INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICTS) IN HIGHER EDUCATION: FACTORS INFLUENCING ADOPTION AND DIFFUSION BY STUDENTS IN KENYAN UNIVERSITIES

Recently, universities have been investing heavily on the provision of ICTs such as Internet bandwidth, E-mail, and expensive e-learning platforms, and administrative intranet and library systems for use and access by all university students. Yet such systems are often either underutilized or not used at all. Consequently, university administrators would benefit immensely by understanding the factors that influence and accelerate the adoption and diffusion of ICTs by students. Such knowledge will aid the universities to achieve their student learning objectives by deploying interventions that guarantee that students will make full use of deployed ICTs in their studies. Several studies have noted that the forces such as new educational delivery technologies, changes in demographics, the emergence of the virtual university, and the complex global economy are creating a new competitive landscape for higher education. This is particularly critical for universities in Sub-Saharan Africa, like Kenya, where universities in the developed world are exploiting the digital divide between the least developed countries (LDCs) and developed economies. They are using ICTs to enroll students all over the world for many degree programs.

Many researchers have studied and proposed theories and models of technology acceptance in order to predict and explain user behaviour, to account for rapid change in both technologies and their environments. However most theories or models have been developed in the U.S. and hence have been questioned whether they can be used in least developed countries. It is also questioned whether there might be other determinants and moderators that play important roles in this specific environment. In addition, researchers have found that studies with a focus on least developed countries (LDCs) are almost non-existent in mainstream information systems research. Consequently several problems lead to a knowledge gap and the lack of ICT diffusion models that take into account contextual and local variables in LDCs, such as access to ICTs, and socioeconomic conditions which are not factors of concern in developed countries.

A quantitative approach was used and data for this research was collected by means of a survey conducted in higher education institutions in Kenya in 2008. A total of 325 questionnaire forms were delivered to respondents of which 218 were returned giving a response rate of 67 percent. Questionnaires were filled in at different universities and different school within the universities.

Among the results for this paper, Access to ICTs, Exposure to ICTs, and socioeconomic conditions had a positive influence on ICT diffusion. This study, therefore has contributed at correcting the limitations of previous work by investigating the factors that encourage or discourage the diffusion of ICTs in the universities in Kenya, and develop and empirically tested the model of diffusion that is applicable to LDCs. The study identified some important antecedent factors that enhance ICTs adoption and diffusion, as well as having a positive impact on university student learning. The paper recommends several intervention measurers to university administrators including that of playing a major role in advocacy and lobbying to government for ICTs policies and support in higher education, and having a common computer to student ratio to mitigate the socioeconomic conditions that hinder adoption of ICTs.