Track: Graduate Student Paper Competition

Abstract

Digital divide centers on access to various dimensions of information and communication technology (ICT) including physical access, motivation, skills, and actual usage of digital technologies. This divide tends to be even wider in the context of developing countries. Further, educational setting has been recognized as a domain with good potential for incorporation of new technologies. It involves a wide range of users of learning technology which should support the process of knowledge transfer and acquisition. Yet, there is a lack of literature on the digital divide and technology acceptance among the students and teachers in secondary education. As an initial step to fill the gap in the existing literature, developing a new model to capture the interplay between digital divide and technology acceptance, and how these affect performances among students and teachers using structural equation modelling and confirmatory factor analysis is of essence. This paper focuses on the development and validation of such a model. The purpose of the study is to build a model that examines relationships among variables associated with factors that influence technology acceptance and digital divide. Data was collected from 1451 participants using a survey questionnaire. Employing structural equation modelling, a hypothesized model was tested for model fit in the study. The resulting model is found to have a good fit.