Considerations for a Professional Development Program to Support iPads in Higher Education Teaching

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the scholarly literature on the adoption of technology in education in order to identify the key considerations for designing, delivering, and evaluating a professional development (PD) program to support the use of Apple Inc.'s iPad technology by higher education teachers. Scholars who have studied the adoption of technology in educational settings indicate the need for PD in order for success. Even with hyped technology, such as the iPad, providing access alone is not enough for successful adoption. I begin by examining the literature on the use of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in educational contexts and how it might influence a PD program. In the following five sections of the paper, I examine five elements that I have identified as crucial to successful technology adoption: technology, time, individual beliefs, organizational structures, and evaluation. Finally, I summarize the key considerations identified throughout the literature review. Based upon my review, a professional development program should: 1. Benefit both pre-adoption and post-adoption learners. 2. Include a learning intervention that aims to increase pre-adoption learners' perceptions on usefulness and ease-of-use. 3. Integrate both product technology and idea technology. 4. Demonstrate useful apps with workflow in a context that learners understand. 5. Begin with familiar activity before challenging beliefs. 6. Seek out stakeholders and idea leaders to provide context and champion the program. 7. Provide ways to share the re-inventions of idea technology at regular intervals. 8. Provide multiple training interventions spread out over time. 9. Use post-adoption learners to encourage change in beliefs of pre-adoption learners. 10. Mitigate pro-adoption bias by evaluating individual's perceptions using the TAM. 11. Evaluate impact by measuring the individual's impact of a lost device. 12. Repeat evaluations over various time frames to measure the change in the organization.