Increasing teaching efficiency - Are they ready for new technology?

For the last seven years, at Silesian University of Technology (SUT), Gliwice, Poland, many undergraduate courses have been fully revised and renewed based on Information and Communication Technology [1,2]. Despite of significant modifications of knowledge delivery and facilitating of self-learning, the students' examination results are often poor. In the current stage of the Circuit Theory course transformation, the authors focus on the student evaluation of the course, and the students' opinion on perspective modification of the course; in particular, on application of various Internet tools (Social Networks, Virtual Worlds, RSS Feeds etc.) for teaching. The survey results show that our students are satisfied with the teaching quality; they indicate insufficient workload as the main examination failure reason. In students' opinion, lecture and classroom tutorials video podcasts are the most successful method of increasing teaching efficiency. The students' acceptance of modern Internet tools for teaching is rather low, the only exception is the Learning Management System (LMS). Following the survey results, the authors reject the idea of introducing more Internet tools for teaching; they will focus on delivering more video podcasts, stimulating students' activity and motivation, as well as increasing application of LMS for self-learning and communication.