Inside Higher Ed 2013 Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology — by Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman

From DSC:
I would like to propose some additional — and/or different — questions for next year’s survey:

 

 

Original question:

  • Can online courses achieve learning outcomes that are equivalent to inperson courses?

Another potential question:

  • How will face-to-face courses compete with what’s being achieved via online/digitally-based courses and mechanisms? (One potential answer, go hybrid.)

 

Original questions:

  • What do professors and administrators see as the most important indicators of quality in online education? How does the quality of online courses compare with the quality of inperson courses?

Another question:

  • If we turned the level of scrutiny (which is good and appropriate, BTW) that’s being applied to online courses to our face-to-face (F2F) courses, how would our F2F courses look/perform? How would they compare in terms of quality, achieving learning outcomes, and in terms of long-term ROI?

 

Original question:

  • What do faculty and technology officers make of MOOCs (massive open online courses), and how do they perceive media coverage of the phenomenon?

Another potential question (to students, ed tech staff, admins, faculty members):

  • What might MOOCs morph into and how might those innovations affect the higher education landscape?

 

 

Other questions:

 

  • Should we be looking to faculty members to initiate change? Or somewhere else? 
    (Faculty members’ plates are full, they may or may not believe in the value/benefits of technology, they may or may not be gifted in using technology, and many faculty members don’t have the incentive systems necessary to move forward with online learning or even enhance their F2F courses with more hybrid-based learning approaches.)
    .
  • Will it take a team-based approach to be competitive in the future?
    .
  • (Addressed to faculty members teaching F2F courses)
     Do you know each student’s name in your F2F course and what each of them are majoring in?  How often do you talk to them?  Do you keep track of who you’ve talked to and when?  Do you know what goals each of your students are pursuing? How often can/do they contact you?     Do you find it more difficult to engage your students in the year 2013 as opposed to 2000?  Do you hold the power to change things at your institution? If so, what have you done with that power?
    .
  • Are curriculums keeping up with what’s needed or are institutions of higher education falling behind? Are we being responsive enough, realizing that the rate/trajectory of change is now exponential, not linear?