Welcome


This blog is dedicated to the topics of Course materials, Innovation, and Technology in Education. it is intended as an information source for the college store industry, or anyone interested in how course materials are changing. Suggestions for discussion topics or news stories are welcome.

The site uses Google's cookies to provide services and analyze traffic. Your IP address and user agent are shared with Google, along with performance and security statistics to ensure service quality, generate usage statistics, detect abuse and take action.

Friday, October 28, 2016

Faculty Not Sold on Ed-Tech

College instructors still aren’t that impressed with technology in the classroom. In fact, faculty responding to the 2016 Inside Higher Ed Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology said they thought the quality of teaching and learning hasn’t been helped by data-driven assessments and accountability efforts, other than to keep politicians off their backs.

Just 27% of faculty members said technology has improved the quality of instruction at their institutions, while the percentage of respondents who said using ed-tech helped to improve degree-completion rates was about the same. On the other hand, 65% agreed that efforts in ed-tech were meant to pacify outside groups.

The survey found that fewer administrators and faculty members said that technology led to significantly improved student outcomes, making it hard to justify the investment. Both groups think institutions are taking the right steps to protect personal information from cyberattacks.

“Faculty members are still worried that online education can’t deliver outcomes equivalent to face-to-face instruction,” wrote Carl Straumsheim in an article for Inside Higher Ed. “They are split on whether investments in ed-tech have improved student outcomes. And they overwhelmingly believe textbooks and academic journals are becoming too expensive.”