Dion van Zyl & Hanlie Liebenberg MOVING TOWARDS A MORE ‘DIGITISED’ TEACHING ENVIRONMENT: ICT ACCEPTANCE AND EXPERIENCES OF IODL STAFF Dion van Zyl & Hanlie Liebenberg

Background Revolution of ICT’s in HE over the past 20 years has contributed to the blurring of boundaries between distance and contact education. Students increasingly gaining access to a range of ICTs for educational purposes. Students’ digital fluency forms an integral part of their graduateness. Research at Unisa over past 5 years focussed on understanding students’ ICT digital fluency/sophistication. However, students’ ICT fluency potential can only be achieved if educators can equally deliver quality education within new ICT environments.

Research Context In 2016 the Academic Planner of Unisa commissioned the Directorate Institutional Research to roll out a research project in support of understanding the transition academic staff are making to move to a more “digitised” teaching environment. To determine the ICT usage, attitudes and the challenges academic staff experience in the transitional move to a more “digitised” teaching environment… with a focus on learning platforms/VLE’s.

Research aims …explore direct relationship between technology acceptance factors and intention to use amongst Unisa staff; …investigate the mediating effects of attitudes between ICT acceptance and intention to use; …investigate moderating effects of gender, age, post level and years of service on the relationship between ICT acceptance and intention to use.

Conceptual model

Design Survey amongst staff Sample n=310 Well balanced across colleges, academic levels and demographics

What primary platform staff use… myUnisa (97%) Blackboard (12%) Google classroom (9% ) Moodle (4%) Adobe classroom (3%) WebCT (3%) Kaleidos (1%) myUnisa remain the primary platform, rightfully so… While the use of myUnisa was to be expected, it is interesting to note the other forms of VLE’s used by academics. Pockets of use and in some instances experimental. Why not stick with ‘official’ platform – either need for ‘more’ than what is currently offered or not utlised to full potential…? Fronter (0,3%) Pockets of ‘experimental’ Why not use ‘official’ platform solely? Need for ‘more’ than what is currently offered or not utlised to full potential…?

Some challenges… Limitations in bandwidth capacity restricts uploading of videos, podcast, and various social media platforms to myUnisa. Blackboard and Google classroom expensive and not supported by ICT. Not an all-inclusive page that allows interaction, but it is rather fragmented; thus, students need to jump to various platforms, pages and resources to communicate and learn. myUnisa viewed as student administrative tool rather than learning platform.

Use of secondary resources to enhance T&L YouTube 46% Podcasts 27% Facebook 22% Twitter 10% Google classroom 9% Vodcasts 6% Powtoons 3%

Construct measures

Performance expectancy= 81% Top Box Score Agree Degree to which users have confidence in the system that will help in attaining gains in job performance.

Effort expectancy= 84% Top Box Score Agree Measures the ease associated with the use of the system.

Social influence= 33% Top Box Score Agree Degree to which an individual perceives that important others believe he or she should use the new system.  

Facilitating conditions= 75% Agree Top Box Score Degree to which an individual believes that an organisational and technical infrastructure exists to support use of the system.  

Hedonic motivation= 56% Top Box Score Agree Refers to the fun or pleasure derived from using a technology.

Habit= 55% Top Box Score Agree Habit is first “explained by prior behaviour” and secondly measured as the extent to which an “individual believes the behaviour to be automatic.”

Behavioural intent= 87% Top Box Score Agree Defined as the intent to continue frequent use in the future.

The model

Drivers of use 0.286* 0.169* 0.332* Moderating variables

Attitude as mediator

Performance expectancy Use Attitude (medium effect) Performance expectancy Effort expectancy Habit

Moderators

(gains in job performance) Age L 0.456 Performance expectancy (gains in job performance) M 0.528 Behavioural intent H 0.600 Results show that age was identified as having some moderating effect on the relationship between performance expectancy and intent to use, with the strength of the relationship increasing with age. Older academics are slightly more inclined (sensitive) to use teaching platforms, if it can help them to attain gains in job performance.

Age Habit Behavioural intent 0.433 Habit M 0.543 Behavioural intent H 0.653

(gains in job performance) Gender M 0.551 F Performance expectancy (gains in job performance) 0.556 M 0.656 Behavioural intent Effort expectancy (ease with the use) F 0.567 M 0.535 Habit F 0.558

Post grade Grade L Effort Behavioural M expectancy intent H 0.705 Effort expectancy (ease with the use) M 0.594 Behavioural intent Academics that fall into the lower post grades categories P8-P10, the relationship between effort expectancy and behavioural intent were slightly stronger. Thus, the degree to which an academic (P8-P10) believes that the system teaching platforms is easy to use, and not complex in nature, will be more sensitive towards future use. Therefore, for young emerging academics starting on their career path and who finds the use of VLEs easy and understandable, effort expectancy would have the largest effect on their future intent of behaviour. H 0.483

What we take from this… Prior use of teaching platforms and tools plays a significant role in academics persisting in the use of these mediums. However, this is not necessarily based on the value of using VLEs but rather on the habit of using them. Risk of merely using teaching platforms based on habit do not open sufficient avenues for improvement…

Academics need to broaden their VLE horizon – as with students they need to experience, engage and learn by using... but the institution need to support this drive. We need to be cognisant of different ‘segments’ of academics and where they are on their academic career paths. If academics are convinced of the value of using platforms (attitudes) and the benefits thereof on their job performance (effort meets performance), it would positively affect their future usage. The next-generation digital learning environments (NGDLE) place a huge responsibility not only on technological development but also on the commitment and development of academics within their specific fields.