It also says the proportion of campuses that require students to exhibit competence in using computers has risen to two out of every five. Academic-computing officers at 605 institutions responded to the survey, which is directed by Kenneth C. Green, a visiting scholar at the Claremont Graduate University. The survey is sent each year to about 1,600 colleges across the United States. It was the second year in a row that computing administrators described user support as their most difficult challenge. It's still entirely new.
Some technologies appear to be easier for faculty members to handle than others.
E-mail is used in nearly 33 per cent of courses among the institutions that responded to the survey. That's up from about 25 per cent last year, and 8 per cent in 1994, the first time e-mail use was measured. The rise was most pronounced at universities, both public and private. About 60 per cent of courses at private universities and 48 per cent of courses at public universities take advantage of e-mail, the survey says. Use of the World-Wide Web is also becoming more common in course work, the report shows.