Teaching styles and faculty attitudes towards computer technology in teaching and learning at a college in Ontario
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study examined faculty teaching styles and attitudes towards the cognitive effects of computers in instruction. A survey instrument (demographic questions, a teaching style inventory (TSI), three computer attitude scales, a behavioral control, and an instructional computer use scale) was administered to full-time post-secondary faculty. The response rate was 40% with 158 useable surveys received. The demographic data analysis showed that the sample was highly representative of the population. Significant evidence (problematic reliability values and clustering results for the teaching styles) suggested that the TSI was of questionable value for this population. Faculty had significantly higher mean scores on every teaching style than the norming population. Faculty had positive attitudes towards the cognitive effects of computers in instruction but were more positive about the cognitive effects of computer technology on themselves and their students than the learning environment. Faculty felt confident about using computers and were using computers in instruction in significant numbers; however advanced users of computers in teaching were still the exception with faculty practicing ‘just enough’ learning of instructional computer use. Significant relationships were discovered among the various scales and the demographics. Women were more learner-centered but less likely to believe that instructional computer use affected them positively, and were less confident than men. Technical program faculty were more teacher-centered and confident while arts, music and theater faculty were more learner-centered. Faculty with significant computer experience but fewer years of teaching experience were more confident and faculty with significant computer experience in technical programs were more advanced users of computers in instruction. Support for the conceptual framework (the Theory of Planned Behavior) was not found as expected in the relationships between teaching style and computer attitudes. However relationships, supporting the framework, were found between instructional computer use and the computer attitude and behavior control scales. It is theorized that traditional teaching style inventories are lacking and a new conceptualization of teaching behaviors related to the use of computers in instruction is needed. In a predictive model, the learning environment and the behavioral control scales accounted for 36% of the variation in the use of computers in instruction.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".