Technology in engineering education: What do the faculty know and want?

Journal of Engineering Education, Jul 2000 by Chen, John C, Ellis, Mike, Lockhart, Jason, Hamoush, Sameer, Et al

ABSTRACT

There currently exists a great interest in integrating technology into the engineering curriculum. The Southeastern University and College Coalition for Engineering Education (SUCCEED) has identified this topic to be one offour "focus areas" for the coalition, and is committed to supporting the effective use oftechnology in enhancing the learning and teaching environment. We report here the results ofa survey of engineering faculty at the coalition universities to identify the training needs and present levels ofexperience with vanous technologies. The most surprising finding is that, despite the wide differences in the Coalition's colleges of engineering, the survey results are similar for all campuses. This implies that the results may be widely applicable to other universities. Generally, we found that the faculty's interest in receiving training in a specific technologyis highly correlated with alow skill level for that topic, as expected. Of the ten potential workshop topics, those in highest demand include:

* presenting lectures or demonstrations from a computer

* creating, editing and incorporating multimedia into course materials

* creating Web pages for a course

* developing multimedia courseware

* developing a course delivered entirely via the World Wide Web

* developing Java applets to enhance courses

* holding electronic help-sessions.

I. INTRODUCTION

Information technology holds great promise for enhancing the teaching and learning processes. Correctly implemented, it promotes active learning, addresses the various learning styles of students, and is more accessible to students via the Internet or on portable media, either synchronously or asynchronously." While examples of successful technology-based learning environments aimed at specific courses or topics abound, a large proportion of faculty simply do not have the skills needed to undertake the development of such projects, or even to borrow and revise them for their own use.

The Southeastern University and College Coalition for Engineering Education (SUCCEED), an NSF-sponsored engineering education coalition composed of the engineering colleges of eight southeastern universities, is committed to a comprehensive revitalization of undergraduate engineering education for the 21st Century. The eight institutions comprising SUCCEED are: Clemson University, Florida A&M/Florida State University (FAMU/ FSU), Georgia Institute ofTechnology (Ga Tech), North Carolina A&T State University (NCA&T), North Carolina State University (NCSU), University of Florida, University of North CarolinaCharlotte (UNCC), and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Va Tech).

The coalition has identified four themes, or Focus Areas, which it will target for improving the teaching and learning enterprises. These areas are Faculty Development, Outcomes and Assessment, Student Transitions, and Technology-Based Curriculum Delivery. More information on these Focus Areas, as well as the coalition itself, can be found on the web at http://www.succeed.vt.edu.

The goal of the Technology-Based Curriculum Delivery (TBCD) focus team, the working committee for this Focus Area, is to support the effective use of technology in enhancing the learning and teaching environment in the coalition's colleges of engineering. At the heart of SUCCEED's strategy for TBCD is educating faculty and administrators about the proven benefits of existing technology. The specific objectives to be achieved include: 1) enhancement of teacher-student and student-student communication using network-based collaborative environments for academic interaction, 2) faculty empowerment to develop electronic mediabased instructional content, and 3) the use of networking technologies to improve management operations throughout the Coalition.

In preparation for achieving these objectives, the TBCD focus team plans to offer a series of workshops targeted at introducing various technologies and building skills in faculty members to facilitate technology incorporation. In order to provide the appropriate training at the appropriate level of expertise, the team has undertaken an assessment to determine the needs of the faculty in the coalition schools. This effort included a faculty survey, the results of which are reported here. The survey results will also serve as the baseline for later assessment of the effectiveness of the TBCD efforts.

A search for archival publications on the specific subject of faculty skills and needs regarding instructional technology was performed, but only a few were found. Furthermore, if the list is further restricted to college-level engineering faculty, and to those containing quantitative rather than descriptive results, there were none. This finding points to the need for such a survey in order to provide guidance on faculty training in using technology.

II.SURVEY DESIGN

The TBCD focus team decided on the following set of design criteria for the survey.

1. It must be brief, so that faculty do not view it as a time burden.