Level Of Teaching Skills And Interest In Teaching Improvement As Perceived By Faculty In A Land-Grant College Of Agriculture

Abstract

This study described the level of skills, and interests in learning more about, selected teaching activities and educational technologies among faculty with teaching appointments in the College of Agricultural, Food and LifeSciences at the University of Arkansas. As part of a United States Department of Agriculture grant, the study served as a needs assessmentfor designingfaculty development activities. Teaching faculty perceived that they had relatively high levels of skills in traditional classroom teaching areas such as lecture and discussion methods. However, they had high levels of interest in learning more about these skills. Their self-perceived levels of skills were low in such non-traditional areas as case studies, discovery learning, and peer observation, and they expressed little interest in learning more about these topics. There was little relationship between their level of skill and level of interest in learning more about teaching methods. These faculty rated their levels of skill in educational technologies lower than for the teaching methods. However, they expressedgenerally high levels of interest in learning more about the technologies. A substantial positive relationship was found between level of skill and interest in learning more about educational technologies.