International Survey of Research University Faculty: Use of Course Management Systems

This report gives highly detailed data about how faculty are using course management systems such as Blackboard, Moodle, Canvas and many others, including home grown solutions. The study presents specific data on the percentage of faculty that use course management systems for each of a number of different purposes such as to submit grades, contact students, distribute audio-visual materials, conduct lecture capture and for many other purposes. It includes an evaluation by faculty of the training that they have received in use of the course management system, and their evaluation of help desk, the academic library, information technology departments and other parties that instruct in the use of the course management system. The data is based on a survey of more than 500 scholars drawn from more than 50 major research universities in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. Data is broken out by various criteria, such as type of university, scholar’s country, gender, political views, academic subject specialty, academic title and other criteria. Just a few of the 155-page report’s main findings are that: Postdocs/fellows were the least likely, only 20%, and instructors/lecturers were the most likely, with 75%, to describe themselves as either more or less conversant or as a skilled user of the course management system. 53.27% of survey participants use the university’s course or learning management system to post or otherwise distribute digital content to students. 92.86% of faculty specialized in Economics, Business, or Finance do so, as do more than 70% of faculty teaching two or more courses. 12.48% of participants reported receiving from the academic library staff in how to use the course management system. Such training was more common in Australia/New Zealand and Canada than in the United States or the UK/Ireland. Scholars from the following institutions were surveyed for the report: Australian National University, Baylor College of Medicine, Brown University, Carleton University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Curtin University, Drexel University, Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Griffith University, Imperial College London, James Cook University, Massey University, McGill University, Monash University, Penn State University, Queen Mary University of London, Reading University Rice University, Rockefeller University, Rutgers University, Saint Louis University, Swinburne University of Technology, Trinity College Dublin, UConn Health Center, University of California, Davis, University College Dublin, University of Alberta, University of Birmingham, University of California Santa Barbara, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Riverside, University of Chicago, University of Florida, University of Idaho, University of Leeds, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Nottingham, University of Reading, University of Tasmania, University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center, University of Toronto, University of Utah, University of Western Australia, Virginia Commonwealth University, Washington State University and Yale University.