The authors conducted a survey of faculty members
at a Midwest university to determine faculty use of instructional technology
in the university classroom. The study addressed the strength of the relationship
between use of technology and demographics such as age, gender, years of
experience, discipline, and teaching style; the strength of relationship
between use of technology and faculty perceptions of the effectiveness
of technology and their access to technology; and whether there is a difference
in faculty use of instructional technology in the classroom based on gender,
years of experience, age, or teaching style.
The results of this survey were not too surprising.
It found that younger faculty tend to use technology in the classroom more
often than older faculty, and that faculty with less teaching experience
(which also suggests that they are younger) also use technology more in
the classroom. I agree with the authors' theory that younger faculty use
technology more because they are more familiar with it and because they
have not had years of teaching using other methods. The survey also suggests
that faculty who use a more individualized teaching style use technology
more often in the classroom. Finally, the survey found that faculty who
perceived technology as being useful for instruction, who had more access
to technology, and who had more administrative support for technology were
more likely to use technology in the classroom.
This article confirms some basic assumptions about
technology in the classroom: faculty who have had more experience with
technology (typically younger, less experienced faculty members) and those
who perceive a benefit from technology use instructional technology more
in the classroom than those who have less experience and perceive less
of a benefit. While the conclusions in the article are quite basic, the
article does provide several good recommendations for further research,
such as studying the difference in use of technology between professors
on the main campus of an institution and branch or extension campuses.
While I think this type of basic survey research
is necessary in order to formulate theories for future research, I also
think surveys are too simplified and offer too little in the way of real
information to be of much use. A study like this would be gain a better
understanding of faculty use of technology in the classroom if it involved
surveying faculty at several institutions and if it some qualitative information
was also gathered through focus groups or personal conversations.
