Flashlight Case Study

Faculty Use of Technology at RIT: What Online Strategies Are They Using? How Did They Learn Them?

The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has long been a pioneer in distance and distributed learning, and many of its faculty members teach in those programs. Today, however, one of the primary goals for Online Learning Services at RIT is to increase the use of online learning technologies in on-campus courses.

To advance that goal, Larry Belle and Raychel Rappold surveyed a representative sample of full-time faculty in the Fall quarter of 2001 to gather baseline data. How many faculty members were already using online strategies in on-campus courses? How did they learn to do what they were doing? What would they like to learn to do next?

Method: From the list of approximately 700 full-time faculty,150 names were randomly selected based on the number of full-time faculty in each of RIT’s eight colleges. After a relatively unproductive attempt to administer the survey questionnaire by telephone, the faculty members in the sample received a personalized email requesting that they complete an online version of the questionnaire. This proved substantially more productive than trying to reach them by telephone.  A total of 91 survey responses, roughly proportionate to the size of each college’s full-time faculty, were obtained of which 82 were useable

Selected Findings: The following findings are excerpted from a longer and more comprehensive report.

The most frequently selected responses (90 % plus) to the question “What online instructional techniques are you using this [Fall] quarter?” were “email to communicate with students” and “word processing to prepare materials for class.”  “Providing students with links to web resources”, “Internet research assignments”, “smart classrooms” were in the 71%-61% range as were “Accepting assignments in electronic formats”, and a “class email distribution lists”. In the middle range (44% and 37%) were “correcting or grading assignments on line” and “web materials developed specifically for the course”.

Only 18% of the respondents said they were using “Instruction in the use of online data bases”, “online simulations and experiments”, “electronic reserves”, “teacher developed software”, “student online team work”, “online discussion”, “online grade books”, “online chats”, and “online quizzing and testing”.

Most fascinating to F-LIGHT, the study revealed that faculty mostly learned to use online strategies on their own and with colleagues, rather than through workshops. In answering the question “How have you learned to use online techniques” respondents could select as many different techniques as were applicable. 

• Eight-nine percent (89%) reported self-instruction as a method they had used in learning online techniques for classroom use. 

• The second most frequently reported method for learning about these techniques was colleagues (56%). 

• Library Staff, Campus Workshops, and Online Learning /Educational Technology Center ranged from 23%-18%

What’s been done with the finding?  RIT still offers workshops but Belle suggests that the university focus workshops on types of learning, or types of faculty, for which these informal approaches are less effective.

The TLT Group has been working on the complementary front. Since faculty do learn mainly on their own, how can a college or university create an environment where such faculty self-taught learning becomes more productive, frequent, and fulfilling? For more on that, and the role of assessment and future research in guiding that process, check out this short paper.

Steve Ehrmann, F-LIGHT

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