6.4 Inferential statistics
6.4.3 Challenges of online teacher training
169 6.4.3 Challenges of online teacher training
170 6.4.3.3 Course structure
Table 6.10 shows that 87.7% of the teachers participating in the survey agreed that the course must be well-structured for teachers to participate in OPD programmes while only 1.5% disagreed. The results show that 53.9% of respondents agreed that support is available in online professional development when they encounter difficulties. Only 15.4% of respondents disagreed that support is being provided to them in online professional development programmes. So they believed that if online professional development programmes are well-structured and user friendly with support to help them when they encounter problems, it will encourage more teachers to engage in such programmes.
6.4.3.4 Unfamiliar
In Table 6.11, 55.4% of the teachers agreed that as they were familiar with a face-to- face learning system, it would be difficult to move to an online learning system, whereas 21.6% disagreed with this statement. It also shows that 69.3% of the respondents agreed that as teachers are unfamiliar with internet conventions, this caused a refractive action towards online courses. Only 12.3% disagreed that they were unfamiliar with internet conventions.
So instructions in online teacher training need to be user friendly where teachers had just to click on an icon to access the resources. Therefore, stakeholders and providers of professional development should find ways to encourage and help teachers to move from the old PD system to online PD system.
6.4.3.5 Human contact
In Table 6.11, 55.4% agreed that as teachers are used to the old face-to-face learning system, it will not be easy for them to move to the new online learning system. But 21.6%
of them disagreed with this statement. In Table 6.14, it is shown that 64.6% of the respondents recognise that now, in a digital world, it is more about digital presence rather than human contact and only 6.1% of the teachers disagreed with this statement. Teachers feel that they have to move to online learning and the same time they feel that this move is difficult. Moreover, this imply that they believe that human contact is not so important in this digital society.
171 6.4.3.6 Health problems
Table 6.11 shows that 69.2% of the teachers agreed that people could have health problems when using ICT devices for a long period of time. Only 9.3% disagreed with this statement. Teachers are conscious about the health problem related ICT usage. Therefore, this can be an important barrier for using ICT devices.
6.4.3.7 Self-discipline
When looking at Table 6.11, we can see that 70.8% of the teachers participating in the survey agreed that teachers need self-discipline to be able to participate in online professional development programmes and 26.2% were neutral, while only 3% disagreed.
This characteristic has to be developed by the teachers so that they are not discouraged while learning on their own online, since no one will be there to remind or encourage them individually to complete a course. In online learning they can get a message to remind them about the deadlines but there will be no such pressure as in face-to-face. This situation can lead to isolation, where the teachers learn by themselves in their comfort zone. In Table 6.9, the results show that they can access others work in OPD on their own (49.2%). The respondents believed that self-discipline was an important factor while engaging in OPD.
Thus, they would not have the tendency to cheat.
6.4.3.8 Authenticity of students’ work
In Table 6.11, 83.1% of the respondents agreed that privacy and security must be provided to increase teachers’ trust in online professional development programmes while only 1.5% disagreed. It also shows that 64.7% of the teachers related their lack of trust in online professional development to plagiarism and 7.7% disagreed. Therefore, online providers of professional development for teachers must provide privacy, security and cater for plagiarism problems to encourage teachers to enrol in online courses.
6.4.3.9 Curriculum constraint
From Table 6.11, it can be seen that 75.4% of the studied sample agreed that the curriculum of teacher PD programme should be adjusted according to teachers’ range of beliefs and behaviour. Only 1.5% strongly disagreed with this statement. Table 6.10 shows
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that 73.9% of the teachers agreed that professional development programmes must be more demand driven, that is, more specific courses are needed for teachers, and 3.1% disagreed.
The teachers believed that professional development curriculum must be related to their beliefs and behaviour and be demand-driven.
The median for each construct has also been computed, and the results show that the respondents agreed that nine of the 10 constructs were factors influencing their usage behaviour of online professional development. Their modes and medians were 2. These constructs were performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, OPD content and activities, evidence of students’ performance, challenges of OPD, teacher’s experiences with OPD, knowledge and beliefs, behavioural intention to use OPD and online teacher-training usage. The percentage who agreed was greater or equal to 60. On the other hand, for social influence, the mode and median were 3. This means that most of the respondents (56.9%) were neutral regarding social influence being a contributor to their beliefs about teacher online professional development (see Appendix R).
Further analysis determines to what extent social influence, facilitating conditions, performance expectancy, effort expectancy and behavioural intention predict or influence the usage behaviour of OPD courses. Previous studies (Shaper & Pervan, 2007; Venkatesh et al., 2003) have shown that these constructs account for almost 70% of the dependent variable in predicting behavioural intention to adopt or use a technology or system. A hierarchical multiple linear regression was chosen to answer this question as in such analysis the researcher would be able to see which variable added significant change in predicting user’s use behaviour of online teacher-training programmes. Moreover, it allowed the researcher to enter the variables in steps. The researcher entered the variable related to UTAUT model first followed by those of teacher learning model. The next section presents the multiple regression analysis.