Student and Faculty Perceptions of ICT Use in Undergraduate Agriculture Courses

Abstract

Students and faculty in a land-grant college of agriculture were surveyed to determine their perceptions of current and future Information and Communication Technology (ICT) use in undergraduate agricul- ture courses. There was a large, positive relationship (r = .83) between student and faculty perceptions of the extent to which 40 specific ICT tasks were required in undergraduate courses. Students and faculty ranked the same five ICT tasks (receive email, send email, search the Internet, submit assignments as email attachments, and use Blackboard© to acquire course information) as being the most frequently re- quired. Students and faculty agreed that all database tasks and many of the intermediate to advanced spreadsheet, word processing, graphics, Internet, and miscellaneous tasks were seldom required in un- dergraduate agriculture courses. While a majority of students and faculty indicated that future ICT use should be maintained at the current level in each of seven broad ICT areas, there were significant (p < .05) differences between faculty plans and student recommendations for future use of the Internet, data- bases, computer graphics, and specialized applications. Students were undecided to moderately positive about their course-related ICT experiences. These results indicate a need to better integrate intermediate and advanced ICT tasks into undergraduate courses.