Background The
School Technology Needs Assessment (STNA, say "Stenna")
was originally developed by SEIR*TEC at SERVE in collaboration
with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction's
Educational Technology Division, as part of the LANCET
project (Looking at North Carolina Educational Technology).
The
STNA was created to help building-level planners collect
and analyze needs data related to implementation of
the NC IMPACT technology integration model, as well
as other contemporary frameworks for examining technology
use in teaching and learning.
The
STNA is typically accessed through a web address unique
to each school, using a free online surveying system
provided by SERVE. After a the survey has been completed
by all staff members, it is closed and the address of
a web-based report is provided to the individual responsible
for coordinating the needs assessment. For
schools preferring other options, a paper-and-pencil
copy of the STNA may also be downloaded and freely reproduced
for use, or items may be adapted to any other surveying
method (e.g., telephone, email, or other web-based system).
A
new version of STNA (3.0) was released in December 2006,
although the older version is still available to schools
wishing to compare newly-collected data with the results
of previous STNA implementations.
Appropriate
Uses The STNA is intended to determine the collective
needs of a school staff, related to the use of technology
in education settings. It provides information to help
school-level planners - administrators, technology and
media specialists, and school or technology planning
team members - make purchasing, resource allocation,
or other decisions relating to technology. However,
its most important use may be guiding building- and
district-level decisions about professional development
for educators, including those about content, timing,
and type of opportunities provided.
It is not appropriate to use the STNA in any
attempt to determine individual teachers' skills with,
understandings of, or attitudes about technology; nor
should this instrument be used to compare schools or
their staffs.
Data
and Reporting The STNA collects perceptive data (what respondents think or feel) about a variety of
broad areas of technology implementation in their school:
The degree to which environmental factors support
technology use
Professional development opportunities offered and
taken advantage of
Uses of technology to support teaching and learning
activities
The impact of technology on teaching practice and
student outcomes
Responses
are analyzed through the online system and each report
provides a picture of that school as a whole, presented
as frequencies and percentages of responses to all items,
and as bar chart representations of those values.
PDF guides to Interpreting STNA data are provided to help
school planning teams make well-founded decisions about
technology initiative implementations (STNA
v.2.x, STNA
v.3.0). These documents illustrate a range of sample
item response profiles and describe how they might best
be interpreted.
Using
the STNA in Your School A
PDF step-by-step checklist for Implementing
STNA in Your School is available to help guide deployment
of STNA in your school. To
use the online STNA, contact
SERVE's STNA coordinator by email to arrange for
initialization of your school's individual STNA. Be
prepared to provide some specific information:
The name of your school
An accurate count of the number of respondents expected
to complete the STNA
The date on which staff members may start responding
The date on which responses should end
Once
the response period has ended, a report URL is provided
only to the original school contact.
A sample
of the online STNA is available for review. Note
that, while this sample is completely functional and
may be completed and submitted, responses will not be
visible to SERVE or to the visitor reviewing the instrument.
Note
that the current version of the STNA (3.0) includes
items asking about the professional profile of respondents.
This information is collected for the sole purpose of
furthering ongoing study of the reliability and validity
of the STNA instrument. In order to preserve and ensure
respond confidentiality of individual responses, this
demographic information is never made available to schools.
It is not possible to identify individuals or their
responses in online STNA reports.
The STNA inferences document (PDF) provides some guidance for interpreting and using your STNA results. View a presentation (in PPT or PDF formats) that describes STNA and provides general suggestions for interpreting the bar graphs provided in the online report.
You
may also view a sample
STNA online report, to see how results will be organized,
once your school staff has completed the survey.
To
deploy the paper-and-pencil STNA, go
to the STNA Downloads page, choose the version you want, and freely distribute
the PDF version of the document. Note that frequencies
and percentages must be calculated manually for this
version of the instrument.
