Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Education

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to ascertain prevalent perceptions among instructors pertaining to their proficiency and the importance of including the use of handheld technology in communication with students. Specifically this study aimed to investigate the differences of perceived efficacy pertaining to proficiency of technology use and importance of technology use by respondents as affected by subject area taught, gender, age, experience of office productivity tools use on handheld technology, frequency of office communication tools use on handheld technology, self-perceived rank of office productivity tools use on handheld technology, self-perceived rank of courseware tools use on handheld technology, and perceived students' rank of handheld technology use for office productivity and courseware tools. This study also investigated nine constituent skills of handheld technology use as it related to perceived proficiency and importance to college level faculty using the Teacher Technology Survey Instrument developed initially by students of the EDIT (Instructional Technology Education) 6320 course (Marlar, 2008) and further modified for research (Goad, 2012). The results of this study were analyzed using descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA and multiple regression analyses. The results thus analyzed revealed that among the eight independent variables of gender, age, subject area taught, duration of handheld technology use, frequency of handheld technology use, perceived self-rank of handheld technology use in productivity tools, perceived self-rank of handheld technology use in lessons and perceived student rank of handheld technology use that were studied, only three significantly affected either proficiency or importance. Only perceived self-rank of handheld technology use in productivity tools significantly affected both proficiency and importance. Of the seven predictors in the regression analyses, age and perceived self-rank of handheld technology use in productivity tools were found to be significant predictors of proficiency while factoring out the other predictors. Frequency of handheld technology use and perceived self-rank of handheld technology use in productivity tools were found to be significant predictors of importance while factoring out the other predictors. Among the nine constituent skills of handheld technology use, using browser applications, use of office productivity applications, learning new software, and teaching students browser applications were found to be the top skills in which faculty considered themselves proficient and considered the most important in their work. This study provides a basic framework which could be used in the decision making processes for faculty training for handheld technology use and for institutional handheld technology procurement. This study also provides a basis for further research into faculty handheld technology use.

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