Findings from the Association for Learning Technology Annual Survey 2015

The second report of Findings from the ALT Annual Survey, launched in December 2014, has been published. The purpose of the survey is to engage primarily with ALT members, but also the wider community, to:

  • Help map the ALT strategy to practice within our community in order to better meet and represent our members’ needs;

  • Show how Learning Technology is used across sectors;

  • Understand current and future practice.
     

The survey reveals that ‘Data and Analytics’ continues to be an emerging important area of work for our members mirroring findings from the 2014 survey. ‘Content Management Systems and VLEs’ remain top in terms of importance for 2015, but responses indicate that this will be slightly less important in 2016. Whilst these areas may grab the headlines more niche areas continue to grow in importance. Whilst the majority of respondents didn’t indicate areas such as ‘Digital and Open Badges’, and ‘Game Based Learning’ as important these areas continue to have some of the biggest gains in the level of perceived importance for 2016.

The ALT membership continues to place a high value on our aims of ‘Intelligent use of learning technology’ and ‘Research and practice’ both reflected in the increased responses from ALT Members indicating use of ALT’s open access journal  Research in Learning Technology.    

The survey also reveals that whilst ‘professional incentives’ were recorded as the weakest enabler for engagement in learning technology this driver, along with ‘staff development opportunities’, saw the biggest increases in importance when compared to the 2014 survey results suggesting ALT’s Certified Membership of ALT (CMALT) is well placed to meet the sectors emerging needs in this area.

Commenting on the survey findings Fiona Harvey, Chair of ALT said:

It's an exciting time for education technology in education across the board. For the second year running we can see how our members are approaching the array of innovations and possibilities that digital education can provide.

The findings of this survey will have a direct impact on the work of the Association representing and serving its members in the coming year, but as highlighted by Sheila MacNeill, Senior Lecturer at Glasgow Caledonain University and ALT Trustee:

The ALT Annual Survey is once again providing a trusted benchmark for individuals and institutions to use when developing policy, practice and investment around the continued effective use of technology in education. 

Both this report and the anonymised survey data have been released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence and are available to download from https://repository.alt.ac.uk/2365