Toronto, Oct 8: Despite the increasing presence of social media and the internet, university students still prefer old style lectures, being less enthusiastic about using computer-based information and communication tools (ICTs), says a study.
Surprisingly, instructors were more fluent with the use of emails than with social media, while the opposite was true for students, that is, they preferred an engaging lecture rather than a targeted tweet, says a new Concordia University study, led by Vivek Venkatesh.
Twelve universities across Quebec recently signed up to be part of the first cross-provincial study of perceptions of ICT integration and course effectiveness on higher learning, according to a Concordia statement.
Venkatesh, associate dean of academic programmes and development within the Concordia School of Graduate Studies, has a particular interest in how education is evolving within post-secondary institutions.
Venkatesh partnered with Magda Fusaro from UQAM (Universite du Quebec a Montreal) Department of Management and Technology, to conduct a pilot project before rolling the project out to universities across the province.
”We hit the ground running and received an overwhelmingly positive response with 15,020 students and 2,640 instructors responding to our electronic questionnaires in February and March of 2011,” says Venkatesh.
”Our analysis showed that teachers think that their students feel more positive about their classroom learning experience if there are more interactive, discussion-oriented activities. In reality, engaging and stimulating lectures, regardless of how technologies are used, are what really predict students' appreciation of a given university course,” says Fusaro.
