In the spring of 2013, ITG asked the faculty what they thought about educational technology at Emerson. A good mix of full time (46%) and part-time (54%) faculty from all departments responded.
The most interesting question to us was “What do you think of Canvas so far? What is easy, and what is confusing?” 74% of responses had feedback on specific features: organizing content (21%), assignments (19%), grading (19%), and the gradebook (17%).
We also categorized the responses as mostly positive or mostly negative:
…and positive won by a landslide!
Sample comments:
More results:
Most respondents said they use Canvas, and they use it mostly to distribute content and for other administrative tasks like receiving assignments and grading.
Of those who didn’t use Canvas, the biggest barrier was the lack of time to learn it. Other frequently used technology tools are Powerpoint and Google Docs.
Faculty members’ main goals when using technology are to distribute course content (87%), save time in managing courses (76%), and provide supplementary materials to students (76%).
In general, faculty are comfortable using technology:
What hinders them from using it is the time required to use it in the classroom (34%) and lack of technical skill (32%).
Faculty generally learn about technology from a staffer or by experimenting on their own:
When asked “Is there anything else we should know?”, the responses were categorized as follows:
Sample comments:
We adore you too!
