55 Percent of Faculty Are Flipping the Classroom

Our first-ever Teaching with Technology survey gauged educators' use of the flipped classroom model, blended/online teaching environments and more.

The majority of higher education faculty today are flipping their courses or plan to in the near future, according to Campus Technology's 2016 Teaching with Technology survey. The survey polled faculty members across the country about their use of technology for teaching and learning, their wish lists and gripes, their view of what the future holds and more.

Fifty-five percent of the survey respondents said they are somewhere along the spectrum of flipping all or some of their courses, in which they ask their students to view videos or some other digital matter online before coming to school and then use class time for other activities, such as hands-on and team projects or discussions. Twenty-five percent intend to introduce the flipped model into their courses over the next year or are exploring that possibility.

We also wanted to know what kinds of teaching environments generally prevailed in higher education, so we asked faculty whether their courses are fully online, blended or exclusively face-to-face. The blended model came out on top, with seven in 10 survey respondents (71 percent) using a mix of online and face-to-face for their teaching environments. Among the remainder, more are using the traditional course approach (19 percent) compared to the online-only mode (10 percent).

Yet, when we asked people directly, "Are you using a blended or hybrid model for your classes?" the numbers came out slightly differently. There, 75 percent stated that all or some of their courses were blended. Another 11 percent said they would be moving to blended in the next year or exploring the option. The remaining 15 percent suggested that they're not doing blended instruction now, and they don't intend to in the near future either.

With so much blending and flipping going on, we wondered whether faculty expected their students to use technology for their work outside of class too. It turns out that tech use is practically a given when it comes to student assignments: Ninety-four percent of respondents said they assign homework that requires technology.

We also asked about the use of fee-based homework systems, such as Cengage Learning's Aplia or WileyPLUS. A large majority of instructors (79 percent) said they don't require students to use that technology to turn in their assignments. Nevertheless, that still leaves more than one in five faculty members (21 percent) who do use those systems.

The full results of the Teaching with Technology Survey appear in the August/September digital issue of Campus Technology. Highlights from the survey will also be posted on this site over the coming months. You can check back for ongoing coverage in our Research section.

Who Responded

There are a lot of people who play a part or have a vested interest in the use of technology in colleges and universities. But for the sake of this survey, CT wanted to find out what faculty thought about the topic, so we targeted our questions to that role within the institution. Everybody else who responded to the survey was eliminated from the results we're sharing with you here.

We were left with 524 qualified participants who held faculty roles. Of those, 69 percent work in public institutions, 23 percent in private not-for-profit colleges and another 8 percent work in private for-profit schools. Seven in 10 institutions (71 percent) run four-year programs; the other 29 percent run two-year programs.

Our typical respondent has spent an average of 21 years in the field. Nearly half of the respondents (49 percent) have 21 years or more of experience working in higher education; the next largest group (33 percent) has between 11 and 20 years.

The respondents come from a gamut of school and college types. The top three most represented are education (19 percent), business (14 percent) and liberal arts (10 percent). Every other discipline has single-digit representation.

The average size of the institution's student body in our survey is 13,886. However, nearly six in 10 respondents work in colleges or universities with fewer than 10,000 students.

Respondents come from almost every state in the union, with particularly high representation from California, Florida, Texas, New York and Ohio, in that order. (We apologize to our Canadian respondents who felt unloved; next year we'll be sure to include your provinces as well.)

About the Authors

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

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