A new survey sheds light on the current digital divide in higher education — and what faculty can do about it in their classrooms, writes Nicole Barbaro // September 29, 2021
I’ll be honest with you: I don’t often use a lot of tech in my courses.
Of course, I use standard education technology, such as learning management systems, audiovisual tech aids and some basic design software to spice up my content — staples of the 21st-century professor. But I don’t often seek out the latest apps, the newest tech or the most innovative tools, and I worry about equitable access to them for my students.
I am always fashionably late to the ed-tech party. And when I do eventually arrive, I often struggle to get the most out of the latest technologies. Although I know ed tech is useful, it can be difficult to learn to use it.
And I am not alone. Students have also floundered, perhaps just as much as professors, when trying to use of all the new educational technology that became the new normal of online learning during the COVID pandemic. In fact, a new report I led from the College Innovation Network finds 20 percent of students reported they struggled to learn how to use ed tech in their courses this past year, and 33 percent said keeping up with how to use new technology has been hard.
The published report, “The New Digital Divide: How EdTech Self-Efficacy is Shaping the Online Student Learning Experience in Higher Ed,” shares results from nearly 700 students across four different higher education institutions, including a primarily online university, a public university, a private university and a community college. The main message from this report is that students’ confidence in their ability to learn and adapt to new technology in the classroom — or “edtech self-efficacy,” as coined in the report — is an important correlate of nearly all aspects of students’ learning experiences that we asked about in the survey. As one student reported, “The programs for some classes were very difficult to navigate. I would’ve really preferred the chance to learn how to use the program face-to-face. Emailing and then waiting up to 48 hours [for a response] could really put a strain on my homework schedule.”
And although many students found ed tech easy enough to navigate, some noticed their peers struggling throughout the year. “Although using such technology was easy for me, that same ease did not extend to every student,” another student shared.
Continue reading: How faculty should deal with the digital divide (opinion) (insidehighered.com)