The Role of Socio-Cultural Factors in Faculty Members’ Acceptance of Moodle at GUST

Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Aljeeran, Reham
Language:	English
Published:	The Ohio State University / OhioLINK 2016
Subjects:	Educational Technology
Online Access:	http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1469121024

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spelling	ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-osu14691210242021-08-03T06:37:49Z The Role of Socio-Cultural Factors in Faculty Members’ Acceptance of Moodle at GUST Aljeeran, Reham Educational Technology One of the mainstreams of e-learning research is the justification and prediction of adoption and use of this mode of learning. Several theories have been developed to understand the phenomenon of e-learning acceptance. These theories have uncovered a variety of factors regarding adoption and use of e-learning. In particular, the technology acceptance model (TAM) (Davis, 1989) is recognized as a parsimonious model in demonstrating Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) use at the individual level. The aim of this instrumental case study was to understand the mechanism by which socio-cultural differences could describe and anticipate behavior toward a Learning Management System (LMS). The socio-cultural factors addressed in this research included values, tools and technology, language, internalization, identification, and compliance. In this case study, I have employed mixed methods to understand the role of social and cultural factors on the faculty’s decision to adopt Moodle at a private university, Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST), in Kuwait. I distributed a survey to all faculty members at GUST and used interviews to learn about the faculty’s experiences with Moodle and to understand the influence of culture and social influences on their adoption of the program. In addition, I obtained documents that included the history of GUST and the adoption history of LMSs. The survey offered information about the demographics, the general use of technology among the faculty at GUST, and their interaction with and use of Moodle. The interviews asked about the roles of these cultural factors (language, values, and technology) on adoption. The interviews also inquired about the role of the social influences of internalization, identification, and compliance on the faculty’s decision to adopt Moodle. In addition, the documents accessed from GUST detailed the history of GUST, the different LMS options the institution went through, and the different functions used on Moodle and their frequencies. Although faculty members had different nationalities, backgrounds, and origins, the overall findings suggest that the main contributing factors to users’ acceptance of the LMS were their previous knowledge and experience with technology, their internalization of the importance of using the LMS, and the system’s usefulness. The majority of the survey respondents and interviewees showed previous experience with technology either during their school years or on their own. Also, the majority of the respondents and all of the interviewees demonstrated an internalization of the importance of using Moodle. In addition, the surveys and interviews emphasized the role of usefulness over the ease of use on the faculty’s adoption of Moodle. The study showed that the faculty found that some tools and functions of Moodle were not easy to use, which contributed to their frustration toward using it. The survey respondents and the interview participants suggested more training on making better use of Moodle and the best ways to use it in the classroom. At the same time, they suggested some type of incentive to encourage disinterested faculty to use Moodle. 2016 English text The Ohio State University / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1469121024 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1469121024 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.
collection	NDLTD
language	English
sources	NDLTD
topic	Educational Technology
spellingShingle	Educational Technology Aljeeran, Reham The Role of Socio-Cultural Factors in Faculty Members’ Acceptance of Moodle at GUST
author	Aljeeran, Reham
author_facet	Aljeeran, Reham
author_sort	Aljeeran, Reham
title	The Role of Socio-Cultural Factors in Faculty Members’ Acceptance of Moodle at GUST
title_short	The Role of Socio-Cultural Factors in Faculty Members’ Acceptance of Moodle at GUST
title_full	The Role of Socio-Cultural Factors in Faculty Members’ Acceptance of Moodle at GUST
title_fullStr	The Role of Socio-Cultural Factors in Faculty Members’ Acceptance of Moodle at GUST
title_full_unstemmed	The Role of Socio-Cultural Factors in Faculty Members’ Acceptance of Moodle at GUST
title_sort	role of socio-cultural factors in faculty members’ acceptance of moodle at gust
publisher	The Ohio State University / OhioLINK
publishDate	2016
url	http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1469121024
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The Role of Socio-Cultural Factors in Faculty Members’ Acceptance of Moodle at GUST

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