Innovators to laggards – how South African students adopted and perceived technologically enhanced learning^*

* The authors’ names are included in alphabetical order and are not in any way a reflection of individual contributions.

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the information and communication technology (ICT) adoption profiles of accounting students at a South African university influenced their perceptions of the usefulness of a technologically enhanced learning (TEL) opportunity. The findings suggest that the South African accounting students’ ICT adoption profiles differ from global profiles as their distribution curve is skewed to the left favouring ICT adoption. Statistically significant differences were noted between gender groups, but no culturally based digital divide emerged. Despite the differences noted, the majority of students, irrespective of ICT adoption profiles, their gender or population groups agreed that the learning value of an online simulation was more beneficial than traditional teaching methods. It can therefore be concluded that TEL opportunities, which add value to students’ learning experience, will be well received by students irrespective of their ICT adoption profiles.

KEYWORDS:

• Information and communication technology
• technologically enhanced learning opportunities
• Rogers diffusion of technology
• technology adoption
• digital divide

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Bernice Beukes http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7503-1563

Notes

* The authors’ names are included in alphabetical order and are not in any way a reflection of individual contributions.

1 In this study, diffusion refers to ‘the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among members of a social system’ (Rogers, 2003, p. 5). ‘Adoption’ will be used in this study as a synonym for ‘diffuse’.

2 The population group ‘African’ refers to black, indigenous or native South Africans.

3 The population group ‘Coloureds’ also refer to as ‘mixed race’ derives from at least five different paternal populations with more than 60% maternal contribution of Khoisan people (Quintana-Murci et al., 2010).

4 The subgroupings for the population group other consisted of Asian, Indian and Coloured students.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Pretoria under a Department of Higher Education Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant.