Full length articleThe acceptance and use of interactive whiteboards among teachers: Differences in UTAUT determinants between pre- and post-adopters
Introduction
Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) as a part of information and communication technologies (ICT) have become an integral part of contemporary education (Firmin & Genesi, 2013) in a range from pre-school to university as well as outside of schools. Based on the belief that IWBs can improve education, extensive investments have been made by governments worldwide, e.g. the United Kingdom (Hall & Higgins, 2005), South Africa (Slay, Siebörger, & Hodgkinson-Williams, 2008), Turkey (Ersoy & Bozkurt, 2015), the USA (Firmin & Genesi, 2013) and across many individual schools worldwide. However, reports on their effect on learning outcomes and efficacy as a teaching tool are far from unequivocal, with (Slay et al., 2008, Smith et al., 2005) reporting on the pros and cons of their use in classrooms. The study of Fekonja-Peklaj & Marjanovič-Umek (2015) reported positive aspects of IWB use, such as the dynamic display of content, pupils' attention and motivation, and negative aspects including technical difficulties and a frontal way of teaching.
Many factors influence the adoption of any technology or teaching practice of an individual teacher when adoption is voluntary. This is the case in the Slovenian school system, where teachers are obligated to include specific content prescribed by syllabi approved by the government in their courses, while remaining autonomous with regard to the methods and technology used to do so (Šorgo, Verčkovnik, & Kocijančič, 2010), even if technologies are available in a classroom or school laboratory.
Traditionally, in every classroom multiple technologies are used, and some of them, such as textbooks, black- or white-boards, and wallpaper charts are universally used and not regarded as technologies anymore (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). Some other technologies have recently been discarded or are only used on rare, special occasions (e.g. radio, TV). Other forms of technology, such as different ICT applications, are in different phases of their adoption cycles (Sherry, 1998). The introduction of any kind of new technology into a classroom is not only a financial or technical issue, but is in the first place, a pedagogical issue. If the introduction of a type of technology, such as IWBs, is not accompanied by appropriate tailored content, pedagogy and support, which allows teachers to construct their Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Mishra & Koehler, 2006), new classroom technology is in many cases condemned to become a decorative dust collector or underutilized (Hepp, Hinostroza, Laval, & Rehbein, 2004), because the teachers themselves are a key factor in technology use (Mueller, Wood, Willoughby, Ross, & Specht, 2008). In the case of introducing IWBs, we cannot regard them as a primary, but rather as an adventive, technology. Technically IWBs are an interactive, touch-sensitive, big-screen extension of a computer connected to a digital projector (Smith et al., 2005), originally developed for office settings (Greiffenhagen, 2002, Smith et al., 2005). Because IWBs are an upgrade or a replacement of existing presentation technologies (e.g. whiteboards, computers with a projector), teachers can include or exclude them from their teaching activities based on the perceived optimization of class learning outcomes and the perceived benefits that can be attributed to the technology. The most important advances attributed to IWBs include dynamic content, interactivity, motivation, and social interactions.
Interactivity is one of the major attributes of interactive whiteboards. However, in classroom practice, the user should delineate between interactive classroom practices and interactive technologies. Interactions between students and teachers (unless a teacher presents their lecture as a monologue) are common practice in traditional classrooms, ranging from asking questions, to vivid debates, and practical work. They did not start with the invention of ICT, or IWBs particularly. Many interactive activities were already known before the IWBs era, and are still being used today, and were simply adapted to digital formats. Some examples are puzzles, mind mapping, sketching, quizzes, etc. The key message of many studies is that major enhancers of classroom interactivity are teachers and not technology (Mueller et al., 2008, Sundberg et al., 2012).
One of the attributes affecting the introduction of IWBs is motivation. However, we should differentiate between the motivation to work with technology and the motivation for content taught with technology. There are a number of studies exploring effect of IWBs on students' motivation. Generally studies report a positive effect on motivation, both for work with IWBs and topics (Şad & Özhan, 2012), however the gains in knowledge domains can be insignificant and small (Torff & Tirotta, 2010).
On the other end of the continuum are concerns about the use of IWBs in a classroom (Slay et al., 2008, Smith et al., 2005). Besides “traditional” limited access to technologies, the lack of interactive materials, training and support reported are limited access to the technology outside lessons for students (Hall & Higgins, 2005), the position of IWBs in a classroom, leading to frontal teaching (Fekonja-Peklaj & Marjanovič-Umek, 2015), or spatially diverse teaching across different locations within the school (Tondeur, De Bruyne, Van Den Driessche, McKenney, & Zandvliet, 2015).
The main objectives of this study are as follows:
- 1.
To develop an instrument based on a modified UTAUT that will allow the simultaneous assessment of dimensions affecting behavioral intentions (BI) and predicted and actual use (USE) of school technologies among different types of users (pre-adopters and post-adopters).
- 2.
To compare pre-adopters and post-adopters in terms of the differences in actual or potential acceptance of technology, and IWBs in particular, in order to understand which dimensions are more important for a certain user type.
- 3.
To statistically verify a modified instrument to be used as a model for research on acceptance and use of the same (IWBs) or different educational technologies, in individual educational organizations or clusters of them.
Section snippets
Technology adoption
The most common theory in the field of IT/IS (information technology/information system) adoption is the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Davis (Davis, 1989) proposed TAM to explain the potential user's behavioral intentions when using a technological innovation, because it explains the causal links between perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU) and users' attitudes towards using (ATU), behavioral intentions (BI), and the actual usage of the system (U) (see Fig. 1).
TAM has
Research model and hypotheses
In this study, the UTAUT model was chosen as a ground theory for developing the research model for investigating teachers' perceptions about using IWBs because of its novelty in technology acceptance research, especially in the e-learning technology field. Fig. 3 presents a research model that explains the use of IWBs and the hypothesized relationships between the variables. The base UTAUT model was extended with ATU because several studies have shown a significant relationship between the ATU
Research method
To test the formulated hypotheses, quantitative research in the form of an online questionnaire-based survey was conducted. The following subsections describe the measurement instrument development process, a pilot test of the questionnaire, the sampling process and the statistical methods that were used for an analysis of the empirical data.
Sample characteristics
Table 1 lists the teacher respondent characteristics. The results of the sample characteristics analysis indicate that a typical pre-adopter and post-adopter of IWBs, participating in this study, was a female teacher between 35 and 54 years old with more than 20 years of teaching experience. The primary working place where the IWB was utilized was in elementary schools (Nine years of elementary school is obligatory and divided into three triads. The last triade is considered to be the lower
Discussion
The goal of this study was to develop and empirically validate a modified UTAUT model by addressing different user types (pre- and post-adopters) in order to identify factors that significantly affect behavioral intentions and the actual use of an educational technology (in this case IWBs) among teachers in schools. One of the objectives was also to statistically verify and propose a new instrument to research the acceptance and use of IWBs or other education-related technologies in educational
Conclusion
Although there were some limitations, this study makes a contribution to the body of research of UTAUT determinants in the field of educational technology introduced in schools for instructional purposes, in particular for IWBs. This study has proposed and validated a model for understanding the determinants of IWB acceptance for potential and actual users. Therefore, user type was added as a moderating variable to the base UTAUT model in order to explore differences between potential users and
Acknowledgements
This research was partly conducted within the project “Accelerating the acceptance and use of interactive content on smart devices” (http://pkp.sklad-kadri.si/?p=3440). The project was carried out during the operation “Po kreativni poti do praktičnega znanja”, which was partly supported and financed by the European Union - European Social Fund, Operational Programme for Human Resource Development 2007–2013. We thank Mr. Marjan Mihalič, assistant principal of the Primary School Apače, Mr. Aleš
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