This week, I would like to draw your attention to the 2022 Students and Technology Report from EDUCAUSE. Entitled “Rebalancing the Student Experience,” the report presents the results of a national survey of 820 undergraduate students in the USA. Much like the renewed focus on work/life balance among American workers, students want the same from higher education. The report presents its findings in four key areas:
- Technology Challenges and Solutions
- Modality Preferences
- Access to Educational Technology
- Student Success
The Modality Preferences section reports data that is not a surprise to those of us in instructional technology. Since the pandemic, student preference for online course options is increasing. In 2020 (pre-pandemic), 35% of students reported a preference for completely face-to-face courses, compared to 29% in this year’s report. In contrast, in 2020, 5% of students reported a preference for completely online courses, compared to 20% this year. Percentages for mostly face-to-face and mostly online courses show similar results.
The Access to Technology section of the report echoes previous research in that most students have the devices they need for school, and that they own and have access to their devices whenever they need them. The majority of students (86%) also report using a laptop or desktop computer as their primary device. While most students (62%) report that their choice of device was based on personal preference, only 52% of those with a reported disability and 44% with pandemic-related housing issues reported basing their decision on personal preference.
The final section of the report, Student Success, also echoes previous research, with 30% of students reporting that completing their degree was the greatest measure of success for higher education. The other 70% is divided among such indicators as securing a job, achieving personal growth, and securing a high salary. The report also investigated how students felt supported by their institutions as well as how they felt the institutions did not support them. Among the ways students felt supported are academic support, career services, online courses, and extracurricular activities. Among the ways students felt institutions did not help are financial aid, inadequate access to technology, inadequate disability accommodations, and insufficient availability of courses.
The report concludes with several recommendations for institutional leaders. These include investigating how technology is supporting and causing stress for students, discontinuing support initiatives that are not being used and developing new ones, and engaging faculty and staff to disrupt the “face-to-face versus online” dichotomy. The entire report is available here: 2022 Students and Technology Report from EDUCAUSE. I recommend reading the full report. It is an interesting read.
Citation for the report:
Jenay Robert. 2022 Students and Technology Report: Rebalancing the Student Experience. Research report. Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE, September 2022.
