Aziza Ellozy Originally published on: November 11, 2003
If you have attended the successful WebCT day organized by Academic Computing Services (ACS) three weeks ago, you would have heard at least two faculty members mention that their students were “technophobic”. A survey conducted jointly by ACS and CLT last spring, shows otherwise. A full report on this survey will be available soon. In the meantime, here is a highlight of some of the results.
A majority of students quickly felt comfortable using WebCT.
A majority of students would like to see WebCT used in their future courses.
A representative sample of 400 students was needed, and an unexpected 1221 students responded. The survey was posted online on the students’ WebCT accounts.
C. WebCT’s advanced features were popular with students when used, but many instructors do not use them
D. Despite the overall satisfaction with WebCT, students were neutral when it comes to judging its effectiveness as a learning tool.
This is an interesting and significant result. Research by others in the last ten years has shown that technologies allow us the flexibility to try out different strategies that promote student centered learning. Although the above results indicate that students are receptive to WebCT, they also indicate that we, as faculty, can reflect on how to design more effective learning experiences in order to explore the full potential of WebCT (or other technologies).
