What surveys on ed-tech use reveal.
Students’ feelings about learning technology improved significantly this year over last. That’s one big finding in a report, “Higher Ed’s New Normal,” released today by the College Innovation Network, a three-year-old consortium of a dozen institutions operating under the auspices of the WGU Labs. The report is based on the latest of three surveys of ed-tech use: students’ attitudes in the spring of 2022, which it compares with 2021 and with faculty members’ perspectives in 2021.
The findings are noteworthy because the institutions included each year tend to enroll significant populations of low-income students. Like most colleges, they’re also not especially wealthy or selective in admissions. As for the report’s lessons, some colleges are already applying them.
First off, a few highlights from the surveys:
- Two years into the forced shift to technology-powered education, students said they were feeling more comfortable with the tools colleges are throwing at them. In the spring of 2022, 79 percent of students said ed tech had enhanced their learning experiences, up from 56 percent the year before. And just 19 percent of students said they found it hard to keep up with new ed tech, down from 33 percent. (Some of the participating institutions in the two student surveys differed, but the network said the respondents’ demographics were similar.)
- Compared with faculty members who responded to the same questions in May, students generally feel better about online courses (67 percent versus 58 percent) and online programs (66 percent versus 55 percent). So it’s student demand, the report says, that “will likely fuel the transition to more fully online programming.”
- Still, 84 percent of students consider in-person classes effective for their own learning, they said this past spring, higher than for hybrid classes (70 percent), asynchronous online classes (68 percent), or synchronous online classes (65 percent).
- Professors seem to feel detached from decisions about the tech they’re expected to use. Less than half of the faculty members reported that they and their peers had “a lot” or “a great deal” of influence over pedagogical ed-tech decisions, despite “having clear expectations about what they want from ed tech.”
- Hybrid and online formats aren’t just for class. A clear majority of students prefer online options for services such as financial-aid counseling, IT support, tutoring, and even campus events and student-run activities.
Putting the findings to work.
It’s no surprise that students and professors who were the most comfortable with their technology also had the most confidence in doing the coursework — and teaching it. The network’s researchers are big on that “ed-tech efficacy” idea. “Openness to technology was an enhancer to learning,” Omid Fotuhi, director of learning innovation at WGU Labs, told me.
So students’ increasing comfort is encouraging. But nearly a quarter of students last spring still reported struggling to learn to use tech tools, and more than a third said most of what they’d used in the past year was new to them. That’s one reason the report recommends that colleges continue to invest in tech support for students. It also urges colleges — early in each term — to identify students having trouble with their digital textbooks, their learning-management system, or other tools, and provide some extra help.
The network also helps its institutions build that efficacy. At Rio Salado College, students take part in new tech initiatives from the get-go, like Rio Connect, a new virtual student union. As Janelle Elias, vice president for strategy and advancement, told me, “change sponsored by student leaders is much more powerful.” Loyola University New Orleans organizes events in which professors can share with colleagues how they’ve used ed-tech tools.
Fotuhi, who is also a research associate at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center, encourages campus leaders introducing any new ed-tech tool to be mindful of whom it is affecting and how. Who is being “taxed” by having to learn to do something differently? Direct resources their way to make sure they have adequate support. “Being vigilant about where the onus is being placed,” Fotuhi said, is how colleges — or any organization — can minimize the burden of change.
The College Innovation Network plans to continue conducting ed-tech surveys even as its membership evolves. Next up are administrators, with a question or two I was invited to add. Since administrators make most ed-tech buying decisions, I’m eager to see how their opinions match up with students’ and professors’.
Member institutions “are not saturated with tech,” Fotuhi noted, so they’re a good test bed for the effects of new tools. I wonder if the network might favor technology solutions over other approaches, but Fotuhi demurred at that. “If we have a bias, it’s toward research,” he told me. And any change, technological or not, he said, should increase students’ engagement and sense of belonging.
See you at Educause this week?
I’ll be taking part in two formal sessions and one informal one during the Educause annual meeting, in Denver.
On Thursday at 11:15 a.m., I’ll be moderating an important discussion of how colleges and vendors can work together better to advance digital equity. The panel will feature Marielena DeSanctis, president of the Community College of Denver; Teresa Hardee, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Claflin University; John O’Brien, president and chief executive of Educause; and Ed Smith-Lewis, vice president for strategic partnerships and institutional programs at UNCF.
On Thursday at 2:15 p.m., I’ll be joining the meeting’s “Ask the Influencer” session, fielding questions on the challenges ahead in higher-ed IT.
On Wednesday from 2 to 3 p.m., catch me in the Exhibit Hall Lounge. Swing by just to say hi or to give me some hot tips or other ideas for future newsletters. I’ll be the one handing out “The Edge” stickers for your laptops.
Got a tip you’d like to share or a question you’d like me to answer? Let me know, at goldie@chronicle.com. If you have been forwarded this newsletter and would like to see past issues, find them here. To receive your own copy, free, register here. If you want to follow me on Twitter, @GoldieStandard is my handle.
