Longitudinal Analysis of Teacher Technology Acceptance and Its Relationship to Resource Viewing and Academic Performance of College Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Due to COVID-19, teachers quickly changed their courses from traditional face-to-face modality to emergency remote teaching (ERT), relying on learning management systems (LMS). In this simple prospective design study, we analyzed the relation of the level of teachers’ technological acceptance at the beginning of ERT (March 2020) considering three variables: the time spent by teachers in the LMS during that semester, the percentage of LMS’s resources their students viewed during the semester, and the final academic performance of the same students at the end of that semester (September 2020). This study included 251 teachers (57% male) and 12,185 students (45% male). We measured the teachers’ level of acceptance with the Spanish version of the Questionnaire Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). We found that the relation between the teacher’s acceptance and their time spent on the LMS was significant and positive (rho = 0.24, p < 0.001). In addition, teachers’ perception of LMS’s easiness is related to the percentage of educational resources their students utilized (rho = 0.26, p < 0.001). Finally, we found a relation between the usefulness dimension of the TAM to the academic performance of the students at the end of that semester (rho = 0.18, p < 0.01). Considering these results, we discuss practices for implementing quality education.