Reflection on the ECAR Study

While a lot of the ECAR study’s findings seemed obvious to me, some of it was still surprising. Yes, e-textbooks can be difficult to use sometimes, depending on what device they’re on and how easy they are to navigate and annotate — two very important parts of textbook learning. Yes, e-portfolios do seem to be becoming more and more popular, and yes they have the potential to be useful when getting a job. Like many of the respondents, I had never heard of a MOOC, and now that I have heard of them I am a little concerned that they exist at all.

On the other hand, there were some technology uses that had never occurred to me as a possibility. I had heard of people using their phones to record lectures (although not in an everyday kind of way), but using phones in other ways during class had been hammered into me as being rude. Yes, even looking up something that the professor was talking about. Similarly, I had only thought about using laptops and tablets in class as a complicated way of taking notes. Being on twitter while in class? Would never have occurred to me before taking this class. Now that I’m experiencing it I kind of like it, but I never would have thought of it. It seems like the world is changing, and academia needs to keep up with technology in order to stay relevant, and to be useful to the students. These technologies may very well become relevant in the job market, too, as will the adaptability of being able to experiment with and understand new technologies that we come across.