New Media Needs Assessment of Faculty for Integration into Instruction
Lasisi Ajayi

Abstract
The combination of interrelated shifts – policy changes, global knowledge-based economy, shifting characteristics of students, and emerging technologies – suggest that faculty must go beyond the traditional stand-alone, textbook-based instruction and use new media to provide rich learning environments where digital resources are infused into instruction to augment students’ learning experiences and interactions. However, there are discrepancies between existing technological resources and faculty’s knowledge of such resources to produce the desired outcomes in many universities. The purpose of this study is to assess new media needs of faculty members. Twenty-one faculty from a small university in Southern California responded to a 72-item, 5-point Likert-type attitudinal scale and provided written responses to 11 open-ended questions. The findings suggest that the participants perceive a gap between their optimal performance and actual practice. The study suggests that the university should conduct technology-needs assessments of faculty with a goal of identifying their technology knowledge and needs.

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