Session Title: What Do Students Want? A Technology Needs Assessment

Time & Date: 12:40 P.M. – 1:55 P.M., Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Location: Student Union Building (SUB) Partyroom

Session Description: Developing Web-based course resources, such as pod- and vodcasts, interactive learning activities, lecture notes, practice quizzes, requires a significant amount of time and effort. A wide range of resources are available and instructors are increasingly pressured to include these in their courses. However, to what degree do students perceive these resources to be beneficial to their learning? Are students actually using all these resources? We need to focus our time and resources on developing resources that students will use and find useful to their learning. We are administering a survey to measure the experiences of undergraduate students regarding various instructional resources and their perceived usefulness. We are surveying approximately 1200 students at all levels of their undergraduate education enrolled in undergraduate psychology classes at the University of Alberta. Data collection will be completed in late March. We will be analyzing the data to see what Web-based resources students have encountered in their courses as well as their perceptions of the usefulness of these resources for their learning. We will also see if there are differences between gender and level of undergraduate study. From this information we hope to find ways to incorporate advancing technologies into existing courses in order to improve the learning experience of students.

Conference Stream: Learning & Teaching

Session Format: Poster Presentation

Co-Presenter: Christopher Ghesquiere

Co-Presenter Bio: Chris Ghesquiere is an undergraduate psychology student at the University of Alberta, working with the Department of Psychology as the intern in the Instructional Technology & Resources Lab.

Co-Presenter: Dr. Connie K. Varnhagen