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The purpose of this quantitative research study was to explore instructional computer use by faculty members in the College of Education (COE) at an Anatolian university in Turkey. The faculty members in the study reported low levels of use and expertise in instructional computer technologies. Variables that were analyzed for their influence with regard to the faculty members' use of computers for instructional purposes included demographic characteristics, computer expertise, computer access, barriers to computer access, attitude toward computer use, support for computer use, and adopter categories based on innovativeness. Variables that were found to be significantly correlated with faculty members' level of computer use were computer ownership in the office, age, years of computer experience in general, computer expertise, computer access, barriers to computer access, attitude toward computer use, support for computer use, and adopter categories based on innovativeness.
Group differences also were analyzed for the six computer-use factors based on the demographic characteristics and adopter categories. Associate professors; faculty members who owned a computer in the office or at home; those between the ages of 20 and 29; those with between 1 and 5 years and 6 and 10 years of teaching experience; those with between 16 and 20 years and over 20 years of computer experience; and those in the innovators, early adopters, and early majority categories reported higher uses of some or all of the computer use factors.
Findings from this study were summarized and discussed with respect to Everett Rogers' (2003) diffusion of innovations theory. The faculty members reported positive attitudes toward instructional computer use relating to Rogers' first three attributes of innovations (relative advantage, compatibility, and simplicity of instructional computer use); the findings regarding the other two attributes (trialability and observability) were mixed. Finally, faculty members' low level of instructional computer use, the majority of the faculty members' self-placement in the last three adopter categories, and responses to the open-ended question regarding reasons for the adopter category that COE faculty members selected were consistent with Rogers' findings.