Faculty and Librarian Technology Survey (Spring 2014)

The results of the Spring 2014 Faculty and Librarian Technology Survey are available online. You have the choice between:

1. Reading the comprehensive report and analysis in a variety of formats.
2. Exploring and analyzing the data yourself.
3. Browsing the Top-10 results as an interactive Story Journal.

Infographics and Data Viz

Infographics are quite the thing these days = appealing visualizations of information (= data viz) to tell a story. Infographics can (and do) include 'traditional' data charts, but commonly use icons, graphical elements, and non-traditional charts for displaying quantitative data. Here are some sources about infographics and how to use them for teaching and learning:

• Kathy Schrock's Infographics as a Creative Assessment
• New York Times Teaching With Infographics
• visual.ly How to Turn Infographics Into Effective Teaching Tools
• Stephanie Richter (Northern Illinois U.) Teaching with Infographics
• Bad Infographics and How to Check for Accuracy

How do you make an infographic? Here is a compilation of data visualization tools and apps I found while digging around (sorted approximately from simple to fancy).

Teaching with Infographics from Stephanie Richter

Banning Laptops or Lectures?

This opinion piece in the New Yorker caused quite a stir over the summer: The Case for Banning Laptops in the Classroom by Dan Rockmore (a professor of mathematics and computer science at Dartmouth College). His arguments are not anything new: computers in the classroom are distracting and note-taking by typing turns students into "transcription zombies". Ragan et al. (2014), for example, found that students were off-task over 60 percent of the time in a large lecture-based university class.

Robert Talbert (and others) responded with Three issues with the case for banning laptops and argued instead that laptops (or technology in general) are not the underlying problem or distraction, but rather that the outdated pedagogy (= lectures) is distracting from learning. Furthermore, the whole notion of banning technology in the classroom may become moot with the proliferation of wearable technology over the next few years!

About 33 percent of our students reported NOT bringing their laptops to class because they are a distraction for them (and about 21 percent because their professor maintained a no-laptop policy in-class). You can find-out more about how our students use their laptops in Questions 12 to 16 of our Fall 2013 Student Technology Survey.

http://doonesbury.washingtonpost.com/

Student Survey (Fall 2013)

The results of our Fall 2013 Student Technology Survey are now compiled, accessible, and analyzed. Scroll-down to Page for the  Summary and Highlights or explore The Summary Infographic (also available as a PDF). Section 3.9 (Page 19) lists the Top-10 concerns identified by our students in final open-ended survey question.