Many Faculty Expect Undergrads to Use Technology

A survey of George Mason faculty about the use of technology in instruction drew responses from more than a hundred faculty describing over 400 undergraduate courses. In 80% of the 408 courses, faculty expect students to use one or more technology applications such as electronic communication, spreadsheets, Web research, or databases. The survey, conducted in April 1998, included participation from the School of Information Technology and Engineering, the Institute of the Arts, New Century College, the College of Nursing and Health Sciences and the College of Arts and Sciences. The survey was designed to help establish a baseline for faculty expectations for their undergraduate students.  

The survey results were tabulated and graphed by the Department of Instructional Improvement and Instructional Technologies (DoIIIT) during the spring of 1999. Data from the survey are available online at http://www.doiiit.gmu.edu/Survey/tableofcontents.htm.

Faculty were asked about technology skills such as electronic communication, use of spreadsheets and databases, and use of the World Wide Web. For each identified skill, faculty were asked whether they expect students to use this skill in a particular course and whether they themselves teach the skill in the course.  CAS Associate Dean Dee Holisky, who coordinated the creation and dissemination of the survey, cautioned that the results do not represent a formal survey of all technology use in all courses. “We’re very aware that this is a limited sample,” Holisky said. “Nevertheless, we thought it showed some interesting trends, and we wanted to share the results with all our faculty.” Holisky thought the survey would help focus the development of new proposals for the CAS Technology Across the Curriculum initiative.  DoIIIT Executive Director Anne Agee also noted that the survey results would help her staff in planning for the support of students using technology in course assignments. “One thing that was very clear to me from the survey is that faculty are expecting students to learn technology skills outside of their academic classes. So our Student Technology Assistance and Resource Center (STAR) needs to be prepared to provide that kind of assistance.”

Survey highlights include:

The IT skills most expected of students in this sample of courses are:

- Email (used in 95 % of courses)
- Word processing (80%)
- Using the GMU online library catalog (68%)
- Using WWW search engines (67%)
- Accessing course WWW site (56%)
- Conducting library database searches (54%)

These IT skills are considered “lower end” and do not require much instruction.

Students are not widely expected to use “higher end” IT skills, such as:

- Groupware (used in only 4% of courses)
- Designing an advanced Web site (6%)
- Designing and implementing a database (7%)
- Creating templates and macros (8%)
- Programming (9%)
- Designing a basic Web site (9%)

Faculty members reported themselves to be largely unfamiliar with some of these “higher end” applications:

- Designing and implementing a database (only 12% familiar)
- Groupware (13%)
- Programming (16%)

Courses that do expect students to use “higher end” applications tend to offer instruction in the use of these applications:

- Designing a basic Web site (56% of classes in which this skill is used also teach this skill)
- Programming (46%)
- Designing and implementing a database (41%)
- Groupware (38%)
- Designing an advanced Web site (33%)
- Creating templates and macros (28%)

For more information about the survey data, please contact Jim Young at 993-9051 or jyoung8@gmu.edu.