Abstract
Technology acceptance and usage become obligatory for people when their work modes change as a result of an unexpected but irresistible force. This is especially true for teachers who are reluctant technology adopters compared with their students. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government issued national policies to enforce online teaching and learning. As the success of online teaching largely depends on university faculties' readiness and intentions, how they perceive and practice technology adoption becomes an issue that warrants in-depth research. Unlike their students who grow up with technology and can be seen as digital natives, university faculties may lack competence in using technology, whether to teach or do other tasks. Previous studies on faculties' technology adoption were all conducted in situations where they made volitional decisions to use technology, but their mandatory technology use received scant attention. In addition, although studies suggested that teachers demonstrated features of digital natives, it remains unknown whether or to what extent their digital nativity correlates with technology intentions. To address these research gaps, the current study examined Chinese university faculties' intentions to use technology for online teaching by incorporating digital nativity and computer self-efficacy as key determinants into technology acceptance variables. Results suggested that digital nativity was a key factor that affected university faculties' online teaching, as evidenced by the fact that 67% of the variance could be explained by perceived usefulness, attitudes and digital nativity. In addition, it was also found that computer efficacy significantly influenced perceived ease of use.
Highlights
Digitalization encourages people of different professions to improve their job performance with information and communication technologies
Results of this study indicated that the measurement model had achieved a good model fit (χ2/df = 2.248, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = 0.916, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = 0.923, SRMR = 0.0579, and Root-Mean-Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = 0.050 [0.047, 0.053])
Consistent with the technology acceptance model (TAM) and previous studies, perceived usefulness is related to university faculties’ attitudes toward online teaching (Davis, 1989; Huang et al, 2021b; Khlaisanga et al, 2021), which further explains their intentions to adopt online teaching (Sánchez-Prieto et al, 2019). This indicated that when university faculties believe using technology is useful, such as enabling them to conduct teaching and administrative tasks even at the epidemic quarantine, they would form an opposite attitude toward technology use and this feeling directly leads to their technology adoption intentions
Summary
Digitalization encourages people of different professions to improve their job performance with information and communication technologies. To ensured continued teaching and learning, university faculties resorted to various synchronous online teaching tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Tencent Classroom (Huang et al, 2021b). This drastic teaching-mode shift facilitates teachers’ pedagogical design thinking on technology (Tsai and Chai, 2012), it brings great cognitive, emotional, and technical challenges to those who are not familiar with technology-enhanced teaching. It is, necessary to examine university faculties’ perceptions of technology adoption in teaching. Ever since Prensky (2001) made the distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants based on thinking and behavior patterns, scholars have conducted research to assess technology
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