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Research on faculty use of technology and online education tends to be cross-sectional, focusing on a snapshot in time. Through a secondary analysis of the annual Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology conducted by Inside Higher Ed each year from 2013 through 2019, this study investigated changes in faculty attitudes toward technology and online education over time. Specifically, the study examined and synthesized the findings from surveys related to attitudes toward online education, faculty experiences with online learning, institutional support of faculty in online learning, and faculty use of technology. Results showed a low magnitude of change over time in some areas (e.g., proportion of faculty integrating active learning strategies when converting an in-person course to a hybrid/blended course) and a large magnitude of change in other areas (e.g., proportion of faculty who believe that online courses can achieve the same learning outcomes as in-person courses). These results reveal that, prior to the widespread shift to remote and online learning that occurred in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty perceptions of technology and online learning were static in some areas and dynamic in others. This research contextualizes perceptions towards online learning prior to the pandemic and highlights a need for longitudinal studies on faculty attitudes toward technology use going forward to identify factors influencing change and sources of ongoing tension.

The cost of textbooks has continued to impact students in higher education. Students have reported that they make decisions on which courses to take based on the specific cost of textbooks. Faculty have reported willingness to use open textbooks to help ease the burden on students but are unsure where to find viable options. We examined the responses of 676 students and 573 faculty from a large private university (Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah) to understand the real impact of textbooks costs to students and how they are dealing with this ongoing problem. We found that 66% of students at this institution have not purchased a textbook due to cost. We also discovered that 91% of faculty at this institution would be willing to use OER alternatives and that 53% of them would welcome assistance identifying and adapting materials for their course.

Scholarly practices are constantly evolving alongside the technological advances and social factors that support them. Modern advances of participatory technologies influence what it means to be a scholar in our time. This chapter explores emergent forms of technology-influenced scholarship, identifies broad categorizations of these practices (including digital scholarship, social scholarship, open scholarship, public scholarship, and networked participatory scholarship), and discusses common themes and implications within a larger framework of their effect on scholarly identity. Understanding the relationship between emergent forms of scholarship and the technologies with which they co-evolve may enable scholars to participate more meaningfully in the public sphere while still preserving their values and authentic identity.

This is an open peer-reviewed article available at https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v23i11.8346., Even though the extant literature investigates how and why academics use social media, much less is known about academics’ temporal patterns of social media use. This mixed methods study provides a first-of-its-kind investigation into temporal social media use. In particular, we study how academics’ use of Twitter varies over time and examine the reasons why academics temporarily disengage and return to the social media platform. We employ data mining methods to identify a sample of academics on Twitter (n = 3,996) and retrieve the tweets they posted (n = 9,025,127). We analyze quantitative data using descriptive and inferential statistics, and qualitative data using the constant comparative approach. Results show that Twitter use is predominantly connected to traditional work hours and is well-integrated into academics’ professional endeavors, suggesting that professional use of Twitter has become “ordinary.” Though scholars rarely announce their departure from or return to Twitter, approximately half of this study’s participants took some kind of a break from Twitter. Although users returned to Twitter for both professional and personal reasons, conferences and workshops were found to be significant events stimulating the return of academic users.

Scholarly practices are constantly evolving alongside the technological advances and social factors that support them. Modern advances of participatory technologies influence what it means to be a scholar in our time. This chapter explores emergent forms of technology-influenced scholarship, identifies broad categorizations of these practices (including digital scholarship, social scholarship, open scholarship, public scholarship, and networked participatory scholarship, and discusses common themes and implications within a larger framework of their effect on scholarly identity. Understanding the relationship between emergent forms of scholarship and the technologies with which they co-evolve may enable scholars to participate more meaningfully in the public sphere while still preserving their values and authentic identity.

Open educational resources (OER) have garnered increased attention in recent years as a means for driving down educational costs, addressing differentiation and adaptability needs, improving accuracy and quality of materials, and supporting collaboration in the design of digital coursework. Perhaps one of the greatest identified barriers in the adoption of OER has been a lack of literacy regarding copyright, fair use, and open licensing. These concepts are commonly misunderstood in educational institutions. Many instructors and educational leaders struggle with understanding what is copyrighted, when it is copyrighted, what it means if it is copyrighted, and what open means. This leads educational leaders and their programs to either improperly use these materials (i.e., illegally or unethically) or to be fearful when using them in legitimate, allowable ways. Through this chapter, we seek to provide educational leaders with an understanding of what is necessary to make full and safe use of both copyrighted and open educational resources.

In this paper, 218 U.S faculty responses regarding Open Educational Resources (OER) were qualitatively analyzed. Ten categories emerged in the coding process. The top three categories that indicated barriers to the adoption of OER were need more information (faculty wanted more information before they would be willing to adopt OER), lack of discoverability (faculty wanted to be able to easily find repositories of OER), and confusing OER with digital resources (faculty were unaware of the difference between digital resources and OER). The top incentives identified in this analysis to overcome these barriers include student cost benefits (saving students money), student pedagogical benefits (faculty being able to make changes to OER to improve course content and instruction), and institutional support for the adoption of OER (whether in the form of course load reduction, curricular research assistance, or library support for finding and adopting OER). Future research is needed to better understand how to address and overcome these barriers to OER adoption.