Abstract:

The paper proposes metrics for measuring higher education teacher’s use of information technology. Understanding adoption of technology, within any context, demands a way of defining what adoption or use actually is. Teachers within higher education possibly engage with e-mail, learning management systems (LMS), and other technologies in various ways and to various extents. One possible way to define adoption is through e.g. how much a particular application is used, number of e-mails sent, use of LMS in hours or times used, and other metrics focusing magnitude of use. It is also possible to define use through the scope of the use, i.e. how many different information technology tools a teacher uses. Based on a large survey (1800 responders) we propose a metric for measuring and operationalizing levels of use within this setting. However, what can be considered a high level of use needs to be mapped onto a regular use pattern of information technology. This means that a high level use of a LMS in the 1990:s might be different from a high level use of a LMS in 2010:s. Thus, we also suggest that such a metric necessarily needs to be dynamic and updated regularly. Furthermore, the results indicate that teachers adoption of ICT in their profession is less a question of adopting artefacts and services, and more a question of adopting practices as digitalised educators.

Keywords:

Use of IT in higher education.