Abstract:

Technology by itself may not guarantee its effective integration in education. This paper surveys main factors affecting the successful integration of ICT in education and discusses their categorization. Furthermore, theories of technology acceptance related to successful integration of ICT in education are outlined. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other research effort has included theories of technology acceptance in the discussion regarding factors affecting ICT integration in education. Furthermore, the discussion regarding previous categorization schemes for factors is extended.

This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses main factors affecting ICT integration in education and alternative categorization schemes. Section 3 briefly presents technology acceptance theoretical models and Section 4 concludes.

Main factors affecting the integration of ICT in education are the following:
• Willingness in educational policies, curricula and assessment strategies to integrate ICT.
• Sufficient information and clear objectives in the curricula regarding ICT integration.
• Existence of pedagogical and assessment approaches in the curricula promoting ICT integration.
• National policies regarding hardware, learning content and educational software.
• Technical and financial support to tutors from educational institutions.
• Time pressure, examination system and length of curriculum.
• Tradition and culture of the educational institution in using ICT.
• Support to tutors by educational institution administration.
• The size of classes or existence of learners with limited ICT background.
• The available hardware/software and access to ICT infrastructure.
• The specific characteristics of each ICT technology.
• Personal characteristics of tutors.
• Tutors’ expectations and attitudes regarding ICT.
• Tutors’ experience in using and integrating ICT.
• Tutors’ self-efficacy involving ICT use.
• Tutors’ training in using ICT.
• Teaching approach endorsed by tutors.
• Tutors’ availability of time to learn ICT for or use ICT in teaching.

A further step besides determining factors that affect ICT integration is the determination of factor categories. Different classification schemes have been presented. Not all factors outlined in our paper are mentioned in corresponding categorization papers. We will discuss two such categorization schemes presented by other researchers. The discussion in the two corresponding categorization papers needs to be extended according to the issues discussed in our paper. For this purpose, we first mention the main factors in each category of the two schemes as discussed in each of the two categorization papers. Afterwards, we outline how the factors discussed in our paper can be categorized according to each of the two categorization schemes.

A further step in the attempt to successfully integrate ICT in education is the development of theories modeling this process. To the best of our knowledge, a discussion of such theoretical models is not included in other papers discussing factors that affect ICT integration.

Examples of such theoretical models are the Theory Of Reasoned Action, the Technology Acceptance Model, the Theory Of Planned Behavior, the Motivational model, the combined TAM and TPB, the Model of PC Utilization, the Innovation Diffusion Theory, the Social Cognitive Theory and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. We briefly outline main points of certain models.

Keywords:

ICT integration in education, Technology and education, Technology acceptance models, barriers to ICT integration in education.