrl, C, and V keys proved so popular that it was updated with a new RGB version.

Thanks, Tom's Hardware

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/101084-survey-20-japanese-students-dont-know-any-keyboard.html

 

[Plague]

The sample size is too small to be meaningful.

 

[MaestroIT]

Do you think the survey is useless with this sample size?
1) yes
2) no
3) I don't know

 

[Theinsanegamer]

GUIs are a thing. Who uses the keyboard shortcuts anymore? I rarely use them when working with spreadsheets, but most people dont do that.

 

[Uncle Al]

What a laugh! I learned them all back in my old Apple II days and have continued to use them. Of course, they are no longer pushed since Windows came along. Time for a little more push in education!

 

[Dunkerton]

If you don't know what CTRL + W does, you should try it right now.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

That's pretty impressive, I bet it's far lower here in the US

 

[madboyv1]

If you don't know what CTRL + W does, you should try it right now.

I'm partial to CTRL+SHIFT+W but maybe it's because I'm an all or nothing kind of user.

 

[Raytrace3D]

That's kind of sad... :/

 

[hahahanoobs]

I'm still amazed at how many US/EU youtubers I see using their mouse to control a video.

 

[bondflavor]

Keyboard functions I am aware of and use extensively while programming:
Ctrl + C,V - copy/paste, obviously
Ctrl + Z - undo, obviously
Ctrl + Shift + Z - redo
Ctrl + Arrow Left/Right - move cursor one word at a time
Ctrl + Backspace - delete one word at a time
Shift + Arrow Left/Right - highlight text
Home/End - move cursor to beginning or end of line
Home/End + Shift - highlight entire line (when starting from either end)
Ctrl + A - select all
Ctrl + F - find (though in Visual Studio I tend to use Ctrl + Shift + F to find all, and Ctrl + Shift + H for replace all)
Ctrl + Win + Arrow Left/Right - change current virtual desktop
Alt + Tab - switch windows

Home and end in particular get so much use that I would be non-functional trying to program with a keyboard that lacked them.

Ones I'm aware of but don't use much
Ctrl + Home/End - move cursor to beginning or end of document
Ctrl + S - save (for whatever reason I tend to manually click the save icon instead)
Alt-F4 - close current program
Ctrl + Alt + Delete - open security options, including task manager
Win + Tab - open task view
Win + Arrow keys - Change window position and state
F5 - refresh page
Ctrl + F5 - hard refresh page
F11 - enter fullscreen
Ctrl + +/-/mouse wheel - change zoom level
Tab/Shift + Tab - change selected element
Alt - select menu toolbar

GUIs are a thing. Who uses the keyboard shortcuts anymore? I rarely use them when working with spreadsheets, but most people dont do that.

Relying solely on mouse input is far slower and less efficient than using the keyboard for many things. There's a reason they're referred to as shortcuts.

 

[mailpup]

I'd be interested in seeing how these students compare with US, UK, maybe China or any other country.

 

[captaincranky]

Ctrl + Shift + Z - redo

Ctrl + Y is redo as well. however, I'll grant you it is a longer finger stretch.

 

[captaincranky]

I'd be interested in seeing how these students compare with US, UK, maybe China or any other country.

I'd be interested to know how far they had to go out of their way to find 519 students that didn't own a computer. All of them likely had cellphones instead.

I freely confess I haven't the vaguest idea how to use a cellphone. In fact, I've been walking around with a couple of grand's worth of camera stuff, been handed a phone , asked to take someone's picture, and then had to ask, "how do you do that".

 

[RaXelliX]

GUIs are a thing. Who uses the keyboard shortcuts anymore? I rarely use them when working with spreadsheets, but most people dont do that.

Shortcuts are useful for batch repeat actions. Sure, for one or two actions the GUI is ok but if you try and do the same action a 100 times in a row you'll go mad without using a shortcut.
Same with using a command line instead of GUI. Both have their uses.

That's kind of sad... :/

Same category of young people who are so dependent on search that they have no concept of a file system and where things are stored. If the search malfunctions they probably think the thing they searched does not even exist.

 

[bviktor]

GUIs are a thing. Who uses the keyboard shortcuts anymore? I rarely use them when working with spreadsheets, but most people dont do that.

Any person that likes productivity.

 

[monkeylove]

That reminds me of that news about an American professor referring to instructions about computer files and folders, and then finding out that most of his students did not know these.