In the spring, ITG asked students their views about educational technology at Emerson.
As with the 2013 faculty survey, we were eagerly awaiting answers to the question “What do you think of Canvas so far? What is easy? What is confusing?”
The results are in, and students love Canvas even more than the faculty do!
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Many had feedback on specific features: most of it was about organization of content (20%), and the Canvas user interface (17%).
A significant amount of students wanted professors to use Canvas even more! Sample comments:
I like it when professors use all of these abilities it has to offer because looking track of everything becomes easier.
I love it. I have one professor who has been taking full advantage of it and it has made submitting assignments and keeping track of grades so much easier. My one complaint is that not all of my teachers have made the switch.
More results:
More undergraduates (79%) than graduate students (21%) responded. Almost all of the respondents use Canvas, and they report that their professors use it to distribute content (97%) and for administrative tasks (72%).
Other frequently used technology tools are Powerpoint and Google Docs.
Students’ main goals when using technology are to access course content (96%), organize due dates and scheduling (78%), and turn in work (75%).
Students are even more comfortable using technology than faculty:
They report that what hinders them from using technology is when professors lack technical skills (51%) or choose not to use it (57%).
They are much less likely than faculty to learn technology from a staff member, and more likely to learn by experimenting on their own or from a friend:
When we asked “Is there anything else we should know?”, we got more positive comments about Canvas, a lot of pleas for professors to use Canvas more, some slightly disturbing information about people’s underwear, and a shout out from a student who works at the IT Help Desk. Hi Lindsay!
