Factors Affecting Technology Integration in Colleges of Education

Abstract

Learning technologies are gradually taking center stage in the education system of the various economies and are becoming a dominant tool for teaching and learning in the various higher institutions of learning. Various forms of learning technologies have evolved in this 21st century with the notion of improving content management, lesson presentation, teachers’ portfolio building, curriculum design and management, assessment, teachers’ competencies development, and reaching the learner beyond the traditional face-to-face model of teaching have increasingly become pervasive within various forms of learning environments. Institutions of higher education are increasingly turning to these technologies to resource and support their teaching and learning environments under distributed circumstances, face-to-face or blended. However, before the widespread deployment of these technologies, information regarding the effective implementation of these all-important learning technologies are very sparse. This study is geared towards gaining a better understanding of the factors that would influence the effective integration of these learning technologies into the teaching and learning in the various colleges of education in Ghana as well as the challenges they are likely to face. This research employed a mixed method. Among the factors likely to influence technology integration in the various colleges as discovered by this research are: tutors’ attitudes toward new media, pedagogical knowledge, perceived ease of technological use, perceived usefulness of technological solutions, availability of technological resources, and motivation. Some of the challenges colleges are likely to face are lack of technological infrastructure, high cost of the internet coupled with low bandwidth, unstable power supply, lack of administrative support, curriculum overload, and lack of in-service training.