A training to promote teachers' positive attitude towards web use: self efficacy, web enjoyment, web usefulness and behavioral intention to use the web

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to examine the effect of compact training on creating a web page on teachers’ web attitude, as composed of four constructs: web self efficacy, perceived web enjoyment, perceived web usefulness and behavioral intention to use the web. It attempted to answer whether there is a significant difference between teachers’ web self-efficacy, web enjoyment, web usefulness, behavioral intention and attitude levels before and after the training. In order to measure the related constructs, the Web Attitude Scale (WAS) developed by Liaw (2002a) was adapted into Turkish and tested with a sample of 156 participants. The participants of the adaptation study were teachers from different schools in Istanbul. The performed analyses verified the internal consistency reliability of Turkish version of WAS, Cronbach alpha was estimated as 0.90. Training materials on creating a web site using a free service of Mynet Portal, Mysite, was developed by using behavioral modeling method of instruction. The training was offered to sixteen teachers. Before and after the training the Turkish version of WAS was administered. The scores of WAS obtained through the pre and post training administrations were analyzed using SPSS 15. The two sets of scores were compared both on the basis of the overall web attitude and specific four constructs constituting web attitude. The tests showed that the participants’ post training web attitude, web iv self efficacy and perceived web usefulness was significantly different from their pre training web attitude. According to the results, the training created a positive and significant difference on the participants’ web attitude. There was also a significant difference on their web self efficacy and perceived web usefulness scores before and after the training. Although the post training scores of perceived web enjoyment and behavioral intention to use the web were higher than the pre training scores, the differences were found not to be significant. The study concluded that, developing and conducting training presented an opportunity for enhancing the web attitude. The study recommended to use the adapted version of WAS in order to examine interrelations between variables related to attitude by designing new research models.