A 2010 Snapshot of Educational Technology use by Teaching Staff of Charles Sturt University

Abstract

This paper presents a snapshot of Charles Sturt University teaching staff attitudes towards and usage of technologies for teaching and learning, drawing on an institution wide online questionnaire completed in 2010 by 246 teaching staff. One of the most interesting findings from this study is the high usage figures for many teaching technologies, including technologies which most would assume would still be used only by early adopters. The study also highlights technologies with relatively low current usage but very high desired usage, including plagiarism checking software for student use, and online assignment marking and return. The study also indicates that teaching staff have genuine educational reasons for choosing to use technologies in their teaching. The findings of this study make it further very clear that assumptions about staff or students' technology preferences, usage or proficiency based on age would be highly misguided. A key finding from this study is that teaching staff at Charles Sturt University are highly diverse in their attitudes towards and usage of technology and consequently, university initiatives need to cater effectively for different stages of technology adoption.