At this week's Libraries' / ITS lunch, the TLT surveys (and the possibility of the Libraries contributing questions) came up.
While I had received information from these surveys in some campus ITS presentations, I'd never actually looked at the full results myself. They are fascinating---a localized version of the EDUCAUSE studies, if you will. I feel incredibly dumb that I overlooked these until now.
Today, I looked at the two most recent surveys---the Fall 2006 student survey and the Spring 2007 Faculty and TA survey. There's lots there to see and think about.
A few findings that struck a chord with me:
Google Scholar and Wikipedia.
Both surveys asked about usage of these resources. Approximately 54% of students said they used or relied on Wikipedia for course research and approximately 36% of students said they used or relied on Google Scholar for course research. 20% of faculty and TAs discouraged students from using Wikipedia for research assignments; 4% discouraged use of Google Scholar. The really interesting finding here is that almost 35% of faculty and TAs had not heard of Google Scholar (only 6% had not heard of Wikipedia).
Blogs and Wikis
Not surprisingly, the students are much more likely to use blogs and wikis than faculty and TAs. 24% of students blog, compared with 7% of faculty and TAs. Over 18% of students use wikis, compared with just over 1% of faculty and TAs.
Clickers. The students love them and feel they help them learn and retain content more effectively. Good thing we're going to have them in all of instruction rooms!
I've barely scratched the surface of what's there. Take a look at the full list of surveys for yourself!
Thanks to the pointer and call out on the ITS surveys ... they are a critical piece in our decision making process -- actually knowing what our audiences are up to allow us to think critically about where we use resources.
BTW, I enjoyed the lunch and the conversation very much!