Atypical pneumonia and the suspension of classes in schools and universities resulted in a dramatic increase in visits to education Web sites last month, the latest figures from Nielsen/NetRatings show.
The Education and Manpower Bureau's site Hong Kong Education City topped the ratings, with a 'unique audience' - the number of people who visited a site at least once during the month - of 524,420, up 87 per cent on the pre-Sars month of February.
But Baptist University, which attracted extensive publicity when launching the Vitle on-line learning platform for schools to enable them to offer synchronous lessons, saw the greatest usage increase, up 228 per cent to a 222,030 audience.
'As Sars scared people away from their normal school activities, they found refuge on the Internet to help them continue their projects and prepare for exams,' said Peter Steyn, director of sales and marketing, Nielsen//NetRatings Hong Kong. Average time spent online increased from 15 hours 12 minutes in February to 22 hours 39 minutes in April. This was double the average in the US and far more than the UK average of nine hours and seven minutes, he said.
Mr Steyn thinks that now students have been forced to use the Internet they will continue to do so. 'They have found out how much information is available on line and how easy it is,' he said.
Of the education audience, 54 per cent were male and 46 per cent female.