Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to investigate user acceptance of bring your own device (BYOD) with first year students registered for Crop Science. BYOD. refers to the practice of people bringing their own laptops, tablets, smartphones, or other mobile devices with them to learning or work environments. The key aspect of it is that of ownership. Today’s students view mobile devices as the tool that assist them with the mastery of technology skills. When students engage with the studies on the mobile devices, it eventually supports them to improve their studies or work on homework and assignments. The participants in this study, were 210 first year students registered at a study university of technology in the faculty of Science, Department of Agriculture. There were 130 (61.9%) female and 80 (38.1%) males. Their age ranged between 18 and 27 years. The question posed in this study was: How were user acceptance of BYOD discovered? To answer this question, the quantitative method was used. Data were collected by means of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) questionnaire. Data were analyzed using SPSS. Reliability for the entire scale computed in terms of the internal consistency was found to be .90. For the content validity the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was .92 which was statistically significant (p < 0.05). The results revealed that 91.9% of the students used smart phones. In terms of the perceive usefulness of BYOD, 81.9% of the students indicated that they were able to use mobile devices to effectively complete the activities on time. It is critical that higher education institutions provide Wi-Fi connection in the classrooms, in order for the students and lecturers to access the Internet during teaching and learning.

Keywords:

Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), bring your own device (BYOD), students, higher education.