Student and Professor Perspectives on Exemplary Practices in the Use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and e-Learning in Colleges Adaptech Research Network, Dawson College, Cégep André-Laurendeau Authors Partners Laura King, M.A. Robert Cassidy, Ph.D. Mary Jorgensen, B.A. Tali Heiman, Ph.D. Alex Lussier, DEC Maureen Hewlett, M.Sc. Catherine Fichten, Ph.D. Catherine Loiselle, M. A. . Alice Havel, Ph.D. Ryan Moon Rhonda Amsel, M.Sc. Nicole Perreault Tiiu Poldma, Ph.D. Odette Raymond, M.Ed Jillian Budd, M.A. Rafael Scapin, Ph.D. Shirley Jorgensen, M.B.A. James Sparks, M.Ed Evelyne Marcil, M.A. Roberta Thomson, M.A. Mai Nhu Nguyen, B.A. Marc Tremblay, B.A. Alexandre Chauvin, M.A. Susan Wileman, M.Ed. Jennison Asuncion, M.A. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ This document is based on the final report of a projet funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC) and its partner the the ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur (MEES) for the program Actions concertées Persévérance et réussite scolaires. 2 Student and Professor Perspectives on Exemplary Practices in the Use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and e-Learning in Colleges Affiliations Authors Laura King, Cégep André-Laurendeau, Adaptech Research Network Mary Jorgensen, Adaptech Research Network Alex Lussier, Cégep André-Laurendeau and Adaptech Research Network Catherine Fichten, Dawson College, Jewish General Hospital, McGill University, Adaptech Research Network Alice Havel, Dawson College, Adaptech Research Network Rhonda Amsel, McGill University Tiiu Poldma, University of Montreal Jillian Budd, Adaptech Research Network Shirley Jorgensen, Dawson College Evelyne Marcil, Adaptech Research Network Mai Nhu Nguyen, Adaptech Research Network Alexandre Chauvin, Concordia University Jennison Asuncion, Adaptech Research Network Partners Robert Cassidy, Concordia University Tali Heiman, Open University of Israel Maureen Hewlett, Mount Royal University Catherine Loiselle, Centre de recherche pour l’inclusion scolaire et professionnelle des étudiants en situation de handicap (CRISPESH) Ryan Moon, Cégep à distance Nicole Perreault, Réseau des répondantes et répondants TIC (REPTIC) Odette Raymond, l’Institut des troubles d’apprentissage (Institut TA), Adaptech Research Network Rafael Scapin, Dawson College James Sparks, Champlain College Roberta Thomson, McGill University Marc Tremblay, Solutions aides technologiques Susan Wileman, Dawson College 2017 - Published by Adaptech Research Network, Montreal, Canada ISBN 978-1-5501699-4-2 Cit ation: King, L., Jorgensen, M., Lussier, A., Fichten, C. S., Havel, A., Amsel, R., Poldma, T. et al. (2017). S tduent and professor perspectives on exemplary practices in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and e-learning in colleges. Modified version of report for the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture (FRQSC) and the ministère de l'Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur (MEES). Montréal, Québec : Réseau de Recherche Adaptech. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................... 4 SUMMARY .......................................................................................................................... 5 RESEARCH REPORT ............................................................................................................. 7 Part A – Context of the research ...................................................................................... 7 Part B – Solutions based on the results, research outcomes and implications ........................ 9 Part C – Methodology ................................................................................................... 12 Part D – Results .......................................................................................................... 13 Part E – Future research ............................................................................................... 18 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................... 19 APPENDICES .................................................................................................................... 21 Questionnaire for College Students ................................................................................ 22 E-learning Questionnaire for College Students ................................................................. 26 Interview Questions for Professors ................................................................................. 31 Computer Technology Checklist for Professors ................................................................. 32 4 ABSTRACT Knowing that motivation is at the crux of learning, we examined students’ motivation to engage - or not - in courses which include the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Although many college instructors use ICTs, there are no studies on the perspectives of professors identified as exemplary users of technology. This is why we interviewed 114 professors deemed by their students to be excellent in their use of technology in their teaching. We obtained our interviewees by first surveying 337 students, 95 of whom were immigrants, about their ICT likes, dislikes, suggestions and teacher nominations. Highlights of the student survey indicate that there were no significant differences between genders, the English and French colleges, and those born in and outside of Canada. An overwhelming majority of students liked it when their professors used ICTs in their teaching and were able to detail their views (e.g., wanting access to PowerPoints online). After coding what the students truly appreciated, we realized our take-home message is that it is preferable for professors to employ simpler and fewer ICTs well than to use many, complicated ones without a pedagogical purpose. Finally, in comparing the two perspectives, our results show that many students wanted to use their own technology in the classroom but that a majority of their professors did not allow them to do this, except for the exemplary professors where most of them did allow this. 5 SUMMARY Many college professors use diverse information and communication technologies (ICTs) in their teaching. As motivation is at the crux of learning, one must consider students and their motivation to engage - or not - in courses which include the use of ICTs. Despite these two factors, there are no studies on the perspectives of professors identified as exemplary users of technology in their teaching. Nor is there much research on the use of ICTs in postsecondary classrooms where students’ and professors’ perspectives are compared directly. Only the study by Venkatesh et al. (2016) asked the same questions of both groups regarding a variety of technologies. Their study showed that students are more satisfied with courses where lecture-related ICTs are used (e.g., PowerPoint, videos), whereas professors felt that constructivist uses of ICTs (e.g., blogs, wikis) were more effective. We surveyed students, including immigrants and non-immigrants, to see if their ICT preferences differed. We also interviewed professors nominated by their students as exemplary in their use of ICTs in their teaching to find out about their ICT best practices and challenges. Finally, we compared student and teacher perspectives. We interviewed 114 professors deemed by their students to be excellent in their use of technology. We identified them by surveying 337 College students, 95 of whom were immigrants, about their ICT likes, dislikes, suggestions and teacher nominations. We targeted students and professors from one Anglophone and one Francophone college. Our methods of data analyses included descriptive statistics, coding and category creation and inferential statistical tests (ANOVA, X2, t-test, correlations). The student sample can be treated as a whole because there were few significant differences between students born in and outside of Canada, the College they attended or their gender. The findings indicate that 93% of students liked courses where their professors used ICTs in their teaching. However, 49% of students disagreed with the statement that instructors allowed them to use their personal technologies in class and 32% of students disagreed with the statement that professors showed them how to use ICTs needed in their courses. Over 80% of students felt that the following ICTs worked well for them: online posting of grades, assignments, course outlines and course notes / PowerPoints as well as the online submission of assignments, computer labs, emails and presentation software. Digital textbooks and online courses only had poor ratings. Many types of infrequently used ICTs by professors were identified by students as working well for them. These include online materials (i.e., attendance records, tests), a variety of ICT tools used in class (i.e., grammar tools, language learning software, simulations/virtual experiments, mind mapping, web conferencing), hardware (i.e., clickers), online tools (i.e., wikis, portfolios and podcasts) and virtual office hours. As for the exemplary professors, they mostly learned to use technology on their own or had previous experience with technology. Their most common challenges were technical and institutional problems. The ten technologies most frequently used were: e-mail, grades, assignments, PowerPoints, course notes, tutorials / practice exercises and web links available online, computer labs, presentation software and videos. The least frequently used technologies were web conferencing, Twitter, chat rooms, mind mapping, podcasts, LinkedIn, clickers, blogs, Wiki sites and Facebook. The Course Management System (CMS) was primarily used for three reasons: to post course notes/PowerPoints, grades and assignments. It was also used for attendance, submission of assignments, the calendar and tests. To communicate with students, most professors used e-mail associated with the CMS, 6 although some used other e-mail systems such as Gmail. A few professors also used instant messaging, online chats on the CMS, texting, Facebook and virtual office hours. There were no significant differences between female and male professors regarding comfort or proficiency using technology. The number of years teaching in the College system was not significantly related to professors’ levels of comfort with or knowledge of technology. 83% of the exemplary professors allowed their students to use their personal technology in class. Gender and number of years teaching at a College did not significantly affect this. Take-home messages include the following: an overwhelming majority of students, including immigrant students, like it when their professors use technology in their teaching. Thus, it is indeed worthwhile to invest in supporting professors’ use of technology and, more importantly, using it well. Most students liked it when their professors used simple technology (e.g., email, posting grades online, PowerPoint); however, these ICTs had to be used well (i.e., quick response time, engaging visual support). It is also important to remember that exemplary College professors were much more likely to allow students to use their personal technology in the classroom than professors in general. Exemplary professors used ICTs for meaningful pedagogical reasons. There are still discrepancies though (e.g., students wanting to use their own technology, online testing, clickers, mind mapping tools). This is why future research needs to adopt a comparative framework and maintain the key element of interviewing student-nominated professors. 7 RESEARCH REPORT Part A – Context of the research 1. Background Knowing that motivation is at the crux of learning, we examined students and their motivation to engage - or not - in learning and course activities which include the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). In fact, today’s college instructors reflect a powerful trend in postsecondary education, which is to use diverse ICTs (Cassidy & Scapin, 2013; Lapostolle et al., 2013). Questions such as, “Does more extensive use of ICTs by instructors ensure better learning?” and “Is teaching using ICTs seen as more or less effective by students and instructors?” have been asked and, yet, these have been shown to be overly simplistic (Abrami et al., 2006; Bernard et al., 2004; Bell & Federman, 2013; NMC Horizon Report, 2013). The complexity, of course, stems from the fact that technology is not used within a vacuum. Indeed, in his review, Barrette (2009) emphasizes the fact that it is not just the technology but the pedagogical framework in which it is used that is crucial. Even though students’ and professors’ views about the effectiveness of different technologies have been shown to differ (Venkatesh et al., 2016), the literature on the use of technology in teaching and learning is based primarily on data from students (Poellhuber et al., 2012; Rashid & Asghar, 2016). Nevertheless, it is professors who set the tone and determine the pedagogical practices used in class. Of course, there are studies of faculty views about technology use in class, including its use in online learning (e.g., Croteau, Venkatesh, Beaudry, & Rabah, 2015; Lloyd, Byrne, & McCoy, 2012). Despite this, there are no studies on the perspectives of professors identified as exemplary users of technology. Therefore, in this research, we explore the views, experiences and technology-related pedagogical practices of professors deemed by students to be excellent in their use of technology in teaching. One of the most current and controversial issues in the area of ICT use in postsecondary education is the use of personal technologies by students in the face-to-face classroom. Lindroth and Bergquist (2010) state that there is no universally accepted protocol that dictates mobile technology usage in the classroom. Thus, neither the professors nor the students fully understand the appropriate role of laptops and other mobile technologies. This uncertainty surrounding their use in the classroom has resulted in three reactions from professors: rejecting the use of laptops, ignoring the laptops, and accepting the laptops (Kay & Lauricella, 2011). Some professors do not allow their students to use their laptops at all in class, due to off-task behavior; thus rejecting laptops all together (Young, 2006). This approach creates a potential confrontation between the teacher and the students wishing to use technologies (Kay & Lauricella, 2011). Other professors opt to ignore laptop use in their classes which leads to unstructured use where students can choose what they want to do. This approach has the intrinsic risk of facilitating extensive off-task behavior (Fried, 2008). The final approach, which accepts and embraces the use of laptops in class, is also referred to as the structured use approach. This approach attempts to integrate the technology as a tool to support and enhance pedagogical practices (Gay, Stefanone, Grace-Martin, & Hembrooke, 2001). The strategies that have been implemented include extensive exercises on the laptop which are preceded by a short lecture, active use of software that is related to the course and virtual experiments which are completed in small groups (Barak, Lipson, & Lerman, 2006). Kay and Lauricella (2011) found that students engaged in more on-task behaviors, such as note-taking and other academic tasks, when professors used a structured 8 approach to laptops in the classroom. Likewise, students spent less time on off-task behaviors, such as instant messaging and sending personal emails, when a structured approach was used. Finally, our last concern was that there is very little comparative research on the use of ICTs in college and university classrooms where similarities and differences between students’ and professors’ perspectives are directly compared. In our literature search we were able to find few studies which directly compared these two groups in terms of ICT use and views. Among these, only the study by Venkatesh et al. (2016) asked the same questions of both groups on a broad variety of technologies from email to course management systems to blogs. Their study, which included large sample sizes for both students and professors, showed that, generally, students are more satisfied with courses where lecture-related ICTs are used (i.e., PowerPoint, videos), whereas professors felt that constructivist uses of ICTs (i.e., blogs, wikis) were more effective. 2. Hypotheses We had three main hypotheses:  Phase 1: Students who are immigrants, compared to non-immigrants, will have a preference for ICTs used in teaching that are (a) text-based and visual rather than solely audio, and (b) not based on synchronous (i.e., simultaneous) interactivity.  Phase 2: Professors nominated by their students for best ICT practices in their teaching will have a reasoned approach to how they use ICTs, feel that they enhance student learning but face a variety of challenges.  Phase 3: Category frequencies of ICTs used by instructors reported by students and instructors will be compared; significant differences will be discovered. 3. Goals What makes this investigation unique is that excellence in ICT related pedagogical practice has been determined by the students and then operationalized by their instructors. We were interested in the diversity of the student participants because different ICT-related pedagogical practices may be beneficial for one group of students (e.g., males versus females, immigrants versus non-immigrants) but not for another. The results can be used to guide decisions about which ICTs should be used by instructors to meet specific learning objectives in diverse pedagogical contexts. Studying the experience of instructors deemed effective in their use of ICTs, including the facilitators and obstacles they experience, has allowed us to gather information concerning “best practices”; something many faculty want to know about when designing courses which incorporate ICTs to ensure that these promote student engagement and motivation. This further emphasizes the need for understanding ICT “best practices” from the students’ perspective. 9 Part B – Solutions based on the results, research outcomes and implications 1. Audiences Our project is pertinent to the ministère de l'Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur (MEES), Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture (FRQSC), College administrators, College professionals, university and College professors as well as the Association pour les applications pédagogiques de l'ordinateur au post-secondaire (APOP), Association pour la recherche au collégial (ARC), Association québécoise de pédagogie collégiale (AQPC), Cégep à distance, Centre de documentation collégial (CDC), Profweb, Réseau des répondants et répondantes TIC (Reptic), and La Revue Pédagogie collégial. 2. Implications of the conclusions New policies could be put into place which include guidelines for how face-to-face teaching environments could include students’ personal technologies, where appropriate. Using a needs-analysis framework to survey students on a regular basis about their ICT likes and dislikes in the postsecondary environment would allow professors to target the ICTs most likely to increase student engagement and motivation. We need to hear from exemplary professors on a more regular basis as this is essential for identifying facilitators and barriers. Finally, asking students and professors identical questions provides a framework for comparative analysis which, in turn, allows professors to get the ‘right fit’ when choosing and effectively using ICTs in their teaching. 3. Immediate or expected outcomes This report offers take-home messages and solutions which have been disseminated, and continue to be, to the post-secondary level of education. For instance, we are presenting our comparative-analysis results at ARC-ACFAS in May of 2017 and then in June of 2017 we are presenting at the collegial-level conference (AQPC). In this presentation, an ICT-pedagogical counsellor will collaborate with one of the researchers in order to focus on the practical implications of our results. In other words, we are offering data-driven instructional design recommendations for the postsecondary level. Since we interviewed students and professors from diverse pre-university and technical College programs, our results can be generalized. Since universal design in pedagogy is becoming increasingly more popular, near- future implications of our work would be to framework our findings within the principles of universal design in pedagogy (McGuire, Scott & Shaw, 2003; Nguyen, Fichten, Barile et Lévesque, 2006; Barile, Nguyen, Havel & Fichten, 2012). In fact, one of our presentations (in Alberta in 2016, Connecting the dots: How student data on their use of ICTs fits into a UDL Framework) used our student results to inform and refine ICT practices in postsecondary teaching within a UD framework. 4. Limitations of the study Our student and teacher samples are not representative as they are only from one Anglophone and one Francophone College. The teacher sample is a quota sample, which is determined by the different numbers of participants that were required from selected 10 categories. In this case, we wanted to interview professors from all the programs so we targeted ten professors per institution, from both pre-university and technical programs, who had the most nominations per category (e.g., Sciences and Engineering, Arts, Social Sciences). In both the student and teacher studies, some of the data were difficult to code into a limited number of categories (e.g., students’ suggestions and professors’ advice). Finally when comparing student and teacher data, only certain questions were equivalent across both samples. 5. Take-home messages  These results can be applied to many college-level students as there were few significant differences between students born in Canada versus those who were born outside of Canada, males versus females, program of study and French versus English Colleges.  These results can also be used by professors from both pre-university and technical programs across various disciplines. Thus, for instance, we know that students like it when their professors use videos and presentation software, keeping in mind though that they have a clear sense of how their professors should do this so that it is effective; these student likes apply to all types of courses across the College spectrum.  These results can also be used in department presentations and specialized conferences. For instance, when we presented to science professors at SALTISE (Supporting Active Learning & Technological Innovation in Studies of Education), we were able to share data on specialized ICTs in this field and science-pertinent advice from expert ICT science professors (e.g., the use of virtual simulations in science classrooms and laboratories).  As simple as it is, the message is clear: an overwhelming number of students like it when their professors use ICTs in their teaching. This means that yes, it is indeed worthwhile to invest in this area of pedagogy and that professors who are reluctant to use ICTs need to be encouraged to embrace this reality.  Not all professors are ICT experts and there is only so much time per session that professors can dedicate to acquiring new knowledge and then applying this to their teaching. Here is the encouraging news: the students did not expect or want their professors to use complicated ICTs. Instead, they wanted the simple things like posting grades online to be done in a clear (i.e., provide the correct grade as well as the average and standard deviation) and timely fashion. This message has been coined in one of our presentations titled “Doing ordinary things extraordinarily well: Faculty perspectives on excellence in ICT and e-Learning use in colleges”.  Finally, the biggest difference between College professors in general and the exemplary ICT user professors was whether or not they allowed their students to use their own mobile technology in the classroom and laboratories. As is perhaps predictable, the nominated professors allowed their students to use their own technology on a significantly higher basis than students reported that College professors in general allowed. This is a current debate among professors, departments, programs and institutions. Some institutions have created guidelines and policies (see for example, the University of Montreal which requires all professors to permit students to use their own mobile technologies in class (Conseil des études de premier cycle, 2013). More policies are required, the debate needs to continue based on informed research and more importantly, effective guidelines for how to use students’ mobile technologies in teaching need to be made available to professors.