Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Durrington, Vance

Committee Member

Goodman, Mark

Committee Member

Elder, Anastasia

Committee Member

Adams, James

Committee Member

Cornelious, Linda

Other Advisors or Committee Members

Minchew, Sue

Date of Degree

12-15-2007

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, Leadership and Workforce Development

Abstract

Colleges and universities continue to make huge financial investments in instructional technology for the classroom. Mississippi State University faculty, assigned to teach in technology enhanced classrooms, are expected by administration, as well as students, to incorporate the technology into their instruction. This study examines whether faculty consider themselves adopters or nonopters of the instructional technology provided in the Technology Classrooms and if relationships exist between this adoption status and demographics, personal social network, and training source. The data was gathered from faculty assigned to teach in the Technology Classrooms at Mississippi State University using an online survey. Demographic data was compared with the adoption/nonoption status to determine if relationships existed. The demographic characteristics used were gender, race/ethnicity, age, and years teaching. A Chi Square and Point Biserial Correlation Coefficient were to analyze the data to determine if demographic characteristics related to adoption/nonoption status of the instructional technology in the Technology Classrooms. Using Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory, along with Social Network Communication Analysis, this study determined if relationships existed between higher education faculty and their ego social communication network of who talks to whom data provided by the respondents. A matrix of the communication network was analyzed with UCINET software. The data provided by the UCINET software was analyzed with SPSS using a Point Biserial Correlation Coefficient to determine if relationships exist between the adoption/nonoption status and social communication networks of faculty. Methods of instructional technology training and adoption/nonoption status were analyzed to determine if relationships existed by using descriptive statistics and a point biserial correlation coefficient. While no relationships existed between the adoption/nonoption status of faculty and the variables of age, race/ethnicity, gender, years teaching, and social communication networks, low to moderate relationships were shown to exist between instructional technology training and adoption/nonoption status. It was determined that 90 percent of respondents considered themselves adopters of the instructional technology provided in the Technology Classrooms. This data suggests that the addition of more Technology Classrooms on campus and the expansion of instructional technology training available to faculty should be explored.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/16202

Download

Share

COinS