Session Information
11 ONLINE 50 A, Developing teachers' professional competence
Paper Session
MeetingID: 819 2557 7357 Code: m9sSQN
Contribution
A constantly evolving Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have been tremendously affecting many fields, including the Higher Education field Liesa-Orús et al. (2020). The current pandemic has also made it clear that academic staff need to possess digital skills and adapt lectures and teaching styles to rapidly changing new technologies. Moreover, several academic staff, especially senior academics, have concerns about teaching through technology (Genet, 2013). Even though the level of anxiety or fear towards using technology whilst teaching may vary from academic staff to another, some academics experience technophobia due to the pressure of adapting new work habits in line with technological changes. Also, those academics are prone to avoid integrating cutting-edge educational technologies into their lectures. In this research, technophobia is defined as “irrational fear or anxiety caused by side effects of advanced technologies” (Osiceanu, 2015, p. 1139). Prior research has discussed several reasons that account for the technophobia experienced by some academic staff, for example, academics’ attitudes and resistance to change, training deficiencies, lack of technical support, and lack of skills in increasing technical knowledge. This study investigates practical solutions to overcoming technophobia in lecturing among academic staff at the University of Latvia. Having identified the practical solutions to overcoming technophobia, the researchers aim to prepare guidelines that would introduce the best examples of good practice in online lecturing and provide useful tools for doing it. The following three research questions were formulated to guide this study.
1. What barriers do university academic staff have to using digital technologies?
2. Are there any correlation between academics’ barriers to using digital technologies and their self-reported digital skills and social demographics such as age, gender and position?
3. To what extent academics’ perspectives on factors affecting technophobia will help to build the motivational system to overcome it?
Method
The instrument employed was a web-based questionnaire that was conducted in January 2022. The questionnaire consisted of five sections: (1)sociodemographic data (9 items), (2) questions about personal experience with technophobia (2 items), (3) factors that affect technophobia (16 items) linked to four spheres (individual, social, infrastructure, and moderating), (4) barriers to the use of digital technologies (33 items) in four spheres (personal, professional, institutional, and contextual), and (5) self-evaluation of digital skills (18 items). Items that are concerned with barriers to the use of digital technologies were adapted by Mercader and Gairín (2020), understanding of the variables affecting technophobia were adapted by (Salamzadeh et al., 2013) and self-evaluation of digital skills were taken by Daniela and Selcuk (2021). Questions about factors affecting technophobia and barriers to using digital technologies were evaluated on a five-point Likert scale (1-strongly disagree and 5- strongly agree) Whereas, questions about digital skills were evaluated in five levels (newcomer, explorer, enthusiast, professional, and expert). The data for this study were gathered from a sample of 60 university academic staff from the University of Latvia. Concerning ethical considerations, all participants received detailed information regarding the study conditions: purpose, researchers involved, confidentiality of data, anonymity, voluntary participation, and their right to withdraw at any time. Upon the closing date of the questionnaire data was exported into IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS v.20) and used for descriptive analysis. Results are displayed in tabular and graph format.
Expected Outcomes
The data analysis will be completed by June 2022.The authors aim to identify and outline the rationale behind the academics’ barriers to digital technologies and correlations between the barriers and their self-reported digital skills. Respondents’ demographics such as age, gender and position will be analyzed and compared to develop a motivational system to overcome technophobia. Nevertheless, the preliminary findings indicate that even though some extent of technophobia among some academics at the University of Latvia does not prevent enthusiastic and experienced academics from continuing teaching through digital technology. Also, the pandemic situation has become leverage for such academics with technophobia better to adapt themselves and their lectures to digital technologies.
References
Daniela, L. Selcuk, H. (2021). Local response to online teaching. Latvia. ERASMUS+ project Navigating social worlds: toolbox for social inquiry (2020-1-PL01-KA226-HE-096356). Genet, D. (2013) ‘Teachers’ fear of technology – how does it impact the classroom?’, Proceedings of SITE 2013 – Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), New Orleans, LA, pp. 1309–1314. ISBN 978-1-939797-02-5 Liesa-Orús, M., Latorre-Cosculluela, C., V ́azquez-Toledo, S., & Sierra-Sa ́nchez, V. (2020). The technological challenge facing higher education professors: Perceptions of ICT tools for developing 21st Century skills. Sustainability (Switzerland), 12(13), 1–14. Mercader, C., & Gairín, J. (2020). University teachers' perception of barriers to the use of digital technologies: the importance of the academic discipline. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 17 (4),14 https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-020-0182-x Salamzadeh, Y., Mirakhori, A. R. Mobaraki, L. & Targhi, Z., H. (2013). Technophobia in Universities: To be or not to be, This is the Problem…, AWERProcedia Information Technology & Computer Science. [Online], 3, pp 186-190. Available from: http://www.world-educationcenter.org/index.php/P-ITCS Osciceanu, M.E.(2015). Psychological implications of modern technologies: “Technofobia” versus “technophilia”. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 180, 1137-1144.
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