Determinants of the Digital Divide among French Higher Education Teachers

Abstract

The widespread use of technology in daily life, and particularly in education in higher education institutions has devoted growing attention to the nature of ICT usages by Higher Education Teachers which has seen as an increasingly important factor for the successful integration of these technologies. This study aims to analyze the determining factors of the various uses of ICT by teachers in the university environment and to characterize their variety and intensity. For this end, we conducted a survey of a sample of 2,079 teachers from public universities in France. Our approach consisted in measuring the intensity of use of ICT in academia in order to appreciate the resulting digital divides between different groups of teachers. Multinomial logistic regression shows that the differences in the use of ICT are linked to the differences in initial digital skills between teachers. Furthermore, the training in ICT, age, gender and social context appear to have a manifold influence on ICT use. Our results clearly confirm the existence of digital divides, it prompts us to analyze more precisely the role of innovative users and that of first-time adopters when they appear to be actors involved in the diffusion of ICT within universities.