Comparative Data and Emerging Longitudinal Trends: 21st-Century Faculty and Students

Educational technology has never been more ubiquitous in higher education, with mobile devices, class capture systems, wireless access, and "clickers" proliferating on many campuses. Anecdotes and hyperbole have also proliferated, describing the experiences, preferences, and attitudes of students and faculty toward technology in terms that swing from glowing to gloomy. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have tried to replace the hype with a systematic, longitudinal study on student and faculty use of technology. In this presentation, we will showcase comparative and longitudinal results from six years of ongoing research and provide guidance for conducting independent studies of this sort.