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  • Who Are We?

    By Joshua Kim September 2, 2009 9:26 pm EDT

     

    I was perusing my Chronicle of Higher Ed. Almanac this afternoon. I learned that:

    --About 2.6 million folks work in higher education.

    --About 1.4 million are faculty members.

    --Of these faculty members, about 51% work full-time.
    Lots of other good facts, but nothing I could find on the numbers, composition, or change among learning technologists.

    How many of us are out there?

    Is anyone measuring our profession? Surveying are members? Researching our professional backgrounds, educational attainment, career paths, and major challenges? How do we break down by age, gender, race/ethnicity and region.

    A quick Web search did not yield much. I'm hoping that someone knows about how to find this information and about who is collecting and disseminating this research.

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Comments on Who Are We?

  • Technology Leader and Chief Information Officer Research
  • Posted by Wayne Brown , VP, IT at Excelsior College on September 3, 2009 at 9:00am EDT

  • I've been conducting and reporting on higher ed CIOs for the past five years. In 2009, I also began surveying technology leaders in the next organizational layer down from the CIO. My goal is to provide a better picture of the people in the CIO and technology leader role, their backgrounds, attributes and conditions that make them effective, and the career path they have taken to get to their current role. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about the survey results.

    Wayne

  • Posted by Laura M. on September 3, 2009 at 9:30am EDT

  • UBC in Vancouver, Canada offers a degree in educational technology, so I posted a note about your query to the program community site, as I know the program tries to keep track of alumni and their doings. The program trains for both K-12 and post-secondary learning technologists (the latter is definitely in the minority). Perhaps someone from there will be willing to share some thoughts on this subject.

    Laura

  • UBC MET Program
  • Posted by Dave R at UBC on September 18, 2009 at 5:00pm EDT

  • I've been a bit delinquent since Laura told me about this post, mainly due to the start of the term. Demographics of students in the Master of Educational Technology (MET) program is something we try really hard to keep track of, though it does require the cooperation of the student and/or alumnus in order to keep track of where they've gone during and after completing the program.

    Since there is a question on the application form asking applicants what their current position is, we have a much better handle on what they're doing when they come into our program than we do when they leave. Since the degree is offered by the Faculty of Education, needless to say the majority of our students are K-12 teachers, but we still have a sizable minority of post-secondary and non-education (private companies, things like that) students and alumni (36%).

    We're definitely looking to have more post-secondary students, but it's not as easy to get the word out to them as it is to K-12 teachers, where you can reach them through their teaching associations.

    I'm also going to pass this along to some of the technology educators in our program and see if they have any thoughts as well.

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