Faculty Survey Reveals Academic Technology Needs, Patterns of Use

Fall 2005

by Larry Gilbert

As a service organization, it's critical that ATUS hears directly from faculty members regarding both academic technology needs and satisfaction with technology services. For that reason, ATUS conducted a qualitative survey of Western's faculty last spring to learn more about preferred teaching styles of faculty, current and planned use of academic technologies, and faculty experience with ATUS support.

Survey Methodology

The purpose of the survey was to help answer the following questions about academic technology use at Western:

• What teaching and learning methods are used most often by faculty at Western?
• What types of academic technology currently support those methods?
• What plans do faculty members have for future integration of technology?
• What types of academic technology support services would faculty members like?
• How is ATUS doing in providing support for academic technology?

A group of faculty members were randomly selected from Western's faculty database and invited to participate in a thirty to sixty minute interview with the instructional development specialist from ATUS (Patricia LeClaire). Twenty-two faculty participated in the interviews, representing every level of faculty from adjunct to full professor. The first part of the interview comprised each faculty member describing their teaching philosophy, style, values, and practice in their own words. The remainder of the interview used prompting questions to address each of the questions in the bulleted list above.

Keep in mind that this was a qualitative survey with a small sample. Self-selection determined whether a faculty member agreed to complete the survey process or not. As such, the results are not statistically reliable. They are rather an indication of general trends and tendencies among Western's faculty in the use of academic technology.

Teaching Styles and Goals Revealed

Not surprisingly, nearly all faculty survey respondents teach on-campus in face-to-face classes. Despite this expected emphasis, four of the respondents also indicated that they teach 'hybrid' courses that is, those that include both face-to-face and on-line components. In addition, one faculty member indicated she teaches only off-campus students using a completely on-line approach. Despite the heavy emphasis on face-to-face classroom teaching, a majority of those taking the survey also indicted that they still use a hybridized approach in their teaching, wherein some activities are done in the classroom and others are done using web or CD/DVD delivery.' This seems to indicate that many of Western's faculty are supplementing student learning in the classroom by using academic technology for student learning outside the classroom.

One of the stated values of ATUS support is that "we are using technology to solve educational problems, not using technology for its own sake." Consequently, it's critical for ATUS to know the teaching goals and student outcomes expected by Western's faculty. Each faculty member was thus asked to rank the importance of twenty four teaching practices related to the Seven Principles of Effective [Teaching]. The practices that were considered most essential by faculty in this survey were:

• Capture the interest and attention of students
• Communicate high expectations
• Encourage students to focus more on understanding and applying the content rather than focusing on "Will this be on the test?"
• Provide opportunity to demonstrate complete processes rather than delivering discrete pieces of information.
• Explain and demonstrate concepts that are traditionally difficult to teach and/or learn.
• Provide students with a greater sense of control over their learning
• Provide access to extra resources which extend or update classroom activities.

When asked to evaluate the criticality of types of student learning, the faculty members clearly cited "developing students' skills in problem-solving and critical thinking" (i.e. cognitive skills) as the most essential. Learning of concepts and developing students' skills in information gathering and organization followed close behind, as shown in Figures 1 and 2 above.

While stand-up lecture was a very frequently reported face-to-face classroom teaching method, Figure 3 shows that faculty members also frequently facilitate both in-class discussion and group work. As described further in the next section, many faculty members use electronic materials in their face-to-face teaching (e.g. Powerpoint, video). Surprisingly, the most traditional of classroom activities (i.e. writing on the board) was indicated by less than half the respondents.

Technologies Currently Used

Clearly, Western's Level 4 classrooms (i.e. Smart Classrooms) are a very popular form of academic technology. All of the interviewees were enthusiastic about the mediated classrooms and make good use of them for teaching when they are available. In Smart Classrooms, more respondents indicated use of the computer, document camera, and slide projector than indicated regular use of the whiteboards. This popularity is expected, in that the Level 4 classrooms directly facilitate several of the key teaching practices noted above. That is, use of a variety of electronic teaching materials through the Level 4 podium has been shown to "capture the interest and attention of students," "explain and demonstrate difficult-to-teach concepts," and "provide access to extra resources which extend classroom activities."

As indicated in Figure 4, Western's faculty use all types of multimedia resources in their teaching. Although Powerpoint is the most common form used in the classroom, faculty members also regularly use audio, video, simulations, modeling, slides, objects and text through the document camera, and digital images for teaching.

Nearly all of the faculty in this survey use email to communicate with their students. About one-third also use electronic discussion forums to facilitate student interaction. Despite the buzz about other forms of electronic communication such as blogs and wikis, not a single respondent was utilizing those tools for teaching.

Faculty members taking this survey use the Blackboard course management system at about the same rate as faculty across campus (i.e. 68% use Blackboard). However, most of these faculty use only the basic features of Blackboard, whereby the syllabus, class schedule, and other course 'logistics' are stored for on-line use by students. Many faculty members also store Word and Excel documents within Blackboard for downloading by students and also find that use of the built-in email tools is valuable for communication with students. Use of advanced Blackboard tools such as the Assignment Manager, online testing, student document annotation, and study groups is much more limited, as many of the faculty members were not familiar with these functions of Blackboard.

Other forms of electronic communication (e.g. web conferencing) are increasingly available to classroom teachers. Although use of such technologies was not widespread, one faculty member each indicated use of a webcast and on-line chat in teaching, two indicated use of a web conference, and three had used video conferencing for teaching. Although instant messaging may be used frequently by students in their personal lives, this survey indicates that this technology is not used at all in the classroom.

What Future Plans Do Faculty Have For Teaching Technology?

Many of the survey participants mentioned specific technologies that they would like to integrate into instruction, although they had by and large not yet had the opportunity to do so. One of the most frequently mentioned technologies was the so-called 'e-portfolio'. An e-portfolio is a specialized website that allows individual students or faculty to both aggregate web pages and other instructional materials into an individualized collection and to control who has access to various aspects of the e-portfolio. See the related article on e-portfolios in this issue for more information on campus plans for this technology.

Some of the new' teaching technologies mentioned by faculty are already available through ATUS, but are not widely known. These include:

• Library e-reserves
• Flash drives for taking data between classrooms
• DVDs
• Classroom Response System for large-lecture classes
• Streaming media
• Animation, sound, video clips and hot links to "catch up with the students"

Other technologies mentioned will be added to the large list ATUS intends to explore for faculty use:

• Learning Objects and repositories
• RSS feeds
• Use of Gaming Theory and simulations
• Integration of the Gradebook and Blackboard grading with the Registrar's grading system
• Plagiarism detection

How Is ATUS Doing In Meeting Faculty Needs?

We asked for, and got, an honest appraisal of ATUS services from faculty participants. With the exception of one instructor who is brand new to Western, everyone was familiar with ATUS and has used one or more of our services. There was consistently strong praise for the Classroom Services team, based on their technical proficiency, rapid response and friendly manner. Respondents were also very appreciative of the teaching technologies provided to them in the Smart Classrooms, although many wished that such technology was available in a larger number of classrooms. As indicated in the two articles about classroom renovations in this issue, ATUS is already aggressively responding to this need.

Faculty perceptions of the ATUS Help Desk were mixed, with satisfaction depending on the Help Desk students with whom faculty spoke and the speed with which their questions were answered. While some were very pleased with prompt and accurate solutions to their problems, others mentioned concerns such as repeated calls regarding the same computer problem, no call-back, or an apparent reluctance to refer faculty to others within ATUS who can help. ATUS has just hired a new full-time Help Desk Coordinator, with the specific role of being the escalation point for faculty/staff Help Desk problems. ATUS will also institute a process of providing faculty/staff callers with an incident number that can be used for follow-up calls to check on problem resolution.

It was surprising to us that no interviewee is currently using ATUS Graphic, Video or Web Services. Some were surprised that we have Graphics, Video, or Web services available. Although we know that many faculty at Western do, in fact, use these instructional support services, we clearly need to do a better job of informing faculty about the value of our multimedia services. We hope you'll check out the information in this issue about new staff members in all three multimedia areas; you can expect to hear much more about how these areas can help you as the school year goes by.

We were also surprised that none of the survey respondents mentioned the relatively new Student Technology Center (STC). As mentioned elsewhere in this issue, a recent survey indicated that 41% of Western's sophomores used the STC last year many at faculty urging.

This is another area where ATUS needs to redouble its efforts to inform faculty about the valuable services available through the STC.

Conclusion

Our survey shows that Western's faculty members think seriously about the instructional strategies they use and about how these strategies affect student learning outcomes. It's also clear that most faculty members use a variety of teaching methods, with most integrating technology into their instruction at some time during the year. ATUS seems to have done a good job of meeting faculty support needs in the classroom. More work needs to be done to target Help Desk services for faculty and staff and much more can be done to inform faculty about other ATUS services that assist with the preparation of instructional materials.