Explanatory model of barriers to integration of digital technologies in higher education institutions
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Explanatory model of barriers to integration of digital technologies in higher education institutions Cristina Mercader 1 Received: 18 February 2020 / Accepted: 6 May 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Digital technologies are powerful resources that have not been globally integrated in higher education teaching. Previous studies have pointed out several barriers that can slow down this integration. This study, therefore, aims to elaborate an explanatory model of the barriers to digital technology integration into university teaching, including both links between them and between social and demographic factors that may be influencing them. Through a mixed method approach, a multiple case study with a sample of 527 teachers was developed in Spain. The results show that there are seven main barriers to technology integration: technophobia, lack of time, absence of planning, lack of incentives, lack of evaluation, work saturation, and university accreditation model. The model will help organizations and teachers to identify both the specific barriers and their linkages to other factors. Thus, they will be able to carry out improvements regarding the integration of digital technologies in higher education. Keywords Barriers . Educational technology . Higher education . Model . Teaching
1 Introduction Digital technologies are currently widespread across Spain. According to the latest data from the country’s National Institute of Statistics (INE 2019), 80.9% of Spanish dwellings have a computer at home, 90.7% have access to Internet,and 99.6% have at least one mobile phone. These data contrast with the last UNIVERSITIC report (Gómez 2017), which found that 72% of universities do not have a plan for the provision of technological tools. In addition, UNIVERSITIC and other reports, such as Fundación Telefónica (2016), and the studies conducted by Mercader and Gairín * Cristina Mercader [email protected]
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Department of Applied Pedagogy, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Plaça del Coneixement, G6 Building, Zip Code 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain
Education and Information Technologies
(2017) and Hernández-Ramos (2019) confirm that although higher education institutions may have such resources, they are underutilized. This is becausepractically all of the professors that use them do so mainly to make visual presentations and to manage the institutional virtual teaching platform. With regard to teacher models vis-à-vis the didactic use of digital technologies (Área-Moreira et al. 2016), we find that professors mostly congregate around the weak model, through which digital technologies are used mainly for exhibition or reproductive tasks. In addition, the technological competency level of teachers is often intermediate or lower (Cuhadar 2018). The teacher’s role in deciding how to use ICT represents a key point in the success of their incorporation (Tejedor et al. 2009). This makes it necessary to investigate why this imbalance exists between common social uses
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