Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Cornelious, F. Linda

Committee Member

Yu, Chien

Committee Member

Prince, L. Debra

Committee Member

Du, Jianxia

Committee Member

Alexander, L. Mary

Date of Degree

12-11-2009

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

Instructional Systems and Workforce Development

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

College

College of Education

Department

Department of Instructional Systems and Workforce Development

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine female faculty members’ use of computer technologies, their attitudes toward computers, the factors that best predict their attitudes toward computers, and the barriers that limit their use of computer technologies in girls’ colleges in Dammam and Jubail, Saudi Arabia. Also, this study examined how female faculty members’ attitudes and use of computer technologies differ according to their demographic characteristics. 206 female faculty members participated in this study, and only 197 usable questionnaires were analyzed and used in this study. Descriptive statistics, a one-way ANOVA, and multiple regression analysis were conducted to analyze the data. The findings of this study revealed that female faculty members had positive attitudes toward using computer technologies. Also, the results indicated that female faculty members had high levels of use of 3 common computer applications: e-mail, word processing, and the Internet. Furthermore, findings revealed that the barriers that significantly limit faculty members’ use of technology were lack of technical support, lack of effective training, lack of equipment and infrastructure, and lack of administrative support. The results revealed that the demographic variables that had an influence on female faculty members’ attitudes toward using computers were age, years of experience with computer technologies, subject taught, academic degree, access to a computer at the office, access to the Internet at the office, computer skill levels, and English language proficiency. The findings indicated that the demographic variables that had an impact on female faculty members’ use of computer technologies were age, teaching experience, years of experience with computer technologies, subject taught, access to the Internet at home, computer skill levels, and English language proficiency. The factors that best predict female faculty members’ attitudes toward computers were reduced course quality, lack of time, lack of collegial support, and lack of self confidence. This study presents several conclusions and recommendations to improve female faculty members’ use of computer technologies at girls’ colleges. Female faculty members need technical support services unit, more training, available equipments and infrastructure, more administrative support, and release time for learning about computer technologies to increase their use of computer technologies.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/15596

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