Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012 | Inside Higher Ed:

Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012 | Inside Higher Ed:


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Professors occasionally get lampooned as luddites responsible for the famously slow pace of change in higher education. But in truth the majority of professors are excited about various technology-driven trends in higher education, including the growth of e-textbooks and digital library collections, the increased use of data monitoring as a way to track student performance along with their own, and the increasingly popular idea of “flipping the classroom.”

However, other technology trends are more likely to make professors break into a clammy sweat. These include the proliferation of scholarship outlets operating outside the traditional model for peer review, the growth of for-profit education, and the intensity of digital communications. The digital era has brought to the surface other tensions as well, particularly differences in how professors and academic technology administrators perceive how broader technological changes are affecting their campuses and how they should feel about it.

These are some of the findings in the second of two reports from surveys conducted by Inside Higher Ed and the Babson Survey Research Group. The first report, focusing on faculty views of online education, was published in June. A PDF of the new, second report can be downloaded here; the text of the report can be viewed here.

The survey relied on the responses of 4,564 faculty members, composing a nationally representative sample spanning various types of institutions; and 591 administrators who are responsible for academic technology at their institutions.

The faculty members’ net-positive outlook on several tech-related pedagogical trends suggests that student performance feedback loops and “flipping the classroom” are durable enough to outlast their current buzz. “The increasing collection and analysis of data on teaching and learning on a course-by-course basis” garnered the most enthusiasm of any of the excitement/fear questions in the survey, with 74 percent of professors saying it is, on balance, a good thing.

"Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012" is the second of two surveys of college professors and academic technology administrators about faculty attitudes about and approaches to technology. A PDF copy of the study report can be downloaded here. To read the text of the report, click here.

Inside Higher Ed collaborated on this project with the Babson Survey Research Group.

The Inside Higher Ed/Babson survey of faculty views on online education was made possible in part by the generous financial support of CourseSmart, Deltak, Pearson and Sonic Foundry.

The counterargument has been that this trend could lead to an overreliance on data-based metrics to assess not only student performance but teacher performance, leading to a No Child Left Behind-like regime at many colleges, especially public ones. But the vast majority of professors seem to think that the advantages of Big Data in the classroom outweigh the hazards.

As for “flipping the classroom” -- that is, banishing the lecture and focusing precious class time on group projects and other forms of active learning -- a decisive majority of professors seem to be on board. Asked their feelings on the notion of “changing the faculty role to spend less time lecturing and more time coaching students,” 69 percent said they were excited more than fearful.

The survey did not ask about the specific anxieties behind these responses. Perhaps some professors feel more comfortable doing research than engaging with students, and use the lecture as a crutch. In any case the findings of this survey suggest that most faculty members do not fear the prospect of “coaching” students rather than talking at them.

Ambivalence about Digital Content

Some technology-driven movements have caused tension, particularly in academic publishing.

In general, professors are pro-digital. A decisive majority, 71 percent, said the prospect of “libraries focusing on digital instead of print collections” makes them more excited than fearful (which may come as a surprise, given occasional reports of faculty protesting the removal of print collections from campus libraries).  And 65 percent said they were excited about “e-textbooks and e-resources replacing traditional print textbooks.”

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/survey/digital-faculty-professors-and-technology-2012#ixzz24sCgZZXo
Inside Higher Ed