Why Professors Love (and Loathe) Technology

dougled writes "A survey of 4,500 college professors (and campus technology administrators) reveals what faculty members think of digital publishing (they like it, but don't do it very much), how much they use their campus learning management systems (not nearly as much as their bosses think), and how digital communication has changed their work lives (they're more productive, but far more stressed)."

Comments

working with them....

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you, working with some very smart profs, that they fall into the exact same classes that you find anywhere else.

You have people that are unreasonable (wanting things to be perfect in an imperfect world), you have people that can't apply basic common sense to using their computer (someone today, for instance, that they can have unlimited disk space and has magical thinking about the situation), people with poor problem solving skills, oldsters whom the world changed around and can't deal with it, people that can't use google, etc. etc...

So I guess what I am saying is that sometimes I wonder if singling them out as a class has any use at all. They're simply people.

Re:working with them....

[UnknownSoldier]

Interestingly enough Max Planck said the same thing back in 1948 about the dogma and institution of Science:
    "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Or para-phrased:
    "Science advanced one funeral at a time"

The old want things to remain the way they always have been.
The youth want things that will be.
Society is a balance of these two diametrically opposed ideologies.

Reference:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck

Re:working with them....

[cpu6502]

The administrators appear to be out touch too (see below). Frankly I don't understand the obsession with posting video lectures. I've found copied handouts of the prof's notes (and also homework solutions) much more useful than a meandering talk. I can scan the notes far, far faster than I can scan a 50 minute video.

"
Administrators believed that 73 percent of the professors at their institutions used data logged by the LMS either âoeregularlyâ or âoeoccasionallyâ to identify students who need extra help..... In fact, only 51 percent of faculty reported doing so. About half of the administrators estimated that professors regularly or occasionally posted video-recorded lectures into the LMS, but just 25 percent of the faculty respondents actually do. Nearly 80 percent of administrators said their faculty members regularly or occasionally used the LMS to track student attendance; the professors clocked in at 44 percent."