As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, faculty are increasingly becoming comfortable with new digital tools in ways that could have lasting impacts on higher education. But even as they embrace online teaching, instructors are worried about equity gaps for their students, according to a study by the nonprofit Every Learner Everywhere and the education consulting firm Tyton Partners.
Faculty are “warming up to digital and online instruction in ways that they haven’t previously,” said Dr. Jessica Rowland Williams, director of Every Learner Everywhere. “We’re much further ahead in terms of how faculty are thinking about integrating technology in the classroom than we would have been under normal circumstances. I think, however, there is still a great deal of skepticism. There’s still work to be done.”
The report is the second in a series of faculty surveys on their attitudes toward and adoption of new technology during the pandemic; the first was conducted in May and the second in August. About 3,641 faculty who are teaching this fall from 1,532 higher education institutions nationwide participated. At this point, over 90% of professors are teaching at least one online or hybrid course, and 60% are using new technology in their classes. From May to August, faculty who felt confident that online learning could be effective jumped from 39% to 49%. About 72% of instructors felt prepared to teach a high-quality course in the fall.
At the same time, two-thirds of faculty were concerned about equity gaps for their students.
“We hear directly from faculty that they are and have been incredibly concerned about the ability of students to be able to have reliable Wi-Fi access, to be able to access a computer or an appropriate device regularly as well as quiet space and ability to focus depending on what their living situation is,” said Kristen Fox, director of Tyton Partners.
Those concerns differ somewhat by institution, she added. At two-year colleges, surveys found faculty particularly worried about students’ basic needs, like whether students “could pay their bills.” At four-year institutions, student mental health was of particular concern.
Nonetheless, more community college professors felt confident that their schools were creating an “ideal digital learning environment” for their students – about 57% of instructors versus 45% at four-year institutions.
