Faculty use and impressions of courseware management tools: A national survey

Journal of Engineering Education, Apr 2003 by St Clair, Sean, Baker, Nelson C

ABSTRACT

Technology in the classroom is changing the way faculties instruct and students learn. Understanding how faculty members perceive and use technology for learning is important for improving the educational process because instructor perceptions can potentially be a hindrance to the use and implementation of technology. This paper describes the results of a survey that investigated faculty Internet usage for instructional purposes as well as their perceptions of courseware management and Web-publishing tools. The survey targeted a random sample of engineering faculty at ABET-accredited universities. The survey results show that while many faculty members are using both Web-publishing tools and courseware management tools for delivering educational content, they use these tools for only a small subset of pedagogical activities.

I. INTRODUCTION

The use of technology, especially the Internet, in the classroom is growing on most college campuses for the delivery of educational content. The Internet is used to enhance traditional lecture classes and to deliver courses to distance learning students. As Internet usage expands, the software tools faculty use to assist in the creation, delivery, and management of educational content also changes. This paper categorizes these software tools used by faculty into two groups: Web publishing tools (WPTs) and courseware management tools (CMTs). The difference between these two types of tools lies in the intended purpose of the tool: a CMT is defined here as a tool specifically designed for the management and delivery of educational content via the Internet. Examples of CMTs are Courselnfo and WebCT. Software that is designed to develop or disseminate online information but not necessarily with an educational purpose is defined here as a WPT. Some examples of WPTs are FrontPage, Dreamweaver, and Adobe Acrobat. For the purpose of this study, stand-alone ftp and e-mail programs (as opposed to the ftp and e-mail capabilities of CMTs) were considered as WPTs because they can be used to disseminate information to students via the Internet.

There are few or no studies in the engineering education literature that report on CMT use. One survey [1] suggests that a majority of instructors are using the Internet and there are studies [2, 3] that show that the Internet can be an effective educational tool. However, CMTs are underrepresented in the literature except with reference to feature comparison reports [4, 5]. The questions as to which tools are being used and how professors perceive the effectiveness of these tools have not been answered and thus were the motivation for this study.

The purpose of this study was to measure Internet usage and assess instructors' perceptions about using the Internet, WPTs, and CMTs for instructional purposes. Specifically, the goals of this study were to:

* determine if faculty members view Internet tools as being effective in assisting in education;

* determine if faculty members view Internet tools as being an efficient use of their time and resources;

* determine which tools are being used most by engineering faculty members; and

* determine the extent to which CMTs and WPTs are being used for specific tasks and how effective they are perceived to be at accomplishing those tasks.

To accomplish these goals, a survey was sent to a random sample of engineering instructors throughout the United States in order to gauge their perceptions of technology use. This study investigated instructors' perceptions of Internet tools as it is believed that perception may be one of the hurdles to use and adoption of technology. The study did not look at how students use technology nor did the study investigate the impacts on student learning. The time and resources allotted for this study were limited and, as such, it was outside the scope of the study to assess student perceptions or to do an experimental analysis of CMT effectiveness. Because actual effectiveness was not measured in this study, we make no recommendations about the use of any particular tool but merely report which tools are commonly being used and how professors perceive the effectiveness of these tools.

This paper presents the development, testing, and dissemination of the survey. Data collection and analysis are also addressed as well as conclusions that can be drawn from this study. The survey and a more detailed collection of the resulting data are available [9].

II. RESEARCH PROCESS AND METHODOLOGY

A draft survey instrument was developed to accomplish the aforementioned goals. The survey consisted of four fundamental portions, along with demographic information about the faculty who responded to the survey. These four sections addressed the following issues: 1) effectiveness of the software tools (do the tools help enhance student learning as perceived by faculty members?); 2) the efficiency of using the software tools (faculty time required to use the tools); 3) types of tools used; and 4) effectiveness of tools, as perceived by faculty members, at accomplishing certain tasks.