Research

Survey Reveals Concerns About Educator Preparedness for Digital Age

• By Scott Aronowitz
• 03/15/10

A site survey conducted among attendees at the ASCD Critical Transformation Conference in San Antonio indicated that teachers and school administrators nationwide are bracing themselves for demise of the printed textbook and that they are largely concerned their schools and districts are adequately prepared for the 100 percent digital classroom.

The survey, sponsored by ed tech firm CompassLearning and conducted by market research firm Pursuit, asked a random sampling of 287 respondents for their opinions on printed textbooks, the growth of the digital classroom, and several aspects of the impact of classroom technology. Interviews with respondents were conducted in person at the conference March 6 and 7. The results, with a 95 percent confidence interval, carry a margin of error of ±5.5 percentage points.

The following is a brief overview of the survey results.

• Sixty-five percent of total respondents "believe the printed textbook will soon be completely replaced by interactive and e-learning tools." Taken separately, 73 percent of school and district administrators hold this opinion, compared with 53 percent of K-12 teachers.
• Interactive and e-learning tools and methods are the wave of the future. Sixty-eight percent said they believe that, by 2015, at least 60 percent of classroom instruction time will be devoted to such tools and methods, and nearly one-third believe it will be at least 80 percent of class time.
• Eight in 10 respondents said they think it's important to make ed tech tools available to students and parents outside of the classroom, preferably giving them online access from the home or other Internet-accessible locations.
• Use of social networking tools among teachers is growing, with 73 percent of those interviewed saying they have Facebook accounts, 43 percent claiming YouTube membership, and 23 percent active on Twitter.
• While 92 percent of interviewees said they believe adaptation of e-learning tools and methods is "extremely important" or "very important," 70 percent believe their schools and classrooms are not fully prepared for such adaptation.

Complete, graphical results of the survey can be found here.