Publication Date

5-2020

Date of Final Oral Examination (Defense)

3-11-2020

Type of Culminating Activity

Dissertation

Degree Title

Doctor of Education in Educational Technology

Department

Educational Technology

Supervisory Committee Chair

Jui-Long Hung, Ed.D.

Supervisory Committee Member

Ross Perkins, Ph.D.

Supervisory Committee Member

Chareen Snelson, Ed.D.

Abstract

Advancement in technologies, such as smartphones and social networking sites (SNSs), are transforming traditional school-based communication in education. School-based SNSs are a web-based system that enables administrators and teachers to (1) create or join a semi-public online school community within a bounded system, (2) construct a virtual classroom with individual student profiles, or avatars, (3) invite parents and guardians to create a profile and link with their child’s profile, (4) and communicate with students, parents, and guardians about students’ school experiences using the classroom management and communication platform. ClassDojo, a school-based SNS, has over three million teachers and 35 million students using the platform (Williamson, 2017a). Teachers create and manage the virtual community; therefore, it is crucial to understand teachers’ end-user attitudes towards adopting school-based SNSs. An extension of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) examined K-8 teachers’ end-user attitudes to integrate school-based SNSs in United States’ primary and middle schools. The TAM’s foundation, extensions, and correlation to teachers’ attitudes towards technology presented as an ideal model to ground the study. Thus, using theoretical and empirical studies related to teachers’ adoption of technology and SNSs, this research study extended TAM using the following factors: (1) perceived usefulness (PU), (2) perceived ease of use (PEOU), (3) security awareness (SA), (4) subjective norm (SN), (5) attitude toward using SNSs (ATT), and (6) intention to use SNSs (ITU). TAM research traditionally relies on obtaining self-reported data from participants through survey.

This survey-research collected data from 264 kindergarten to eighth-grade teachers throughout the United States. The survey data was used to analyze descriptive statistics between TAM variables, as well as perform path analyses on the relationships between the TAM variables. In this study, the TAM was extended to include subjective norm (SN) and security awareness (SA). In summary, a majority of K-8 teachers had a generally favorable attitude about ClassDojo’s: (1) perceived usefulness, (2) perceived ease of use, (3) security awareness, (4) subjective norm, (5) attitude towards use, and (6) intention to use. Path analysis with latent factors utilized multiple regressions to assess the direct and indirect influences of variables within a model (Hatcher, 2013). The extended TAM model was reliable and illustrated that seven out of the eight path analyses were statistically significant. Teachers’ attitudes towards ClassDojo use had the most statistically significant influence on teachers’ intentions to use ClassDojo. Similar to findings from traditional TAM studies, perceived usefulness had the largest statistically significant influence on teachers’ attitudes toward ClassDojo use. A thematic analysis of teachers’ comments about ClassDojo provided support for the extended TAM path analysis. In conclusion, this study synthesized other TAM variables to establish, the Teacher Technology Acceptance Model of Social Networking Sites (T-TAMS), to identify and explore factors that positively influenced K-8 teachers’ end-user attitudes towards school-based SNSs use. Lastly, limitations and future research were presented. This study advanced research on teachers’ TAM of SNSs, teachers’ end-user attitudes toward ClassDojo, and school-based communication. Thus, these findings can be used to boost ClassDojo’s adoption rates among K-8 schools in the United States.

Download

Share

COinS