Running head: Communities of Practice

Relationships between Communities of Practice and Effects on Educational Technology Adoption

Clayton Mitchell EDTECH 504-72/4173 Boise State University Spring 2012

Running head: Communities of Practice

Abstract
Communities of practice are comprised of a group of people who engage in a process of learning. Educational institutions, by nature, form a community of practice in the process of educating their student body. An institutions community of practice is comprised of members that are also members of smaller communities of practice. This paper looks at three such communities, based primarily on their roles in the institution. Students, Instructors, and IT administration comprise communities of practice whose attitudes and actions have direct effects on technology adoption within the institution. By focusing on a single community of practice, an institution can better position itself to improve the attitudes of the other two communities and thus ensure greater success with technology adoption efforts.

Running head: Communities of Practice

Introduction
This paper looks at the motivating factors related to the adoption of technology in education. Why are some technologies are adopted at one institution and not at others? The aim is to find if there are any constant factors that could predict if a technology would likely be adopted. There are several ways to look at technology adoption depending on who is the focus of the adopting technology. Students, instructors, and institutional support form unique communities of practice that in turn comprise the corpus of an institutional domain. These communities are integrally linked. Acceptance of a technology by one community is affected and informed by how the other communities view technology and its use. There are direct influences, both positive and negative, that will predict how one community will choose to adopt technology. The type of technology, while not addressed directly by the literature, does not seem to be a contributing factor in the decision process for adoption. The two methods employed by the researchers found to be valid and accurate at predicting user outcome were the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Risk Theory. These two methods in conjunction with each other can accurately predict if a technology is likely to be adopted by a given community both before a user has had interaction with a system (Risk Theory) and after introduction of the technology (TAM) to the community.

Communities of Practice
Simply having a group of people does not make a community of practice. A community of practice is comprised of people who share a common identity and work toward a common goal. The three parts that a community of practice must have are a

Running head: Communities of Practice domain, a community and a practice. The domain is something that connects people and gives them an identity. Educational institutions serve as the domain for members of that institution. This domain gives the community commonality and a sense of belonging. Each member of the community within the domain works to continue the domains existence and pass on the ethos of the domain to the communitys new members. The community is comprised of members that share a common interest. The members of the community help each other learn and build on prior knowledge. The members of the community must interact and learn from each other in order to sustain the community Membership within the community implies a commitment to the domain, which in turn insures the longevity of the community. The practice is what the community does within the domain. The technologies, resources, stories, and experiences a community uses and develops comprise the practice of the community. The members of the community must give back what they have learned to be full practitioners of the community. How well aligned a communitys practices are with the objectives of the domain will determine how well the community functions. If there is a misalignment in the practice of the community, the community may be weak or ineffective. The technologies that an institution uses are part of the practice of the community of the institution. Each sub-community within the institutional community must use these technologies and share in the evolution of the tools. When the sub-communities are misaligned with each other, technology adoption is likely to fail. Members of the domain must work together to align the communities toward a common ethos of technology use.

Student Adoption of Technology

Students comprise a community of practice within the domain of an educational institution. The main focus in education as a field is to help students learn. When talking

Running head: Communities of Practice about educational technology we are really talking about tools to help students in the learning process. Some tools are meant to engage, others are meant to entertain, and others are meant to document progress. The best tool is always the one is the one that is actually used. What are the deciding factors that govern students decisions to use a technology? The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) postulates that Perceived Ease of Use (PEU) positively influences Perceived Usefulness (PU) and that these two together positively influence Behavioral Intention to Use (BIU) and is a mediator of Actual System Usage (ASU).

Given this as our basic framework, we can predict that if students think a system is easy to use they will have positive intention to use the system. This is born out in the literature, with recent studies finding that attitude that can help predict if a technology will be adopted. The TAM was devised to assess the likely continued usage of a system after initial introduction. It was not devised for predicting whether technology adoption in an unexposed community was likely to occur. . This is a limitation of the model. To address this different approaches have been taken to help normalize the findings into a uniform predictor. Tselios, Daskalakis & Papadopoulou (2011), attempted to find if students attitudes before the use of a system had a positive effect on actual system usage. They gave a questionnaire to students prior to using the system, but only after a

Running head: Communities of Practice 20 minute session explaining the intended use of the system and a system demonstration. The questionnaire had 5 questions that looked at PU, 6 questions that looked at PEU, 4 questions that looked at attitudes toward use to directly ask about intention to use, and 3 questions that looked at behavioral intent or actual usage. The results found that PEU positively affected PU, and that only PU had a positive effect on students attitudes towards usage. The results also showed that PU did not affect actual usage. The students were then required to use the system and given the same survey again. The results showed that PEU had a positive influence on PU and that PEU not PU had a positive effect on students attitudes towards usage. The results also found that PU had a direct positive influence on behavioral intention or actual use. The conclusions are that a system must be used before students will perceive it as useful, but a system must be perceived as useful if it is to be adopted. As Altun, Gulbahar, & Madran (2008) state, active participation is regarded by students as the most important factor influencing the success of a given technology. These findings speak to student intent to use a system but do not show a predictor as to the continued use of a system after adoption. It is implied by the TAM that if students have high actual system usage, they will continue using the system in the future. To address this question Kan-Min, Nian-Shing, & Kwoting (2011) looked at how negative incidents during use affect PEU, PU, and how these were predictors of continued intent to use. They extended the TAM to include Frequency of Negative critical incidents (NCI), Quality Attributes cumulative Satisfaction (QAS), and Overall Satisfaction (OS). With the addition of these elements, they postulated that if students have a high NCI it will negatively impact QAS and PEU as well as PU. They also postulate that if QAS and PU are high, it will have a positive effect on attitude toward

Running head: Communities of Practice use, and that if OS and attitudes are high they will have a positive effect on Continued Intention to use a system.

The conclusions bore out the hypothesis with the exception that PU was not an indicator of continued intention. The study found that users may feel more favorably about a service if they are satisfied with the instruction Kan-Min et al. (2011). It also points out that if instructors have a good perception and/or adoption of the system, the students are likely to have a low NCI and are less likely to have negative perceptions that will lead to a higher Continued Intention. These findings are supported by Jeng-Yi, (2011) which also looked at intention to use. His study found that attitudes had the strongest direct effect on intentions, and that factors such as perceived value and perceived contextual value had a stronger influence on intention if mediated by attitude. The contextual value mentioned refers to the context in which the students interact with the system, for a class or for a school. The context also includes how much importance the students feel the school places on a given system. When students believe that a given schools practice matters to them, it then motivates them to recognize the needs and the values associated with using the system Jeng-Yi, (2011).

Running head: Communities of Practice These findings, looked at holistically, point to a few conclusions. If students have a good attitude and low negative experiences with system usage they are likely to adopt a system. They also show that positive interaction with instructors use of a system and perceived value by the institution of the system, directly affect attitude. A positive attitude will have a positive effect on continued use of a system. Therefore instructors attitudes and institutional attitudes directly impact student adoption. The students community of practice is influenced both positively and negatively by the practices of both the instructors and the institutional support communities.. This points to a need to align the practices of these two communities with that of the students community. Simply put, the institution needs to make an effort to insure that instructors are knowledgeable about and competent with the technology they use for instruction.

Instructor Adoption of Technology

If student technology adoption is directly impacted by their experiences with and attitudes of instructors, what are the factors that govern instructor adoption of a technology? How can the instructors community of practice help with technology adoption? Instructors are a little more difficult to measure because there are additional factors to consider that students do not have to contend with regarding technology. For instance, a technology adoption may negatively impact an instructor's evaluations from a class, which in turn may negatively impact an instructors advancement or career prospects. So we have to look not only at the technologies and their adoption factors, but also risks associated with the adoption as perceived by the instructors. Risk theory provides a way to analyze individuals judgments of risk in terms of perception and acceptability. Perception and acceptability encompass why a task or behavior is considered risky and how risky it is (Howard, 2011). If instructors perceive a technology

Running head: Communities of Practice to be risky, they are less likely to adopt it. Two instructors at the same institution teaching the same subject may perceive the risk of adopting a technology differently from one another. Therefore, there is not an inherent danger in the technology itself. Pure analytical evaluation of a given technology is not sufficient to allay fears instructors may have. Instructors perceive risk when they feel something they value is threatened (Howard 2011). Risk perceptions are strongly influenced by the emotions of the instructors. When instructors feel anxious about their skills, especially with computing, they are less likely to adopt technology into their classroom. They perceive the possibility that something may go wrong as paramount justification of not adopting a technology. Instructors need to feel supported and gain increased skill sets before they become comfortable with technology. This points to a need to have a strong community of practice for instructors. The instructors community of practice must place professional development and collaboration as its main focus. Otherwise the community will become misaligned with the practice of the domain. Schlager and Fusco (2003) state that, When professional development is embedded in a strong community of practice focused on instructional improvement, the community of practice owns a stake in the outcome of the activity. This ownership by instructors is what is needed to insure alignment with the institution. How can a community of practice of instructors achieve this ownership? Instructors attitudes towards risk can be altered for the positive by increased professional development, computer skill training, and a feeling that the technologies are valued by the institution they work for. Ahmed (2010), conducted research looking at what characteristics affect user adoption of a hybrid e-learning environment. The research found that a large number of instructors are reluctant to adopt technology in their classrooms. The research also showed that instructor reluctance will slow adoption of new technology. Additional research has shown that learners in hybrid e-learning

Running head: Communities of Practice classes achieve better results. This fact should be enough to sway the attitudes of instructors in favor of adopting technology into their classes, but it is not. Support must be given before instructors feel comfortable with technology. Instructors attitudes toward using technology are highly dependent on the organizational support and readiness and reliability of the information technology. Lack of technical readiness and organizational support can hinder the introduction of technologies and affect the attitudes of both learners and instructors (Ahmed, 2010). It is unrealistic for institutions to not adopt technology into their classrooms. Students do not perceive the use of technology as a risky behavior. It is safe to say that students even expect the use of technology in the classroom as a matter of course. Therefore, it is imperative that instructors begin adopting educational technologies. The single greatest factor that affects instructor adoption of technology is support from the institution. Institutions have to place a higher value on the use of technology within the classroom before instructors perceive its use as not being risky.

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Institutional Adoption of Technology

The third community of practice at an educational institution is comprised of institutional support. This community must not be confused with the domain, the institution. One problem that institutions run into with this community is that there may be no community to speak of. There are people that serve in the roles of support but they may not have a community of practice. Often the support is siloed so that one division either cannot or does not interact with other divisions. Institutions must create an environment where the varying support divisions can interact and learn from each other and thus create and active and vibrant community of institutional practice. How then do these communities, or lack there of, affect technology adoption?

Running head: Communities of Practice If student adoption of technology is dependent on instructor adoption, and instructor adoption is dependent on institutional support, what can institutions do to demonstrate that support? It would stand to reason that given the above declarations of student and instructor adoption, simply selecting a technology and declaring that the technology be used by the institutional body would constitute sufficient support by the institution. This is not the case. Institutions are large entities, and change is not that simple. There has to be a consensus among many stakeholders before change can happen. First and foremost, any technologies have to be firmly grounded pedagogically before an institution will consider their adoption. Then there are economic issues to be considered. Next, the technology has to be able to align with the institutional culture. Finally, that technology has to be accepted and adopted by the instructors, students, administration and technical support. If instructor adoption is dependent on institutional support, and institutional adoption is dependent on instructor adoption, this poses a conundrum. Hannon (2008) states that these issues of the complex work of reconfiguration, where the issues were not with technology, nor with staff resistance. The underlying problem is the sheer volume and complexity of the work required to configure people, machines, objects, texts, and money Hannon (2008). This reconfiguration is what the institution has to overcome before they can offer support for educational technologies. There has to be an alignment among all communities about the role technology plays in the classroom. Institutions must commit to fully supporting technology in the form of instructional support staff, networking, technical support staff, and physical technology before instructors feel comfortable adopting new technology. The implications for educational development are in the challenging the repertoires, of enabling and guiding, around technological infrastructure that capture teaching and learning strategy Hannon (2008). The institutional community must provide a fertile environment in support of

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Running head: Communities of Practice innovating teaching and learning. This environment has to include professional and staff development and that development has to be the centerpiece of the institutional community before change can occur.

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Conclusion
The three communities of practice looked at in this paper were students, instructors, and institutional support. These communities share a common identity through the domain of a given institution. These communities have varying degrees of overlap between them but share a common goal of educating or being educated. They also have a degree of fealty to the domain and a common interest to see it continue. Where there is alignment between these communities, there is a good possibility that a technology adoption initiative will succeed. Where the communities of practice do not align, technology adoption is less likely to succeed. The alignment of the different communities is a task that must be spearheaded by the institutional support community. Adopting educational technology is not a simple task. The focus of any technology adoption should be the engagement of the student in the learning process. Students are the end point at which a technology can be considered successful if adopted. Student adoption is dependent on whether or not they like a technology, but many factors have a bearing on student attitude. The modified TAM can be used as a predictive model for student usage. Perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of technology have a positive effect on student adoption. Student attitudes are shaped before using a technology as well as during its use. If students have a positive attitude for a technology they will perceive that technology as having value. If they perceive the technology as having value they will adopt its use. Students are directly influenced by instructor adoption of technology both positively and negatively. If instructors have a

Running head: Communities of Practice positive attitude about the use of technology in the classroom and feel that the use of the technology has added value for the students, students will also have a more positive attitude toward adoption. In order for instructors to have a positive attitude toward technology and its adoption, they have to feel that there is institutional support for technology. Risk theory is best used to predict how likely a given technology is to be adopted by instructors. The amount of risk perceived by instructors is directly proportional to the level of support given by the institution. By creating a strong environment of support within the institution for the use of technology, the risks perceived by the instructors are diminished. As the barriers of perceived risk are mitigated greater adoption can occur. There currently is no model for predicting successful institution adoption of a technology. However, strong institutional support appears to be the single biggest factor in adoption of educational technologies, not just at the institutional level but also affecting both faculty and and student satisfaction.

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