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Journal of Computing in Higher Education

, Volume 27, Issue 2, pp 94–113 | Cite as

Assuring graduate competency: a technology acceptance model for course guide tools

  • Amara Atif
  • Deborah Richards
  • Peter Busch
  • Ayse Bilgin
Article
First Online:

Abstract

Higher education institutions typically express the quality of their degree programs by describing the qualities, skills, and understanding their students possess upon graduation. One promising instructional design approach to facilitate institutions’ efforts to deliver graduates with the appropriate knowledge and competencies is curriculum mapping. To support the complex activity of curriculum mapping and to address existing problems associated with current practices around unit guides, that many Australian higher education institutions are developing unit guide information systems (UGISs). This study examines factors influencing the acceptance and use of UGIS by unit conveners and academics. This study proposed a model for the acceptance of UGIS, which integrated key constructs from the technology acceptance model (TAM), social cognitive theory and model of PC utilization including seven main factors: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude towards using the UGIS, intention to use the UGIS, social influence, unit guide specific self-efficacy, and unit guide specific anxiety. The model was tested on a sample of 134 unit guide users from 39 Australian universities and analyzed using structural equation modeling and partial least squares methods. Analysis showed that attitude, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use from the basic TAM model contributed significantly to explain the intention of academics and unit conveners to use UGIS. In addition, the integration of self-efficacy, anxiety and social influence as constructs were found to improve the fit of the model. Implications of the results are discussed within the context of unit guides and curriculum mapping.

Keywords

Technology acceptance model Unit guides Anxiety Self-efficacy Social influence 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • Amara Atif
    • 1
  • Deborah Richards
    • 1
  • Peter Busch
    • 1
  • Ayse Bilgin
    • 1
  1. 1.Faculty of Science and EngineeringMacquarie UniversitySydneyAustralia

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