Faculty readiness for the adoption of Web -enhanced instructional technology

With the advent of the Internet, Web instruction has become an option in higher education around the globe. However, the technology associated with its adoption can be much more complicated than the traditional ones. Thus, faculty readiness to adopt this technology in their classrooms must be fully researched.;The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which faculty members in Taiwan's Institutes of Technology were ready to adopt Web-enhanced instructional technology (WEIT) in the classroom. Specifically, this study assessed faculty readiness levels based on their knowledge, skills, resources, support, press, and spirit. The study also investigated faculty's WEIT adopter category distributions in terms of capability, commitment, and innovativeness. Finally, underlying factors that could be used to discriminate faculty WEIT adopter memberships were explored.;A researcher-designed questionnaire was used to gather data from all faculty members teaching in the 11 Institutes of Technology located in the central region of Taiwan. The questionnaire solicited information on their technology competencies, institutional resources and support, internal and external feelings, and self-perceived adopter categories regarding WEIT adoption in their classrooms.;The results indicated that faculty members were highly ready in their spirit and moderately ready in knowledge and skills. However, they did not perceive they were ready in press or institution's resources and support to adopt WEIT in classrooms. Faculty's readiness perceptions varied on age, gender, experience, and discipline, but not on their responsibilities of administrative duty or teaching load. With regard to WEIT adopter distribution, most faculty members perceived they belonged to the upper three categories (Innovator, Early Adopter, and Early Majority) with an increasing commitment to upgrade their innovation levels.;As a result of the factor analysis, six underlying factors emerged to account for faculty's WEIT adopter membership. These factors were technology competency, institution support, internal spirit, equipment conditions, external press, and Internet conditions. Based on multivariate regression analyses, these factors were significantly related to faculty's adopter membership at the .001 level. After a series of step-wise discriminant analyses, technology competency and internal spirit were identified as having discriminating power on faculty's WEIT adopter memberships.