E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

ECAR does a yearly survey among undergraduate students about information technology. In October they published the results.

ECAR collaborated with 157 institutions to collect responses from 13,451 faculty respondents across 7 countries about their technology experiences. ECAR also collaborated with 124 institutions to collect responses from 43,559 undergraduate students across 10 countries about their technology experiences.

One of the interesting finding is about the preferences of students for online or blended courses. For the fourth year in a row, the number of students preferring a blended learning environment has increased as is visible in the image above.

One of the recommendations of authors is:

Take steps to make online learning opportunities the rule rather than the exception. At the institutional level, take steps to eliminate differential pricing structures for fully online courses so that they are accessible to all students. At the program level, consider ways to integrate online and blended courses in the curriculum to meet the learning environment preferences of students (and potentially increase enrollment). At the faculty level, create faculty development programs that help instructors better integrate the LMS into their face-to-face courses, thereby increasing the capacity to produce more blended learning opportunities.

Many institutes still have a big way to go for this, including mine.