Teaching with Technology Survey Results

Teaching with Technology Survey

Most Faculty Say Technology Has Made Their Jobs Easier

Our 2017 Teaching with Technology Survey found that faculty have a positive outlook about technology’s impact on their work, teaching effectiveness, student learning and more.

By Rhea Kelly
08/23/17

In a survey of faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States, 73 percent of respondents said technology has made their jobs “easier” or “much easier.” And nary a one considered their job “much harder” thanks to tech.

Those findings came out of Campus Technology‘s second annual Teaching with Technology Survey, in which we asked faculty to dish on their use of technology, likes and dislikes, views of the future and more. Their responses revealed a lot about the business of teaching and learning with technology today — and how it has changed over the last year.

While 73 percent of faculty were positive about the impact of technology on their jobs, that count represented a slip of four percentage points from last year, when 77 percent believed the same. The number of faculty who think technology has made their jobs harder is holding steady (17 percent this year compared to 16 percent in 2016), and a growing faction feels that tech has not had an impact either way (10 percent this year compared to 6 percent in 2016).

Whether technology is making life hard or easy for faculty, the majority of respondents (85 percent) feel the effort is worthwhile, agreeing that “Technology has positively affected my ability to teach.” That number is slightly lower than last year, when 88 percent felt the same.

The results were similar when it came to technology’s impact on student learning. Eighty-one percent of respondents saw a positive effect, compared to 84 percent last year. And 13 percent feel tech hasn’t affected student learning one way or the other. “Technology is only as successful as the teacher who uses it,” noted one respondent from a public university in California.

Overall, faculty in our survey hold an upbeat view of technology’s value in higher education: Eighty percent think tech has had an “extremely positive” or “mostly positive” impact on education, similar to last year’s count of 81 percent who felt the same.

A handful of respondents were less sanguine, feeling that technology has had a “mostly negative” impact, and 19 percent saw both positive and negative effects. As one faculty member from a two-year institution in Texas asserted, “Technology is rampant, but the actual impact on learning is unknown. Random studies have been conducted, but no one really knows.”

“In some cases, technology is already overshadowing the learning process and making it more difficult,” opined a respondent from Illinois. “More technology is not always the answer and more technology cannot replace good instruction.”

“As with any facet of teaching and learning, there needs to be enough time for faculty to learn to properly use, adapt and implement for technology to be beneficial,” pointed out a respondent from a Florida university.

“Technology used badly can be horrible,” agreed a faculty member in Georgia. “Technology used to enhance student access to the world and their ability to collaborate and create can be awesome! It all depends on how you use it (like everything else).”

The full results of the Teaching with Technology Survey appear in the July digital issueof Campus Technology. Highlights from the survey will also be posted on this site over the coming months. You can check back for ongoing coverage in our Research section.

Who Responded

Our survey polled 232 faculty members across the country about their use of technology in the classroom, their likes and dislikes, their predictions for the future and more. The majority of respondents (68 percent) come from public institutions, with 28 percent from private nonprofits and 4 percent working at for-profit schools. Seventy-two percent work at four-year colleges or universities; 26 percent are at community colleges (the remaining 2 percent designated their institutional level as “other”).

Respondents represent institutions of a range of sizes, with about one-third (32 percent) working in colleges or universities with 2,500 to 9,999 students. Just under half (45 percent) of respondents are from institutions with 10,000 students or more.

Our respondents are veterans of higher education: The largest group (47 percent) has more than 20 years of experience, with 81 percent logging at least 11 years in the field.

The top three most common school and college types among our respondents are education (22 percent), business/business administration (17 percent) and liberal arts (12 percent). But overall, respondents work in a wide range of disciplines, from engineering and medicine to humanities and fine arts. The top 10 states with the most survey respondents are New York, Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

About the author: Rhea Kelly is executive editor for Campus Technology. She can be reached at rkelly@1105media.com.

Shared Language Courses Fall 2017

With student course enrollments for Fall 2017 on the way, we would like to invite our GLCA colleagues and students in Arabic and German to consider an expansion of course selection options via the GLCA Crossroads Shared Languages Program.

Shared Language Program courses (SLP) courses are especially attractive to students who

want to continue with their studies of Arabic beyond first or second year courses offered at their home campus
need to double up to complete their German major or minor
have run out of options of courses to take for their major
need to take a directed studies because of under-enrollment in a German upper level course
have a time conflict with the course offering at their own college
have run out of options of courses to take at their home institution
need to take a directed studies because of lack of course course offerings
have a particular subject interest that no one program could accommodate
would like to benefit from a global course connections course component
are interested in exploring new pedagogies with digital technologies in a virtually interactive environment
are not able to go study abroad but would like to meet new people with similar interests
eventually with the success of the SLP may minor or major in Arabic
and more..

This program also has great benefits for faculty who

are one-man or one-woman programs and miss having a like-minded colleague for the exchange of ideas and concerns
are concerned about under-enrolled classes and fear of cancellation
with the advantages the SLP affords may be able to expand their Arabic program to a minor or major even with one home institution factually member
wish to expand their facility with digital pedagogies
seek professional development that no one campus can offer
want to join the discussion on ways to address the future of our discipline
wish to teach a course outside of their language program but “cannot get away”
have numerous directed studies students due to some of the reasons mentioned above (usually without any compensation)
and much more

Screen Shot 2017-03-31 at 3.42.25 PM This semester, we are able to offer two SLP courses in Arabic and two in German. Our Arab colleagues from Denison University and Earlham College, Dr. Hanada Al-Masri, respectively Dr. Kelly Tuttle are offering a language course on the intermediate level and an Arabic writing course.

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For German, Dr. Lee Forester is offering a course in German Linguistics and I will teach a course on Germany’s Young Generation. All pertinent information can be found here.

The course enrollment process is simple with the respective registrars having contributed significantly to design a smooth experience for both students and faculty. All the information you and your interested students will need, can be found on this website page, please scroll all the way down.

First pilot semester student feedback results are very encouraging. (Full results are available, please ask.) All students found all aspects of the courses very “doable”, “engaging”, many also “exciting”. They all enjoy meeting other students with similar interests and especially appreciate the added diversity of both students and instructors. They are learning important inter-cultural lessons and can better apply technological skills in the academic environment and beyond.

There are no specific technology requirements. All students will need is a computer with a built-in camera (or plug in a webcam), a quiet, well-lit place to sit, and a stable internet connection. The SLP instructors will provide your students with a course orientation that addresses all technology aspects.

Colleagues who serve as on-campus advisors for students participating in a SLP course will receive a stipend. Likewise, if you chose to offer a SLP course yourself, there will be compensation from the GLCA SLP Mellon grant.

Please also look out for an announcement for a SLP workshop for anybody who is interested on any level of engagement that will take place at Denison University from May 21 (evening dinner) to May 25th (midday).

And finally, the most important feature of this program is that we are offering our students a wider range of possibilities to stay engaged in the language and culture they chose to study.

Please let me know how our SLP team can assist you with any further questions you may have. We look forward to hearing from you.

The GLCA expresses its appreciation and gratitude to Dr. Lee Forester (Hope), Dr. Hanada Al-Masri (Denison), Dr. Kelly Tuttle (Earlham), and (almost Dr.) Basem Al-Rabaa (Oberlin) for their pioneering work and open-minded spirit!

Teaching and Integrating International Students

WASHINGTON – What would international students in American classrooms most want their professors to do differently?

A survey of 662 international students at 23 colleges and universities commissioned by ELS Educational Services found that many international students want their professors to:

Provide more feedback (35 percent identified this as a desired improvement from among a given list of choices).
Seek to understand international students’ perspectives (33 percent).
Make classroom materials available after class (32 percent).
Provide examples of completed assignments (32 percent).
Provide non-U.S. examples in course contents (28 percent).

One caveat for the above numbers is that nearly 12 percent of students in the sample were native English speakers, so their presence in the sample could have skewed some of the overall figures in various ways. For example, 22 percent of all respondents said they’d like their professor to speak more slowly or clearly, while 32 percent of Chinese respondents did.

The sample was nearly evenly split between undergraduates (52 percent) and graduate students (48 percent). The most common classroom challenges identified by the students who were surveyed were: too many writing assignments (65 percent said this was a challenge), too much reading (cited as a challenge by 63 percent of respondents), writing in English (56 percent), participating in class presentations (56 percent), the perceived preferential treatment of native speakers (56 percent), participating in class discussions (56 percent) and professors’ lack of understanding of their culture (50 percent).

More than a third of students — 35 percent — said they felt uncomfortable questioning the opinions of their professors, 30 percent said they felt uncomfortable questioning the opinion of their peers, and 29 percent said they felt uncomfortable speaking in class discussions (the latter proportion was higher among Chinese students, 38 percent of whom said they felt uncomfortable). Nearly a quarter of respondents — 24 percent — said they felt uncomfortable interacting with American students.

Mark W. Harris, the president emeritus of ELS, presented on the findings of the survey during a session Tuesday at the Association of International Education Administrators annual conference focused on how faculty can “bridge divides” and integrate international students in the classroom. The number of international students in the U.S. has nearly doubled in the past 10 years and now exceeds 1 million, representing about 5 percent of the total student population, according to data from the Institute of International Education.

Recruiting international students was the number one priority for university internationalization identified by institutions who responded to the American Council on Education’s 2016 survey on mapping campuswide internationalization, which the association conducts every five years. In presenting a preview of some of the 2016 data – a full report on the survey is scheduled to be released this spring — Robin Matross Helms, the director of ACE’s Center for Internationalization and Global Engagement, said that one key finding is that there’s been a “backtracking” in terms of support for internationalization-focused faculty development opportunities from the 2011 to 2016 surveys. The percentage of responding colleges and universities that reported offering these kinds of opportunities was lower in 2016 than in 2011.

About a quarter of institutions report offering workshops for faculty on teaching and integrating international students — “my response was, wow, only a quarter?” Helms said.

“If we’re not providing faculty with that professional development support, that’s definitely a worrisome trend,” Helms said.

Darla K. Deardorff, AIEA’s executive director and an adjunct research scholar at Duke University’s education program, described the different forms faculty development can take – retreats, discussion working groups, invited speakers, faculty panel presentations – with common topics being things like: “classroom challenges for international students,” “moving beyond stereotypes and assumptions,” “integrating non-Western perspectives into what is taught,” “communicating with international students,” “creating a supportive classroom environment,” “learning styles in different cultures,” “understanding classroom behavior,” and “interculturally competent teaching.”

Deardorff also shared recommendations to faculty international students have made in various focus groups she’s conducted with them. Recommendations include:

to focus on the professor-student relationship
to understand what students are used to (and not to assume)
to be very clear on expectations and to provide examples
to pay attention to underperforming students
to be intentional about connecting domestic and international students in the classroom
to not single out international students (by asking, say, “you’re from Australia, what do Australians think of this?”)
to connect students with various campus resources available, such as the writing center
to use examples from students’ home countries.

“A lot of this we know, but it’s nice to hear it reaffirmed by the students,” Deardorff said.

Denison Language and Culture House

Denison Students: would you like to live in an exciting, culturally-diverse environment, get to practice your language skills and make new friends from many different cultures? Then the Preston Language and Culture House is right for you!

Hurry though, spots are limited and the application deadline is coming up quickly: March 1st!

Like our Denison University – Modern Languages Facebook page and you can see all of our Language and Culture Program events, which you Denisonians are welcome to join! https://www.facebook.com/denisonmodernlang/

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Language House Brochure 2017 (pdf)

AUBG’s Dr. Stantcheva’s Visit at Denison

Working with German professor Dr. Diana Stantcheva from the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) as a collaborative team within GLCA’s Global Course Connections Program over the past four years has been a most productive and enjoyable journey. Both Denison and AUBG students have been collaborating on a great variety of projects for 7 continuous semesters. These courses have ranged from intermediate to advanced level , from language to content-focused, and from simple technologies to complex digitally innovative courses.

Students on both sides have gotten to know each other and both professors over the years, and it’s not been seldom that students who had worked together on a digitally supported project found each other to be partners again three semesters later. Via Google Hangouts and later Zoom video-conferencing students on both sides have met regularly over time to discuss American and East-European culture, US and German politics, the refugee situation in Europe, German media, Homosexuality in German film, gender and family, and linguistic phenomena, and much more – all in German!

This fall, on November 7th, Dr. Stantcheva came to Dr. Dillmann’s “Media in Germany” course to discuss the US presidential election from a European perspective with the class. In turn, students in the course explained and discussed the American voting system with Dr. Stantcheva who was extremely impressed both by how politically informed our students were and how well they were able to describe the complex election system and state their own opinions on the two competing candidates in very clear German.

Dr. Stantcheva’s husband Vladi, an accomplished artist based in Sofia and Berlin, joined us for a campus tour where he talked with several students in German. He was particularly interested in students working at the election information table in Slayter Hall and likewise impressed by how politically savvy and engaged our students are. The stereotype that young Americans are indifferent to the politics in their own country was certainly not confirmed on our campus.

Definitely a highlight of Diana’s and Vladi’s visit – according to both Diana and Vladi – was visiting the Mulberry MixLab with its director, Christian Faur, showing them the lab space with its manifold artistic production programs and demonstrating to them how the various 3-D printers set up in Mulberry and the Bryant Arts Center function. Diana was especially delighted about the special gift she received from Christian: her name laser-cut into a piece of wood.

We concluded the evening with a meal at Day Y Noche, where two of our Denison students had the pleasure to be captured spontaneously in a portrait drawing by the artist at the dinner table. They said that they would always treasure this unexpected gift.

Thank you, Diana and Vladi, for your visit and sharing your thoughts and experiences with our students!

Shared Languages Program Launch

In the Spring 2017 semester, Earlham, Denison, and Oberlin will offer their first Shared Languages Program courses. This program is an initiative funded by a Mellon grant, Global Crossroads, with which the Great Lakes Colleges Association is supporting campus internationalization and globalization efforts throughout its 13 domestic consortial college member institutions.

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In Arabic, Dr. Kelly Tuttle will teach Arabic 341: Alienation in Modern Arabic Literature (in Arabic) at Earlham College while Dr. Hanada Al-Masri will be offering Arabic 300: Media Arabic (in Arabic) at Denison University. Dr. Basem Al-Raba’a will be encouraging Oberlin students, who would otherwise not have the opportunity to continue their Arabic language studies, to participate as guest students in these upper level Arabic courses. Allegheny’s Arabic professor, Dr. Reem Hilal, as well as DePauw’s Arabic professor, Ghassan Nasr, are looking into identifying students for whom these course offerings would be a great opportunity to continue their Arabic studies.

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germanposter In German, Dr. Gabriele Dillmann will offer German 305: Migration to and from Germany and the EU since 1945 (with a special focus on the current refugee crisis) at Denison University in collaboration with Hope College’s German professor Dr. Lee Forester who will encourage Hope German students to engage not only with Denison students in this course but also with AUBG students as part of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance Global Course Connections program. As a globally connected course, Dr. Dillmann’s students have meaningful opportunities to engage with students from diverse cultural backgrounds at the American University in Bulgaria. Albion’s German professor Dr. Perry Myers has expressed interest in participating in the program in the near future.

The Shared Languages program has been in the making since January 2016 and has since then been directed by Gabriele Dillmann for the GLCA Crossroads Initiative. Interested faculty have met during two summer workshops for Arabic, respectively German to discuss language pedagogy, course content, digital pedagogy, and course logistics. A follow-up working group meeting will take place in December at Denison U to discuss course assessment strategies and faculty will offer a show and tell of their pre-pilot work in their current Arabic and German courses. Logistical and technological details have since been worked out with the help of our participating schools’ four highly engaged registrars and apt IT personnel, and an informative Student Q&A has been created.

Many thanks to Simon Gray (Program Officer at GLCA) and all my Arabic and German colleagues, registrars, and IT personnel who are making this exciting new program happen!!

ACTFL 2015 Presentation on Transforming Oral Proficiency

TRANSFORMING ORAL PROFICIENCY WITH DIGITAL PEDAGOGY

ACTFL 2015, San Diego, November 21, 2 pm.

ACTFL_Photo_Hana_Gabi A big thank you to all of you (we counted 96+!) for coming to our presentation as well as for your interesting and stimulating questions and comments! As promised, below you will find all the materials and the complete presentation. Please use as you deem appropriate, but do give us credit if you use the materials in their entirety or a significant amount/part of them.

Presenters:

Gabriele Dillmann, German, Denison University

Hanada Al-Masri, Arabic, Denison University

Content and Purpose:

New digital technologies and innovative hybrid teaching models transform how we teach students communication skills both inside and outside the classroom. In particular, oral proficiency dramatically improves with digital pedagogies compared to the traditional FL classroom. Such tools as Google+ Hangouts and Zoom with their multifunctional interaction tools (screen sharing, chatting, etc.) and Blackboard Voice Board have made online hybrid learning uniquely interactive, intuitive, inexpensive, and inviting for both students and teachers. These tools provide the individual student with more speaking opportunities, in pairs or in small groups, and task-based follow-up exercises, which then allow for constructive and structured feedback from the teacher. This pedagogical approach is especially useful in a globally connected learning context, where students increase both their linguistic and intercultural competencies. Students also learn digital skills and dialogue etiquette in a global context.

Outcomes:

Participants were
– introduced to Google+ Hangouts, Zoom, and Blackboard Voice Board as interactive teaching and learning tools,
– learned how to use these tools to create interactive classroom activities,
– explored feedback strategies appropriate for these tools.

Methods:

Participants were introduced to Google+ Hangouts, Zoom, and Blackboard Voice Board via the appropriate technology, i.e. specially prepared modules (ppt/slides/video material) was projected to the screen from a laptop and discussed allowing for feedback along the way.

We discussed specific examples of the actual experience with these tools from both German and Arabic intermediate-level language courses inviting participants to reflect on their own experiences and pedagogies.

We provided supporting materials, such as handouts of a rubric for both guidelines and assessment/grading, a description of a variety of class activities, and websites for further learning.

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View first PPT Presentation here:

Actfl2015Speaking

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Educational Technology Start-up with a Social Consciousness

This fascinating project shows us how with creativity and intelligence innovative activists can make a huge global and social difference with limited funds and means.

Watch Innovators in Education Episode 5 with Prakash Paudel from Lumened.org to learn more.

Text from the host: “Prakash is CEO of LumenEd. A tech-ed company with a social conscious. LumenED is about connecting students in the United States with students in developing countries. WIth a focus on social learning and empathy, LumenED is trying to create a global classroom. Today we are not only going to talk about connecting kids and how technology can bring a level of social learning to the classroom never before scene, but also discuss what school is like outside of our backyards.”

Lumened’s vision:

“Globalization is rapidly changing the world. The internet, the global economy and climate change have shown that what happens locally can have a profound impact globally. This means that the next generation will live in both a local and global community. But, this isn’t what students are being prepared for. The classroom is still confined to its four walls. Students rarely interact with peers outside their local community. We want to change that.”

The 5 former Oberlin College sophomore students raised money for their project “The Bright Orange Box: Connecting Classrooms” with Kickstarter. The Bright Orange Box is a smart projector that brings digital tools to disconnected classrooms and connects students across the world. It works without reliable electricity and without internet access. The specific project connects kids in distant classrooms globally in a two-way system, i.e. each receives and produces content, in a digital video pen-pal program. The current project connects classrooms in the US with classrooms in New Delhi, India but can be extended to global partner schools in diverse geographic locations.

The Huffington Post calls this innovation: The Projector That Will Redefine Classrooms.

I look forward to learning more about this exciting project in the near future.

Thank you, Cheryl Johnson (IT @ Denison U), for pointing out this video recording to me!

Thoughts on Suicide

This page is dedicated to the memory of Wendell Jackson, “a young, bright student, a remarkable Denisonian with a wonderful energy about him,” and who “had an amazing ability to bring people together. He walked across this campus creating friendships with a huge spectrum of people. He saw differences as an opportunity to be challenged and to learn” (President Weinberg).

He left us too soon. But it’s never too late to learn about suicidal thinking and save lives.

Juliane Werding “Am Tag als Conny Kramer starb”

Thoughts on Suicide

“Suicide is a complex malaise. Sociologists have shown that suicide rates vary with factors like war and unemployment; psychoanalysts argue that it is rage toward a loved one that is directed inward; psychiatrists see it as a biochemical imbalance. No one approach holds the answer: It’s all that and much more …”

Edwin Shneidman, Psychache

“Each way to suicide is its own: intensely private, unknowable, and terrible. Suicide will have seemed to its perpetrator the last and best of bad possibilities, and any attempt by the living to chart this final terrain of life can be only a sketch, maddeningly incomplete.”

― Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

Novelist William Styron in Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness recounts his struggle with suicidal depression capturing vividly the heavy, inescapable pain that can lead to suicide: “What I had begun to discover is that, mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this cauldron, because there is no escape from this smothering confinement, it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion.”