Saturday, November 14, 2015

Faculty Attitudes toward Technology



On Thursday I viewed a webinar discussing the results of a recent Inside Higher Ed survey of faculty attitudes on technology; 2075 faculty and 105 administrators had been surveyed.  (If you would like to view the PowerPoint from the webinar or the webinar itself, you'll find it at https://www.insidehighered.com/audio/2015/11/12/2015-survey-faculty-attitudes-technology )

Four issues stood out for me:
1. When asked “Did use of educational technology lead to improved student outcomes?” only 20% of the faculty and 35% of the administrators said outcomes were improved significantly.  Tenured faculty were somewhat more skeptical than non-tenured but most were in the middle, agreeing that technology somewhat improved student outcomes. The majority of both faculty and administrators felt that the cost was worthwhile.
2. However, when asked “Do for-credit online courses achieve outcomes at least equivalent to in-person courses?” only 17% of the faculty said yes, while 62% administrators said yes.  One of the narrators made the point that it might be that the comparison faculty have in their minds is an idealized picture of a small group of interested, motivated, high-achieving students sitting around a seminar table discussing complex issues rather than, for instance, a big lecture hall in an introductory course.
3. With respect to Plagiarism Detection Software (like Turnitin), most faculty liked it.    The moderator, however, was concerned that students often don’t know what plagiarism is and pointed out that this is something teachers need to address and not just have a false sense of security that if students run their papers through the software they will understand the complicated issue of plagiarism.
4. Finally, there was one issue on which everyone agreed: 93% of faculty said textbooks are priced too high, and 92% thought professors should assign more open educational resources.  Here, the moderator pointed out how much time was needed to find and incorporate open educational resources into a class and, more worrisome, how much time is needed to change those resources as times change, serving as a possible disincentive for course improvement.
What do you think?  Any reaction to any of these points with respect to your own attitudes and your classes here at Lincoln?

4 comments:

  1. I agree with the Inside Higher Ed survey of faculty attitudes on technology. Maybe we should have our own survey (at our next faculty meeting).

    Safro Kwame

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Faculty Technology Circle is crunching numbers as we speak, to find out attitudes about technology from the survey recently administered to both faculty and students at Lincoln. This is the first step in a research process that will include follow-up interviews, and will hopefully result in some interesting questions and answers about the role of technology here.

      Delete
  2. I agree with your summary Linda from this webinar ;students often don’t know what plagiarism is and pointed out that this is something teachers need to address and not just have a false sense of security that if students run their papers through the software they will understand the complicated issue of plagiarism. I see this lack of awareness ,maybe concern shown by some students toward plagiarism. Last week CASA - Center for Advising and Student Achievement- located in Wright Hall , 2nd floor held a workshop titled "Preventing Plagiarism".

    ReplyDelete
  3. Leonie, thank you for reminding everyone that CASA is a great resource for both teachers and students at Lincoln! Hopefully Turnitin can add to what CASA does and CASA can add to what Turnitin offers.

    ReplyDelete