July 10, 2003
Student, faculty view on technology often differs, study shows
The first-ever study at the UW to investigate perceptions, uses and expectations of educational technology shows the challenges ahead in meeting the desires of students and engaging more faculty.
Surveys and focus groups involved nearly 3,000 students and faculty, asking them about their current uses of educational technology, barriers to further use, perceptions of their own expertise and the availability of training, among other issues. The findings were reviewed by a group of faculty and staff at a recent discussion session.
Among the study’s key findings were:
- Students expect a dramatic increase in their ability to use technology while enrolled at the UW, and they expect the UW to be responsible for that training. Most students believe that they are comfortable with new technology and a high percentage consider themselves advanced or expert users. But, before they sign up for a class, they would like to know which technical skills will be required, so they can prepare or decide if the course is really for them. They do not believe the current help available for learning about educational technology is adequate.
- Students would like technology to be employed consistently throughout the University. Specifically, they would like to see common navigation on course Web sites. “In this area, it appears that the desires of student and some departments are at loggerheads,” said Tom Lewis, who leads the Catalyst initiative for Educational Partnerships and Learning Technologies. “Departments want Web sites that have their own, distinctive look and feel, and students don’t. We have provided tools for setting up starter Web sites that use common navigation devices, but many people won’t use them because they aren’t fancy enough.”
Michael Eisenberg, dean of the Information School, noted that a faculty member in the school, Melody Ivory, has developed a program that does automatic analysis of the quality of Web sites.
“It might be worthwhile to sponsor her to develop an automatic program based on quality criteria for UW educational technology sites. Then her program could be run on different sites and used to suggest improvements, without mandating them,” Eisenberg said.
- Students believe that they are highly skilled at evaluating information that they find on the Web, but faculty strongly disagree, and would like to see the University support building more information literacy training into existing courses.
- Both faculty and students believe that faculty should receive more training on how to integrate educational technology into the classroom. Faculty cited three barriers — lack of skills, lack of time, and the paucity of incentives for technology adoption.
“We need to work with faculty, to develop more strategies for disseminating information about the resources that are available, as well as training opportunities,” says Scott Macklin, director of the Program for Educational Transformation through Technology (PETTT). Others commented that aggregate figures on faculty use of technology are likely to mask large differences among departments and disciplines. Participants agreed that spreading the word among faculty who have not yet adopted any technologies is going to require more human interaction, in addition to general publicity.
Considerable discussion occurred around the question of students’ technology fluency. While it may be desirable to find an objective way of measuring student proficiency, testing can be expensive and time-consuming. Some participants were skeptical that an institution as diverse as the UW can develop measures for fluency that would be widely applicable. Others thought a concept analogous to the linked courses for the Interdisciplinary Writing Program could be employed for teaching technology fluency.
One conclusion that is indisputable is that interactive electronic communication is providing a new technology for student learning. While students may want all syallabi and course outlines to be on the Web, they will develop electronic means of furthering their education even when faculty are reluctant: 30 percent of students report that they use instant messaging every day for their UW course work and research. Moreover, few students would like to see their instructors use this medium. Peer to peer learning is a reality for today’s students, and collaboration is happening, whether it is promoted or not.
“I think this report shows that UW is doing a terrific job of integrating technology in the classroom,” Information Dean Eisenberg said. “We have lots of faculty using the technology, and we have lots of tools available. Of course, we can always do better, and this report will point us in some useful directions. But we should take pride in what we’re doing.”
The study was authored by Kimberly Gustafson and Kurt Kors of PETTT. The survey itself was the product of several groups including Educational Partnerships and Learning Technologies, Computing & Communications, the UW Libraries and the Office of Educational Assessment. The full report on the survey is at http://depts.washington.edu/pettt/tech_report.pdf.
