Volume 4 Issue 1
Spring 2008
ISSN 1937-7266

Faculty Use of Online Digital Resources in Higher Education

Flora McMartin

Broad-based Knowledge
Richmond, CA 94804
+1 510-967-5327
flora.mcmartin@gmail.com

Alan Wolf

University of Wisconsin at Madison
Madison, WI 53706
+1 608-263-0919
alanwolf@wisc.edu

Glenda Morgan

George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
+1 703-993-4446
gmorgan3@gmu.edu

Cathryn Manduca, Ellen Iverson

Carleton College
Northfield, MN 55057
+1 507-646-7096
{cmanduca, eiverson}@carleton.edu

Joshua Morrill

Morrill Solutions Research
Madison, WI 53704
+1 608-242-0924
joshua@morrillsolutions.com

In 2006 over 100 US colleges and universities, including community colleges surveyed their faculty members and instructors to learn about how they use digital resources and digital libraries for educational and scholarly purposes. Results from this survey in indicate that:

  • demographics commonly used in higher education to categorize populations such as institution type or level of teaching experience could not reliably predict use of online digital resources
  • valuing online digital resources highly only corresponds with higher levels of use for certain types of digital resources
  • lack of time was a significant barrier to use of materials, paradoxically respondents indicated that they used them because they save time
  • respondents did not tend to intentionally look to the Internet as a trusted resource for learning about teaching.

A complete list of the survey questions is available at http://serc.carleton.edu/facultypart.

A Data Repository for Evolutionary Biology
For a larger view of the poster click here