Page 35 - Campus Technology, July 2017

RESEARCH
DO YOU HAVE ACCESS TO ADEQUATE SUPPORT AND TRAINING FOR TECHNOLOGY IN USE?
Yes No
29%
71%
FACULTY REPORTING ON THE TECH ABILITIES OF THEIR STUDENTS
5%
8% 0%
Excellent Above average Average Below average Failing
29%
58%
PREFERRED SOURCE FOR HELP WITH TECHNOLOGY
Online search
37%
Help desk/IT department
21%
Peers
20%
Instructional technologist
16%
User forums
2%
Vendor support
2%
Students
0%
Product manual
0%
Other
2%
35
CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | July 2017
Getting Tech Help
Faculty confidence in their technological abilities is growing. A full 84 percent of respondents said they are “absolutely confident” or “very confident” in their tech skills (up from 79 percent in 2016), and another 14 percent consider their skills “adequate.” Just 2 percent said their tech skills are “below average,” and not one person identified as “incompetent.”
Students’ tech abilities, however, seem to be slipping. This year, 34 percent of faculty said their students’ tech skills are “excellent” or “above average,” down from 39
percent in 2016. Fifty-eight percent of our respondents consider their students to have “average” tech abilities; 8 percent called their students “below average” in this area.
“Students are far less comfortable with technology than the ‘digital native’ prophets believe,” commented one fac- ulty member from North Carolina.
The good news: Seventy-one percent of faculty feel there is plenty of IT support for education technology on campus. While 37 percent like to solve their own
problems via online search, 21 percent turn to the
help desk or IT department when in need of assistance. Peers and instructional technologists are also preferred sources of help, cited by 20 percent and 16 percent of respondents respectively.
That’s not to say faculty don’t have gripes, particularly when it comes to new technologies or innovations. “I
think the most problematic part of technology in education is the all-too-common practice of buying some new technology and then not having the expertise to train
the faculty how to use it,” said one respondent in Missouri. “Most faculty are not comfortable failing in front of the class.”4