Faculty and Student Technology Use to Enhance Student Learning

Scholarly research has indicated that technology adoption to facilitate blended learning promotes the academic success of many different types of students and improves the quality of existing educational offerings. To understand how technology enhances learning, surveys queried the faculty and students of a statewide community college system. The results indicated widespread technology use among the faculty and students. The faculty survey revealed details of technology tools employed and the motivations for their use or discontinued use. Details regarding faculty use of learning management systems, textbooks, and other media characterized the current technology adoption climate. The student survey collected information about students’ perceptions of how technology influenced their learning, their preferences for specific technology tools, and their student progress. Ninety-three percent of student respondents indicated that technology enhanced their learning. Alignment between the faculty use and student preference for technology tools suggested that students are actively engaged in the technology resources used by faculty to enhance learning. Students described how technology facilitated multimodal learning. They also noted that technology increased communication, access, and inclusion in learning. Successful technology use and integration, accompanied by ongoing scholarly debate and monitoring, has the potential to provide more access, promote learning outcomes, and preserve the investment of technology for the institution. The surveys employed here, when used semi-annually, may provide a low-cost model for technology integration monitoring and evaluation. The responses to the surveys also have the potential to provide technology use and integration data that informs strategic planning processes and institutional learning outcome development.


Introduction
Scholarly research has indicated that technology adoption promotes the academic success of diverse students and improves the quality of existing educational offerings (Allen & Seaman, 2013;Courts & Tucker, 2012;Lewis, Fretwell, Ryan, & Parham, 2013;Lertwanasiriwan, 2010;Simkins, 2002;Zucker & Light, 2009). Technology facilitates a blended learning environment in which teaching presence, as well as social and cognitive development, are enhanced (Garrison, 2017). However, technology integration requires appropriate faculty support and institutional support to promote learning gains (Mbati & Minnaar, 2015;Quillerou, 2011). The long-term goal of this research project is to enhance educational technology integration to increase student learning within their disciplines, and for both faculty and students to increase technology literacy skills required for success in the 21st century workplace. The general problem is that the acquisition of institutional technology is an administrative process, but the implementation of technology is a process that unfolds in variable classroom environments. As a faculty, we rarely hear why or how the technology adopted is chosen, even though we live the outcomes. The specific problem is the absence of monitoring protocols to track technology integration by faculty and subsequent learning outcomes for students.
The goal of this observational research was to provide a picture of how students and faculty interact with the technology available. Since there was no coordinated effort for technology integration and monitoring across the campuses of this rural community college, the complementary surveys released to the faculty and students collected technical and perceptive data about how the technology tools were employed to enhance learning. No student learning assessments accompanied the survey data collection, and no experimental conditions were established before data collection. The qualitative data collected here explored the enhancement of learning with technology use. Quillerou (2011) used similar methods to investigate whether students used the technology tools available in their learning environments.
Learning is the acquisition of knowledge. In the context of this study, if faculty or students perceived that a technology tool enhanced learning, the perception was interpreted as a positive indication of learning. Lancaster and Lundberg (2019) employed similar student-identified learning gain metrics to explore correlations between faculty behavior and student learning gains. From a theoretical perspective, the willingness of adult learners to use technology must be self-motivated for practical reasons. According to theories of andragogy, both self-motivation and the practicality of the subject matter and its real-world context are important parameters for adult learning (Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 2011;Merrill, 2002). Therefore, students' perceptions of how technology enhances their own learning is a valid data point in the monitoring of technology integration in the learning environment.
The survey results presented here describe the technology adoption climate among the faculty and students of a multi-district, rural community college. These results describe the parameters of technology use at the college. The results also described student perceptions of the value of this technology adoption to their learning experience. Administrators may use these results to characterize the current use value of technology the organization already supports. These results may also provide insight regarding professional development opportunities for faculty to promote increased use of educational technologies, with the goal of technology integration over time. Finally, these results may identify gaps between student perceptions of and faculty preferences for educational technology use.

Use of Technology for Learning
The goal of education technology use is to enhance learning. Scholars have described a number of productive educational advancements facilitated by technology adoption and blended learning (Garrison, 2017;Laurillard, 2013). Educational technology facilitates learning by enriching the course content with multimodal resources that provide opportunities for students to engage with the course content in different ways (Laurillard, 2013;Simkins, 2002). Mathematics education has seen a productive shift from didactic instruction to student-centered, constructivist approaches (Abdulwahed, Jaworski, & Crawford, 2012) and computer-assisted instruction (Potocka, 2010). Technology has transformed language learning by allowing for programmed instruction and self-paced learning (Butler-Pascoe, 2011). Participants have gained knowledge from online self-learning modules (Crall et al., 2010;Gagnon et al., 2015). Instructional video training for pediatric health care professionals (Cheng, Lang, Starr, Pusic, & Cook, 2014) and nurses (Serna et al., 2016), as well as citizen scientists (Crall et al., 2010;Gaddis, 2018) have increased their knowledge and procedural performance. Participants have been more ready to engage in self-directed learning after an online training experience (Gagnon et al., 2015). For students who are working adults, parents, and for those who have encountered other barriers that prevented traditional school attendance, asynchronous instruction has increased access, allowing for a more flexible learning schedule (Johnson, Becker, Estrada, & Freeman, 2014;Yamagata-Lynch, 2014).

Technology Adoption Versus Technology Integration
The use of technology in numerous educational settings is well-documented, but technology adoption and technology integration are not the same phenomenon. Technology adoption concerns the application and ease of technology use, while technology integration concerns the fundamental integration of technology into the organization's educational philosophy, planning, and implementation (Keengwe, Onchwari, & Onchwari, 2009;Mbati & Minnaar, 2015;Russell, 2014). A precursor to technology integration is the holistic acceptance of technology use as both an educational tool and a learning outcome (Courts & Tucker, 2012). Technology adoption and integration are challenging concepts for some educators because they imply that the traditional educational framework is no longer the only effective means to educate students (Johnson, Wisniewski, Kuhlemeyer, Isaacs, & Kryzkowski, 2012).
Faculty may be encouraged to use technology in the classroom, but an administration's failure to explain the educational benefits of its use leaves faculty without solid evidence for its efficacy. Professional development may remedy this outcome by building a learning community among the faculty in which they can share best practices and experiences (Johnson et al., 2012). The technological competencies of faculty remains a consistent scholarly inquiry since the generational constellation of students and faculty is an ever-changing phenomenon (Ajjan & Hartshorne, 2008;Allen, Seaman, Poulin, & Straut, 2016;Moule, Ward, & Lockyer, 2011;Roney, Westrick, Acri, Aronson, & Rebeschi, 2017).
When technology integration is achieved, it expands the technological knowledge of the faculty and students together, thereby strengthening the 21st century skills of both groups. The research described here provides a snapshot of technology adoption by faculty and students, upon which technology integration efforts can grow. Studies exist that assess various characteristics of the technology users and their self-efficacy (Roney et al., 2017). The goal of this investigation was to instill a spirit of monitoring and self-assessment to the technology integration process itself by keeping a pulse on the perceptions and practices of faculty and students regarding technology use over time.

Case Study: Colorado Mountain College
Colorado Mountain College (CMC) is a rural, multi-district community college system with 11 campuses in the intermountain region of Colorado, serving over 20,000 students in an area spanning 12,000 square miles ("Colorado Mountain College: CMC Facts," 2016). Colorado Mountain College ranks in the top 13% of community colleges in the United States, offers five bachelor's degrees, and is recognized as the community college that offers the third-most affordable bachelor's degrees in the United States. Colorado College, 2014). The use of technology addresses two of these goals, namely student success, and teaching and learning. According to the strategic plan, CMC will "promote student success with relevant student support services" and will "provide excellent learning opportunities" by improving "the quality of existing educational offerings" (Colorado Mountain College, 2014).
Technology integration has the potential to meet these strategic goals. The research presented here provides a snapshot of current technology use and student perception of its use. Both are measures that may be used to evaluate strategic goal attainment. Colorado Mountain College is a leader in innovation; however, tracking and analyzing the specific technology-based learning innovations employed by faculty is challenging due to the multiple campus design of the college and the sheer volume of instructors teaching for the college.

Methods
Two surveys investigated technology use by CMC faculty. One survey queried the faculty (Appendix A) and the other queried the students (Appendix B). Both were disseminated by campus e-mail servers as well as posted on the organizational internal Web portal called Basecamp. The response period was one month long. The intention was for this survey to be offered semi-annually to collect longitudinal data about the technology adoption and integration process at CMC. These are the results of the pilot release of the study.

Results
The faculty survey included a series of questions that collected information about faculty use of educational technology and teaching experience. The student survey collected information about students' perceptions of how technology influenced their learning, their preferences for specific technology tools, and their student progress. Both surveys included closed response questions for which respondents could select multiple responses if appropriate. These questions also included an opportunity to provide a written response if the options presented by the survey did not characterize the respondent. This was an important design feature because many of the questions provided a common list of technology tools, but it was possible that faculty used tools beyond those choice options. The student survey also included an open-ended question to capture the authentic student responses of how technology enhanced or did not enhance their learning. In the context of this study, a technology tool was defined as a digital resource that was used to enhance the classroom learning experience.

Faculty Survey Results
The survey was responded to by 104 faculty members, of which 63% were adjunct faculty, and 37% were full-time faculty. This mirrored the college-wide instructional profile; 71% of courses were taught by adjunct faculty. Respondents quantified their experience in higher education. The majority of faculty (65%) had 10 or more years of experience. The remaining respondents had six to nine years (18%), three to five years (13%), and zero to two years (4%) of experience ( Figure 1). These data indicated that the faculty had significant experience teaching in higher education. The majority of faculty used up to five technology tools per semester, but not more. To ascertain why faculty members stopped using a technology tool, a survey question offered likely stumbling blocks to technology adoption as choices. The most popular responses included too timeconsuming to set-up (57%), not an effective learning tool according to faculty (49%), hard to set up according to students (35%), too difficult to integrate into the learning management system (LMS; 29%), and too costly (8%).
All faculty responded regarding their own production of technology tools. Faculty produced their own slide presentations (81%), instructional videos and/or podcasts (54%), Websites (43%), Web conferences (30%), SoftChalk lessons (18%), and wiki pages (15%). Other tools produced by faculty included (a)  Student Preference respondents, 13% never produced a technology tool (see Figure 3). These data suggested that faculty were authoring their own instructional resources in addition to employing the technology itself. This is evidence for technology integration.
These technology tool production patterns were similar to faculty technology tool use patterns but there were some interesting discrepancies to note. The tools used by the majority of faculty respondents included Websites, instructional videos, and slide presentations. The percentages of faculty that produced Websites (43%) and instructional videos (53%) was less than the percentage of faculty that used each tool (Figures 2   and 3). However, in the case of slide presentations, 80% of the faculty produced slide presentations, but only 61% reported using them. Perhaps slide presentations are something all faculty have made at some   Regarding the use of the LMS in the classroom, of the instructors who taught for six or more years, 83% used the LMS in the classroom, while only 31% of instructors who taught for up to five years did so. It is possible that using the LMS is a skill one develops after gaining confidence with the practice of teaching itself. The use of open response questions might have elucidated these motivational factors. As shown in Figure 5, faculty respondents used the LMS to manage the gradebook (87%), for assignment submission (82%), to curate documents (68%), to administer tests and quizzes (66%), and to run discussions (61%). In addition to the survey-prompted uses of the LMS, faculty wrote in that they used the LMS to identify goals and objectives and allow for student choice in learning activity. Faculty noted that they used the LMS for A series of survey questions queried the use of electronic textbooks. Twenty-four percent of faculty used digital textbooks and 24% did not use a textbook at all. One of the great advancements in textbook publishing includes the availability of digital resources that support the textbook. Among faculty who used a textbook, some also used slide presentations (50%), instructional videos (49%), publisher test banks (46%), lecture outlines (28%), adaptive study programs (14%), and virtual labs (9%) provided by the textbook publisher.

Student Survey Results
The student survey probed student perceptions of instructor technology use in the context of their learning and academic progress. Fifty-seven students responded to the survey. Respondents were freshman students (31%), sophomores (21%), juniors (28%), and seniors (21%). The majority of respondents had attended CMC for one to three semesters at the time of the survey. To ascertain the environment in which students experienced technology integration, respondents identified their mode of learning. Sixty-five percent of respondents took online classes, and 80% took face-to-face courses. Thirty-nine percent of respondents had completed one to three online classes to date, 34% had never taken an online course, 12% had completed four to six online courses, and 7% had completed either seven to nine online courses, or 10 or more online courses, to date.  Ninety-three percent of students indicated that technology enhanced their learning (see Figure 6). Respondents noted that technology facilitated self-paced learning and "made going to school more time manageable." Technology "increases interaction with the subject matter," is "available anywhere," and makes "it easier to do research." Other students added the following responses to characterize how technology enhances their learning. "Technology is just part of the world we live in and how we access information and learning. It makes some processes more efficient." "Technology is needed for everyday activities. One cannot conduct business or communication without it." Several students used the terms "information access" or "access to information" when describing how technology enhanced their learning. One student remarked that "technology helps me to learn a great deal.
I love that after a few short minutes I can find a variety of information, studies, blogs, and articles online." "Anything you need to know is right on the Internet." Although information access was not a direct measure of learning, some students interpreted technology's enhancements of their learning as it related to access.
At CMC, the students' perception of access enhancement is evidence that technology is facilitating strategic goal attainment for the institution. Several students discussed how technology allowed for more communication among students and with the instructor, which enhanced their learning. One student described lecture-based instruction as multimodal and noted that it accommodated his or her learning. Another student wrote that technology provides an additional access point to instructors and fellow students. That extra communication opportunity is not available without technology tools. Also, better types of content (video, audio, interactive tools, etc.) are available via some tech solutions, adding to the ability for students to learn the material via these non-text methods.
When asked what their favorite technology tools were, students responded with instructional videos (66%), Websites (59%), and slide presentations (54%) which faculty also noted they used with regularity. These 93% 7% Yes No comments confirm scholarly research that indicated blended learning facilitates social and cognitive development (Garrison, 2017). These data also indicated that there was a connection between resource access (e.g., learning materials, instructor) and the perception of learning enhancement. Lancaster and Lundberg (2019) drew similar conclusions when they queried faculty and students to explore correlations between faculty behaviors and students' self-perceptions of learning.
Although not the majority opinion, one student remarked that she or he learns "best by the old school lecturing at a chalkboard where the instructor lectures to the notes that he or she writes on the board. In this way, I hear the lecture, see the lecture being written and write the lecture myself, reinforcing the materials through three different mediums at one time."

Discussion and Considerations for Future Research
Regarding the representativeness of the sample, the majority of respondents were adjunct faculty. The response rate for full-time faculty was approximately 30%. Seventy-one percent of courses at CMC were taught by adjuncts. Sixty-three percent of survey respondents were adjuncts. These percentages were well aligned and therefore likely represented the Colorado Mountain College teaching population with some degree of accuracy. The exact number of adjuncts across all 11 campuses was unknown to the researcher due to the dynamic and ever-changing number of adjuncts at any one time. Furthermore, there were fewer adjunct instructors working in the summer semester, so the respondent percentage rate of adjuncts might have been affected by the summer delivery of this survey. There were structural flaws in the survey design. It was difficult to draw comparisons between student and faculty responses because the questions in the student and faculty surveys were not paired. If they were, a chi-squared contingency table could be established to compare technology tool choices to a general faculty or student identity. Additionally, questions that ask respondents to check all that apply should be accompanied by paired questions that select a top choice. With these two pieces of information, a chisquared analysis could be done. Student preferences for technology tools were closely aligned with professors' efforts to integrate technology tools. This begs the question: do students like the technology tools professors are using, or is it that professors are responsive to what students want? For example, no students liked using Twitter in an educational context, but only one faculty member reported using Twitter in an educational context.
Understanding the causal relationships here would provide valuable information regarding technology trends in higher education.

Conclusions
In this investigation, faculty and student surveys employed at a multi-campus, rural community college revealed the current technology adoption climate, including faculty and student technology tool preferences and perceptions of their own learning gains. The faculty surveys described faculty use, production, and publication of technology tools in addition to details regarding their teaching experience. The student surveys revealed students' perceptions of the effect of technology on their learning and details regarding their academic progress. The overwhelming sentiment from students was that technology enhanced their learning (93%). This perceptive gauge was not accompanied by experimental methods that confirmed or refuted the student self-reported perceptions of technology's effect on their learning. Nonetheless, these data suggested that the organization's efforts to offer and support educational technology were valuable to the student population.
Faculty and students tended to prefer the same technology tools, including instructional videos, websites, and slide presentations. Faculty apparently worked to both produce and provide these resources to their students. While some tools were too challenging or ineffective to continue using, faculty employed, on average, five technology tools each semester. Faculty with more experience were more likely to employ a blended approach in which they used the LMS in the classroom. There were no apparent differences in the behaviors of part-time and full-time faculty, but these conclusions could not be made with statistical analysis due to the survey design. The majority of faculty respondents had 10 or more years of teaching experience, thereby indicating that these data reflect the behaviors of a seasoned faculty who have had time to use and reflect on the technology climate in their professional environments. The student population represented students in every class year, indicating the validity in generalizing these conclusions to the entire student population.
The coordinated analysis of technology adoption and integration within teaching and learning practices is an opportunity for institutions of higher education. The shortcomings of these data are informative. Across 11 campuses, technology integration is one of many topics to consider on an institution-wide level.
Nonetheless, there is a significant institutional investment involved in providing technology and staff to support it. Successful technology use and integration that is accompanied by ongoing scholarly debate and monitoring has the potential to provide more access, promote learning outcomes, measure strategic institutional goals, and protect the institutional investment in technology. Since new technologies tools are always becoming available, the key to sustainable technology integration is a community-wide commitment to its effectiveness and continuous improvement.
Technology integration is a continuous process, and its success is assured through monitoring and program evaluation. Prior to this investigation, there was no evidence that ongoing technology integration monitoring practices existed. The surveys employed here, when used semi-annually, may provide a lowcost model for the monitoring of technology integration. The surveys also have the potential to provide technology use and integration data that may inform strategic planning processes and institutional learning outcome development. a. Not always teaching every semester b. 1 course c. 2-4 courses d. 5-7 courses e. 8-10 courses f. More than 10 courses 16. How many years have you taught online courses? a. 0-2 years b. 3-5 years c. 6-9 years d. 10 or more years 17. Are you an adjunct instructor or a full-time instructor?
a. Adjunct b. Full-time Thank you for your participation.
c. 4-6 courses d. 7-9 courses e. 10 or more courses 9. How many face-to-face courses have you taken? a. 0 courses b. 1-3 courses c. 4-6 courses d. 7-9 courses e. 10 or more courses 10. How many hybrid courses have you taken? Hybrid courses have either the lab or lecture component online and the other component face-to-face.
a. 0 courses b. 1-3 courses c. 4-6 courses d. 7-9 courses e. 10 or more courses 12. How many non-credit courses have you taken in total?