An Investigation of Community College Administrators\u27 Perceptions of Educational Technology Facilities

The purpose of this investigation was to measure the direction community colleges across the United States and Canada have been taking in the development of technology based facilities and how the evolutional changes in the use and access of computers, multimedia, video and information resources for education has had an impact on facility development. To gain an insight on technology based facilities remodeling and/or development, an instrument of forty questions was developed and mailed to the facility offices and technology developers at the fifty-five (N=55) community colleges that are members of the League for Innovation in the Community College. The thirty-four (34) responses from the survey were tabulated using a Modified-Delphi Technique to determine a consensus of direction on seven conceptual issues: facility function, funding, human resources, educational activities, equipment, benefits and critical issues. The results of the investigation suggested: I) developing facilities for broad use; 2) the design for most new facilities should consider future modification possibilities; 3) there is an insignificant change in the number of newly constructed or planned joint-use, multipurpose technology based facilities; 4) most institutions fund technology at a rate between 5% and 9% of the institutions total operating budget; 5) there is no common strategy for developing the human resources needed for new facilities; 6) almost all community colleges do not require any form of technology literacy for employees; 7) the most innovative facilities developed include: open curriculum support centers, joint use facilities, computer courtyards, expanded libraries, instructional learning centers, facilitated learning centers, and technology support centers; 8) most community colleges have strategic plans and operational plans to support them; 9) very few empirical studies have been conducted at community colleges on the value of technology based facilities; and, 10) only two-thirds of facility development projects are based on using new methods of instruction or learning paradigms