From Gatekeeper to Champion: Gaining the Faculty Perspective to Facilitate Institutional Change

Overview. Over the past several decades, technology has cemented a permanent role in higher education. Proponents of tech-enabled learning argue that it will increase access to college, make courses more engaging, and personalize the learning experience to better meet students’ needs. Whether technology can deliver on these promises, however, depends in large part on how faculty experience and adopt technology tools in their teaching. Without faculty support and buy-in, students are unlikely to reap the full benefits of tech-enabled learning. Understanding how faculty perceive, experience, and interact with technology will be critical for institutions to successfully integrate tech-enabled learning to improve the student experience. In this presentation, we present key findings from our Annual Faculty EdTech Survey Series and discuss how one institution has developed evidence-based initiatives to improve the faculty experience with tech-enabled learning based on these findings.

Learning objectives. The attendee learning objectives for this session are as follows:

• Understand why gaining the faculty perspective is critical for the successful implementation of tech-enabled learning in institutions.
• Learn about key trends and takeaways from an annual survey series on faculty experiences with EdTech and online learning.
• Understand pain points in the ways that faculty experience and use EdTech in their teaching and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Explore evidence-based strategies that institutions can take to improve faculty experiences with tech-enabled learning.

Survey Approach. To gain insights into the faculty perspective on EdTech, we launched our second Annual Faculty EdTech Survey in November 2022. The survey, which included 491 faculty members across nine diverse colleges and universities, explored challenges in the faculty experience with technology — and opportunities to better serve faculty needs moving forward.

Results: Overall, the results of the survey showed both promise and peril in how faculty are currently experiencing tech-enabled learning in their institutions. Although faculty respondents were relatively positive about using technology in their teaching, many were dissatisfied with how technology is being implemented in their institutions and its anticipated future impact on instruction. We used the results of the survey to identify four key takeaways with implications for improving the faculty experience with tech-enabled learning:

1. Faculty see value in tech-enabled learning, but do not necessarily trust that available EdTech products are effective.
2. Faculty perceive that those furthest from the classroom have the greatest influence on EdTech decisions.
3. Faculty are wary of a tech-enabled future that is more standardized with less faculty-to-student interaction.
4. Faculty are experiencing high levels of technology fatigue and burnout.

Improving the faculty experience with technology-enabled learning. From these results, researchers and higher education administrators in our network have worked together to identify actionable strategies that institutions can take to improve the faculty experience with technology-enabled learning. In this session, we discuss specific strategies that one institution is implementing based on the findings from our survey. First, we discuss strategies institutions can take to gain the faculty perspective on the rollout and implementation of tech-enabled learning, including forming an advisory committee representing faculty across diverse academic disciplines and roles to provide input on decisions about tech-enabled learning and inviting faculty input at multiple stages of the implementation of new technologies. We also discuss institutional strategies to provide faculty additional support and resources for implementing technology-enabled instruction.

Interactive discussion. We will conclude the session with interactive table break-out discussions of how institutions of higher education can leverage our findings to create more effective technology-enabled teaching and learning experiences within their respective institutions. Example discussion questions include whether the findings from the survey resonated with attendees’ experiences at their own institutions, how attendees could implement the institutional strategies discussed in the presentation at their own institutions, and ideas for other institutional initiatives to improve the faculty experience with tech-enabled learning moving forward. After the table discussions, each group will be invited to share key takeaways from their discussion with the larger group.