Higher-education technology advocates describe many professors as “skittish” about lectures available on the web, because the anytime availability gives students no incentive to attend class—making lecturers expendable.
Nearly six in 10 IT staff support lecture-capture technology, according to a report from CDW-Government Inc. released this past summer, while just two in 10 instructors are in agreement. The survey revealed the common friction between IT personnel who pushed for wide-ranging campus technology and professors who supported a more gradual approach to technology adoption, especially with web-based lectures.
College faculty “want to resist technologies that replace the traditional classroom lecture,” said Jeremy Hyman, a longtime college educator and co-author of Professors’ Guide: The Secrets of College Success. “They want technologies that serve as a reasonable extension of their courses.”
Hyman continued: “Once professors have that 400-person lecture, they’ve laid the groundwork themselves for the problem. Once you’ve stopped engaging students in a one-to-one mode, it’s a small step for a university to license the content and stream it to students on the other side of the pipe.”
The CDW-G report also showed that one-fourth of student respondents believed the “biggest impediment” to improved classroom technology is their professors’ inability to use the devices and online programs.
Fourteen percent of students said professors simply “won’t use” technology that is available to them. Eighteen percent of IT staffers agreed.
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