Press Release:

Digital Curricula Use in Higher Education Continues to Grow Even with Return to In-Person Courses

Bar chart of higher education teaching modality by year showing the pandemic caused a drastic decline in face-to-face teaching that has not fully returned for 2021-22.

Download Report: Turning Point for Digital Curricula: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2022
Download infographic: Turning Point for Digital Curricula infographic

Faculty report increased acceptance of digital materials and use of open educational resources

It looks like many faculty – but not all – found digital course materials and tools useful and plan to incorporate them more whether they are face-to-face or online”

— Julia Seaman, Director of Research

OAKLAND, CA, USA, June 30, 2022/EINPresswire.com/ -- While almost all higher education faculty have returned to their physical classrooms this school year, their reversion to print textbooks and other instructional materials they preferred before the pandemic hasn’t been nearly as swift, an annual survey of educators by Bay View Analytics found.

The results show that students are returning to the classroom, with 58% of faculty stating they taught at least one face-to-face course in the 2021-22 school year. While this is a large increase over the just 14% of faculty who did so in 2020-21, it is still far below the pre-pandemic level of 96% from 2018-19. In addition, over half of faculty stated that they “agree” or “strongly agree” that they would like to teach their courses as a combination of in-person and online and also as fully online.

Faculty and administrators expressed growing acceptance of digital courseware this year compared to earlier surveys, with 74% of both faculty and administrators saying that digital materials provide students with greater flexibility.

“Digital curricula and remote learning in higher education were already on the rise before the pandemic. The emergency switch to online learning during the pandemic introduced many faculty and students to a wider range of digital tools,” says Dr. Julia Seaman, Director of Research at Bay View Analytics and author of the report. “It looks like many faculty – but not all – found digital course materials and tools useful and plan to incorporate them more whether they are face-to-face or online.”

The 2021-22 survey results are the first year that the majority of faculty (57%) report awareness of open educational resources (OER). OER are teaching, learning and research materials that are either in the public domain or licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to retain, reuse, revise, remix and/or redistribute them. Faculty awareness of OER has grown year over year, with this year’s survey showing a 7% increase. The survey also shows that faculty use of OER has quadrupled since 2016, with more than one in five reporting adopting OER.

The survey results also highlight that 64% of faculty and 86% of administrators still believe that cost of course materials is a serious problem for students.
Bay View Analytics is in partnership with the Online Learning Consortium and funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. This year’s study is the 11th in a series investigating higher education curricula discovery, selection and adoption processes in the United States since 2009.

The complete report, Turning Point for Digital Curricula: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2022, is released under a Creative Commons license and is available for download at https://www.bayviewanalytics.com/reports/turningpointdigitalcurricula.pdf. An associated infographic is available at https://www.bayviewanalytics.com/reports/turningpointdigitalcurricula_infographic.pdf and associated research brief on OER trends is available at https://www.bayviewanalytics.com/reports/reaserchbrief_becomingmainstream.pdf. The study also examined educators’ views on curriculum adoption and professional development.

The full series of reports for this project and for reports on K-12 are available on the OER section of the Bay View Analytics webpage, https://www.bayviewanalytics.com/oer.html.

About Bay View Analytics
Bay View Analytics is a statistical research firm focusing on survey design, implementation and analysis. Formerly known as the Babson Survey Research Group, the scope of Bay View Analytics' consulting engagements includes scientific statistical analyses, clinical trial statistics and survey designs for a range of topics, with a particular focus on online education. Bay View Analytics has been conducting research and publishing annual reports on the state of online education in U.S. higher education for thirteen years. Visit www.bayviewanalytics.com for more information or contact us at info@bayviewanalytics.com.

About Online Learning Consortium
The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) is a collaborative community of education leaders and innovators, dedicated to advancing quality digital teaching and learning experiences designed to reach and engage the modern learner – anyone, anywhere, anytime. The growing OLC community includes faculty members, administrators, trainers, instructional designers and other learning professionals, as well as educational institutions, professional societies and corporate enterprises. Visit onlinelearningconsortium.org for more information.