As an NC State faculty member who taught in Fall 2002, you have been selected to participate in this survey. As indicated in the email you received, the survey will ask you to think about whether or not you used computers and other electronic instructional and student-learning aids in courses you taught last semester. Some of you will be asked about your 100-200-level courses with enrollments of 60 or more, others will be asked about 300-400-level courses with fewer than 30 students, and so on. If you did use these instructional and learning aids in these courses, you'll get chance to tell us how you used them. For those you didn't use, you'll get chance to tell us why not and whether you might try them if conditions were different.

This survey plays a critical role in the University's preparation for its upcoming reaffirmation of university-wide accreditation by the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges (SACS). Part of the reaffirmation process is a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), a long-range plan to enhance instruction and student learning. NC State's QEP topic is "Learning in a Technology-Rich Environment" (LITRE), a set of proposals to study, take advantage of, and enhance the ways in which our expertise in technology improves instruction and student learning. This survey, which focuses on computer-based technology for instruction and learning, is one initial step in implementing LITRE. Studying faculty and student use of and satisfaction with current computer-based and non-computerized educational-technology applications, resources, content and infrastructure at NC State will help shape recommendations for appropriate actions based on identified needs.

Please help us by taking a few minutes to complete the survey. Your answers to all the questions are very important. The survey includes a "comments" section in which you may elaborate on an answer. It is very important that everyone being asked to participate in this survey does so. Your responses will be combined with those from other NC State faculty members to give an overview of opinions on this topic.

The Unity or EOS log-on you use to access this survey will be automatically associated with your answers. We use this to link your responses to other information in university records, such as your department and college, so that we are able to better understand the survey results and at the same time keep this questionnaire short. Be assured that all of your responses will be kept strictly confidential! Our reports remove identifying information and combine your responses with those of other faculty members. The original data are not available for use by others. If you do not have a Unity or Eos login ID, please contact Terri Riley mailto:terri@ncsu.edu to get one.

If you have any technical questions about this survey, please call our office of University Planning and Analysis at (919) 515-4184 or email nancy_whelchel@ncsu.edu. If you have more general questions about the survey or the LITRE project, please contact Sharon Pitt at (919) 513-4234 or email litre_info@ncsu.edu. (At the end of the survey you'll find a Web link to more information about LITRE and SACS reaffirmation.)

Thank you for your help with this important effort to learn more about and improve the educational experience at NC State.

Sincerely,
Robert A. Barnhardt
Interim Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs