Higher Education Faculty Desire to Implement Digital Tools: A Follow-Up Study
While online learning and the utilization of digital technologies in higher education continues to be an important part of future plans for higher education course opportunities, some higher education faculty experience barriers to this implementation. These barriers can vary from institutional factors to personal characteristics. Utilizing survey data from the 2015 Ithaka S+R faculty survey a hierarchical linear model (HLM) and a regression model with robust standard errors were employed in order to explore relationship between the institution level factors of institution level support and institution level rewards,as well as the personal characteristics of academic field, gender, age, years of experience in current field, and years in current position and the desire to implement digital technology in their instruction. The analysis found that the personal characteristics gender and years in current position were significant predictors of desire to implement digital technologies, as well as the institutional predictor of support, when accounting for all other covariates. The other predictors of age, years of experience, years in position and institution level rewards were not significant. The cluster variable field was not found to be statistically significant.
