EDUCAUSE study of undergrads and IT: more tech use, high expectations for faculty
Posted by Jacque on September 18th, 2007
The EDUCAUSE Center for Academic Research (ECAR) has released their 2007 report, the fourth year of a longitudinal study, based on quantitative data from a spring 2007 survey and interviews with 27,846 freshman, senior, and community college students at 103 higher education institutions.
It focuses on what kinds of information technologies the students use, own, and experience; their technology behaviors, preferences, and skills; how IT impacts their experiences in their courses; and their perceptions of the role of IT in the academic experience. Some key findings are summarized in the accompanying tables and graphs in this post.
Among the results noted in the Executive Summary (PDF) are some especially important ones for faculty and administrators.
“Students put responsibility for the link between technology and their learning squarely on the shoulders of instructors and admiistrators.” Rarely do they attribute IT-related learning problems to their own technical limitations.
Based on survey comments, institutions need to emphasize: developing instructors’ technology skill sets; training instructors on how and when to effectively integrate technology and pedagogy; increasing instructor and administrator awareness about how their students differ in technolgy savvy and access to tech resources and how to factor that into instruction; and improving the speed, reliability, and support of the institution’s network and academic applications, especially course management systems.
