The independent, trusted guide to online education for over 26 years!

How Do Online University Instructors Use Online Classes Technology?

 

 
About 40 percent of full-time U.S. college faculty have taught a course at an online university school.

That’s just one result from a new in-depth survey of traditional and online classes technology usage compiled by Primary Research Group. “The Survey of Higher Education Faculty: Use of Educational Technology” includes the results of a survey of more than 550 higher education faculty in the U.S. and Canada. Results were released in January 2010.

Some key findings:

• More than half—53 percent—of those sampled said they would like to be an online university instructor if the pay were equivalent to that of a traditional class setting.

• More than a third of faculty in the sample weren’t proficient with their online university school’s course management system. They said they were either “pretty much lost” or that they “know a little, a few basics.”

• Only a third of the online university faculty (34.83 percent) had ever used electronic whiteboards

• In-class Internet access is highly supported, with less than 5 percent of online university faculty thinking it harmful or worthless

• About 25 percent (26.1 percent) of American instructors reported using the library computer labs frequently; only 14 percent of Canadian faculty said the same.