An exploratory study of the diffusion of instructional computing innovation among social work faculty

Instructional computing applications are increasingly being diffused throughout social work higher education. For this study, graduate faculty ($N=330$) nation-wide were surveyed about their use and perceptions of computers as instructional tools. Rogers' (1983) Diffusion Theory was used to identify variables hypothesized to be correlated with the innovational adoption process. The findings suggested that the innovational attributes of trialability (r =.459, $p<.001$) and observability (r =.363, $p<.001$) surfaced as moderate predictors of instructional computing innovation adoption levels. Perceptions of complexity (r =.358, $p<.001$) as they pertained to computer anxiety and perceptions of relative advantage (r =.361, $p<.001$) were also moderately correlated with innovational adoption levels. Vital to social workers, perceptions of compatibility with values also moderately predicted adoption levels (r =.342, $p<.001$). Past experiences with computers did not appear to correlate with adoption levels. Finally, institutional and individual variables were not significant in predicting instructional computing innovation adoption levels among graduate faculty.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio