While college students are on the cutting edge of technology with cell phones, instant messenger, palm pilots and laptops at their fingertips, when it comes to the classroom, some just want things the old-fashioned way.

A recent national survey of college freshmen and seniors compiled by the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research found that only 12.7 percent of students said technology in the classroom improved their learning.

The study cited a lack of professor knowledge in the proper application of technology, which has led to technology use that is not improving classes or student learning, but instead serving as an avenue for making up missed or skipped lectures.

‘Because this is the millennium generation that grew up with technology, we really expected a higher favorable rating,’ said Robert Kvavik, senior fellow and associate vice president at the EDUCAUSE Center, which studies academic technology. ‘The real news, though, is that it’s not having the same educational impact as the vendors want universities to think.’

The survey’s results mirror those of some SU students’ opinions. While many had some exposure to educational technology – be it PowerPoint lectures, live Internet feed, or the Blackboard Learning System – few noted any huge improvement in the quality of their classes because of the technology.

While the addition of technology can make things easier, some students said it has somewhat phased out the idea of class itself, making it tougher to show up to lectures and discussions.

‘Normal teachers don’t know what they’re doing,’ said Chris Cummings, sophomore computer science engineering major. ‘Most PowerPoints are very dull and wordy. They can’t get it to work, so they spend 15 minutes doing something else and then tell us to leave.’

Many students said they believe the class is less engaging when professors use technology extensively in their classrooms.

‘Kids pay a lot of money to interact with faculty,’ Kvavik said. ‘They prefer face-to-face experiences.’

The need to balance technology with personal contact is something that many faculty at SU have had to deal with in order to ensure students get more out of class than just a 45-minute presentation they could easily have read online.

Michael Sponsler, professor of chemistry, prefers to use overheads and handwritten notes in his lectures over PowerPoint or other forms of technological presentation because they’re more personal.

‘I feel that that other technologies can be used effectively, but that there are traps,’ Sponsler said. ‘It can create canned presentations. Some things, like research, just can’t come across well.’

While familiar with classroom technology such as PowerPoint, Arthur Flowers, professor of creative writing, said he prefers to use only Blackboard and to take his creative writing classes to the computer clusters.

‘Students can participate in a conversation of which there is a record and create a communal document,’ said Flowers. ‘That’s important for a creative writing class.’

With the study and student comments pointing to a failure on the part of the professor to integrate technology, things don’t have to be this way, said Kvavik, as many teachers are not using the interactive tools that could improve learning.

‘Teachers may not know that there are technological ways to do an assignment,’ said Cummings.

Faculty Academic Computing Support Services offers SU professors help and information about learning to use technology in the classroom. Michael Morrison, FACSS manager, said that often professors cannot use technology in the classroom because of time constraints, not a lack of interest. Creating presentations, Web sites, and learning the technology takes a significant amount of time away from other professorial pursuits.

Kvavik was quick to point out that the effectiveness of technology was not reliant on just the teachers.

‘I really thought students would learn a lot, but some are just technophobes,’ said Kvavik, who cited the difficulty in learning computer programs, how to deal with system crashes and the teacher-student barrier as major causes of student technophobia.

Students, too, understand that they cannot place all blame on their professors.

‘I wouldn’t blame just the teachers because I don’t think that most students know how to use PowerPoint or Excel effectively, either,’ Cummings said.

Kvavik is already looking forward to the future and to technological improvement. Eventually, learning systems such as WebCT, Desire to Learn, and Blackboard, which SU uses, will be pursued to analyze trends in how students are using the systems and relate the information to student satisfaction. There are no studies using the tracking information yet, however.

‘We have to look to the next generation of faculty,’ said Kvavik. ‘We have to think of how they’re going to use the tools.’

Published on October 26, 2004 at 12:00 pm