Date of Award
2012
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Abraham S. Fischler College of Education
Advisor
Marianne M. Riddile
Committee Member
Andrew Jared Bucker
Committee Member
Ronald P. Kern
Keywords
attribution, attribution theory, Attributional Style Questionnaire, blogs, educational technology, explanatory style, faculty, faculty attitudes, faculty development, faculty innovativeness, Facebook, gender differences, higher education, higher education faculty, innovation adoption, Innovativeness Scale, instant messaging, optimism, part-time faculty, pessimism, podcasts, positive attitudes, psychology, public universities, social communities, teacher attitudes, teacher-student interaction, technology adoption, technology integration, training barriers, video casts, video sharing, Web 2.0, well being, workplace support, YouTube, demographic factors, emerging technologies, faculty perceptions, intrinsic factors, online technologies, professional development, social media, student engagement, technology use in education, university faculty, web-based learning, educational innovation, classroom technology, adoption barriers, organizational support, instructional technology, digital learning tools, faculty motivation, faculty confidence, learning technologies, technology acceptance, educational psychology, faculty training, online communication tools, teaching effectiveness, higher education institutions, technology implementation, innovation diffusion, faculty behavior, technology readiness, educational practices, online collaboration tools, faculty perceptions of technology, technology-enabled teaching, instructional innovation, professional learning, organizational change, educational leadership, technology-supported instruction, faculty well-being
Abstract
People may have either a more positive or more negative explanatory style, and their explanatory style consequently leads to behavior choices. Explanatory style may be a primary intrinsic factor underlying optimistic or pessimistic attitudes that directly affect technology adoption by faculty. Research has already found some links among optimism, positive attitudes, and technology adoption. This dissertation therefore analyzed the relationship between explanatory style and individual innovativeness among higher education faculty as measured by the use of emerging Web 2.0 technologies in higher education with the intent to better understand how optimism and pessimism affect choices to use technology in education. The study further analyzed the study construct relationships across gender, age level, and other demographic factors.
Full- and part-time faculty at public 4-year higher education institutions was given the Innovativeness Scale (IS; Hurt, Joseph, & Cook, 1977) and the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ; Peterson, Maier, & Seligman, 1993; Peterson & Seligman, 1984; Tennen & Herzberger, 1986) in order to measure relationships between the study constructs. The results of this study showed an overall weak positive correlation between the ASQ and IS (r = 0.2920, n = 54, p = .0320). When the data were split the males (r = 0.0570, n = 25, p = .7850) had no correlation while the females (r = 0.5120, n = 29, p = .0005) had a stronger correlation between these variables suggesting that gender seems to play an important role in the relationship between the ASQ and the IS.
The top 5 Web 2.0 tools used, in order of preference, follow: (a) video sharing with tools like YouTube; (b) instant messaging; (c) blogs; (d) social communities, such as Facebook; and (e) podcasts or video casts. In this study, the respondents claimed that the intrinsic factors of a lack of time and training were the main barriers to integrating more Web 2.0 tools into their classrooms. Respondents reported positive views of Web 2.0 use in class, with 75% saying that these tools would benefit students and 83% saying they would benefit teacher-student interactions. In contrast to these results, though, only 44% of the respondents used at least 4 of the 13 listed Web 2.0 tools with students. The reported uses did not match with the reported benefits, and this would support the results that extrinsic factors (time, training, support), instead of intrinsic factors (beliefs, motivation, confidence) are the main barriers to faculty using more Web 2.0 in education. There was no relationship between the number of barriers to use of, or reported uses of, Web 2.0 tools and the study constructs of ASQ and IS.