Memo to faculty: Your students want you to be tech-savvy, but don’t get carried away.
That’s the message of a survey (pdf) of 18,000-plus college students, conducted by the Educause Center for Applied Research. The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) reports:
College students want faculty members to use information technology, but students nevertheless hunger for the human touch in courses as well, according to a new survey of 18,039 freshmen and seniors at 63 institutions.
Forty-one percent of the students said they preferred their professors to make moderate use of information technology. By comparison, 26 percent said they preferred only limited use, while 27 percent sought extensive use.
“They really want to see it balanced,” said Robert B. Kvavik, an associate vice president of the University of Minnesota who worked on the survey. “They value the interaction among themselves and with faculty, and they don’t want technology to get in the way of that.”
“The students see technology right now as supplemental rather than transformative,” said Mr. Kvavik.
Students in the survey most commonly said that convenience was the primary benefit of the use of technology in courses. They cited “connectedness” second.
Full story (subscription required).
Andy writes! 