Abstract:

In September 2015, the University of Westminster’s Faculty of Science and Technology began transforming its learning and teaching environment by providing all staff and level 5 and 6 students with I-Pads. With the roll out involving over 2000 iPads, this is one of the largest projects of its kind in HE in the UK. The aim of the project is to enhance learning and teaching by embedding technology into all the practices of the faculty, including but not exclusive to classroom activities. One of the risks for the project was identified early on as staff and / or students not adopting the technology. This research aimed to explore possible differences and similarities in the attitudes of staff and students to the introduction of iPads by the faculty.

The two groups considered in the study, staff and students, were invited to share their thoughts on the projects in two separate ways, in focus groups and in a questionnaire. These data were collected at 2 time points, first within a week of them receiving their iPads, then again towards the end of the second teaching semester. The questionnaire included demographic questions, a section on iPad usage expertise derived from an Apple training tool, and the UTAUT (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, Venkatesh, 2003). The UTAUT questionnaire is a well established tool to measure technology acceptance and intention to use.

The results suggested that staff’s and students’ attitudes towards the introductions of iPads were overall similar and generally positive, with staff and students both predicting that they would use the iPads in the months to come. One area where the groups differed was in their confidence level at using the technology and the need for support and training of lecturers was far greater than that of students. Lecturers were mostly unclear as to how they could include iPads into their learning and teaching beyond mobile web access and note taking. Unlike for subject specific skills, where lecturers are experts compared to students, with iPads students are more confident than the lecturers in many areas. This suggests that the integration of iPads into teaching will be dependent on lecturers’ willingness to adopt a technology where they might be less expert than the students, in contrast with subject specific skills where they are more expert than students.

Keywords:

IPads, mobile learning, STEM.