Transcript Focus Group Report Presentation

Academic Technology Planning
Focus Group Summary Report
Process Followed
Team – Vicki, Lou, Mike
Provost campus sponsor
 Designate logistical contact
 Selected Participants
• Faculty high-end group, mid to non users
• Academic technology staff
• Academic Technology Planning Teams
• Students
Facilitators’ Role
Process
 Collaboratorium (SFSU, CSUN)
 Recording
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Faculty Questions
1. What challenges do you face in helping students achieve
the learning goals you have established for you courses?
2. How have you used technology to try to address these
challenges?
3. What is your vision of how teaching and learning will look in
2006?
4. What do you need to bridge the gap between where you are
now and what you envision in the future?
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Student Questions
1. How is technology being used in your courses?
2. How is technology being used to support other aspects of
student life?
3. How would you like technology to be used?
4. What obstacles do you face in using technology to achieve
your educational goals?
5. What support and/or resources do you need to help you
overcome these obstacles?
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Academic Technology Staff Questions
1. What challenges do you face in helping faculty and students
use technology to achieve their learning goals?
2. What are some successful strategies you have used in
supporting faculty and student use of technology for
learning?
3. How do you envision using technology in the future to
support faculty and students
4. What do you need to bridge the gap between what you are
doing now and what you envision in the future to support
faculty and student use of technology for learning?
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Academic Technology Planning Team
Questions
1. What progress have you made in the strategic planning
process for academic technology on campus?
2. What challenges have you faced in the planning or
implementation of the academic technology plan?
3. How do you envision technology being used in the future to
maintain and improve education provide by the campus?
4. What obstacles does your campus face in using academic
technology in such a way that you could make such a vision
a reality?
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General Comments
Faculty were predominantly technology users
Student Participation
 Overall small turnout
 Two large and engaged groups, one mostly student workers
All groups were open, communicative and expressed thanks
for including campus input into process
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Faculty Support
Many examples of technology use in teaching/learning
 Presentation technologies in class
 Generalized use of web
 Hybrid courses
 Fully online courses
 E-mail
 Discipline specific applications
Five broad issues
 Pedagogy
 Workload
 RTP
 Instructional support
 Policies
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Faculty Support
Pedagogy
 First concern is becoming better facilitators of learning
• Engaging students in their learning
• Assessing student performance
• Assessing course effectiveness
 Expressed need for faculty instructional support
• Instructional development
• Instructional technology development
• Production/development support
• Coaching
 Expressed need for educational research
• Support methods
• Successful models
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Faculty Support
Workload
 Faculty workload is an inhibitor
 Technology strategies followed to-date have added to faculty time
commitments
 Faculty want the time commitment inherent in using technology
recognized in faculty workload policies.
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Faculty Support
Rewards, Tenure and Promotion
 RTP processes do not recognize faculty effort to develop technology
assisted learning methods.
 Time spent in technology development reduces time available for
RTP recognized activities.
 Student expectations reflected in evaluations put faculty in a Catch22.
 General resistance to the acceptance of learning technologies will
persist until incentives change.
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Leaning Technology Support
Academic Technology Support
 Not enough support available today (resource constrained)
 Not all types of support needed are available (instructional support)
 Faculty consultation is not always a part of support decisions
 More technology equipped learning spaces are needed
 Faculty and students expressed a need for better maintenance and
more frequent replacement
 Faculty need more and better development opportunities
• Needs based design
• Learning focused
• Sensitive to faculty workload
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Faculty Support
Academic Technology Support
 Faculty want specialized instructional support
• Course design assistance
• Design and development of mediated materials
 Faculty expressed a desire for support for collaborative development
of reusable discipline specific learning objects.
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Administrative Support
Policies and procedures impede the use of academic
technologies
 Copyright and fair use of materials
 Intellectual property
 Non-compete
 Other operational policies (scheduling…)
Policy and procedures are perceived barrier to collaborating
across campuses for distributed learning
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Student Support
Five Broad Issues
 Student academic and technology preparedness
 Access to technology
 Student workload
 Student support services
 Accessibility
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Student Support
Preparedness
 Basic academic skills
• Students are often not ready to perform at the college level
• Some approaches have been implemented to mediate
– Online writing labs
– Peer writing review (specialized software)
– Computer based remediation
• Faculty expressed need to collaborate with feeder institutions to
address preparedness solutions
 Study skills
• Students do note organize and manage their time.
 Information literacy
• Don’t understand how to access, validate and use information
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Student Support
Preparedness
 Technology skills
• Basic technology skills
– Digital divide – Gap between those who have and have not had
access
– Often do not have requisite skill with personal productivity
applications
• Advanced technology skills
– Faculty expect students to know or intuitively learn advanced
technology applications
– Often highly complex applications that are not intuitive
• Students express need for training on use of LMS
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Student Support
Access to Technology
 General Issues
• Not enough open access labs
• Access to discipline specific software is limited
• Specialized software to expensive for students to acquire
• In compatibilities between home and campus systems
• Last-mile bandwidth results in unequal access
• Limited remote access to campus based resouces
 High cost of on-campus print services
 Considerable sentiment for student laptop requirement
 Technology fee Initiative
• Faculty and staff favor
• Students generally opposed
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Student Support
Student Workload
 Work, family and other commitment compete for with school work
 Time management skills are not well developed
 Some make additional demands on faculty and study teams to
update for missed classes
 Individual student performance may adversely affect teams
Student Support Services
 Institutional Services
• Want simplified student institutional processes
• Well organized easily accessible information
• Connections to peers
• Want it all online
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Student Support
Student Support Services
 Institutional e-mail
• Most have private mail accounts
• Often don’t use campus mail
• Adds complexity to communications
 Technology services
• Students have expectations for service
• Often don’t know what is available
Accessibility
 Deployed technologies must make accommodation and be
accessible for all students, including those with special needs.
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Resources
The apparent view of CSU faculty and staff is that every
challenge to the successful deployment and use of academic
technology can be overcome with money.
Faculty and staff identified four resource issues
 Facilities
 Technology
 Support Staff
 Leverage
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Resources
Facilities
 Not enough smart classrooms
• Availability
• Management
 Design and configuration of space
• Usability
• Flexibility
• Retrofits and new construction
 Need more lab space
• Insufficient open lab availability
• Not staffed to maximize utilization
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Resources
Technology
 Discipline specific needs do not receive adequate consideration
• Specialized needs not considered in institutional discussions of
technology
• Non-computer related needs overlooked
 Need planned replacement
Support staff
 Not enough in any existing category
 Instructional support resources generally not available
 Some expressed concern regarding the organization and
management of support
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Resources
Leverage
 CO Software programs have been helpful
 Faculty envision system sponsored discipline specific collaborative
efforts
 CO sponsored server farms for AT applications (remote hosting)
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Technology Considerations
Standards
 Support efficiency (Staff)
 Loss of flexibility (Faculty)
 Primarily related to PC/Mac
 Some issues related to common facilities (Classrooms and Labs)
Network authentication
 Multiple passwords
 Multiple print/copy access cards
Strong support for ubiquitous wireless access
Last mile
 Viewed as barrier to distributed learning
 Desire for subsidized/reduced cost access
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Resources
Learning Technology Tools
 Faculty expressed discontent with LMS (especially WebCT)
• Not user friendly
• Functionality of embedded tools
• LMS/browser incompatibilities
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Institutional AT Planning
Campuses generally have not made significant progress on
academic technology plans
 Leadership
 Institutional culture
 Process
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