Press Release:

U.S. higher education faculty’s views on digital education trend toward new post-pandemic status quo

Digital textbook adoption continues to grow even as other digital use and perception trends stabilize.

OAKLAND, Calif. – Three-quarters of higher education faculty in the U.S. report they teach at least one fully face-to-face course, compared to 40% teaching fully online or 23% teaching a course that combined face-to-face and online components. These results come from the most recent survey results of over 3,400 faculty from Bay View Analytics. While most courses are in-person for students, this proportion is far below the 96% of faculty who reported teaching fully face-to-face pre-pandemic.

This new proportion of in-person to online and blended courses, unchanged from last year’s results, represents a new higher education status quo. Additional survey results show that faculty textbook use and perceptions on digital versus print are also steady year-over-year.

A trend that is still growing is offering digital material options for students. Almost all required textbooks are offered to students in a digital format. For 2023-24, just 8% of courses only offered a print textbook, down from 12% last year and 19% the previous year.

“The results show that higher education faculty are settling into a new normal with regards to teaching online and perceptions of digital materials, now a few years out from the COVID-19 pandemic disruption. Though, it is clear that print-only materials are becoming rarer as digital options for students continue to increase year over year,” said Dr. Julia Seaman, Research Director at Bay View Analytics.

In 2023-24, more than half of faculty (56%) were aware of open educational resources (OER)—teaching and learning materials that are free to use, adapt, and share—and 41% use OER as a required or supplemental material in their courses. While awareness and use of OER dropped slightly compared to last year, levels remain above or on par with those seen two years ago.

"Faculty are continuing to turn to OER for their courses, especially as movements for low-cost and zero-cost materials gain traction," said Seaman.

These results are part of an annual survey of educators conducted by Bay View Analytics, tracking curricula adoption decisions in higher education in the U.S. The project is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Online Learning Consortium. The complete report, Approaching a New Normal?, has been released under a Creative Commons license and is available for download at bayviewanalytics.com/HigherEdOER.. The entire 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. 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 reports on the state of online education in U.S. higher education for twenty years. Visit www.bayviewanalytics.com for more information or contact us at www.bayviewanalytics.com/contact.