Is a general extended technology acceptance model for e-learning generalizable?

e-Learning acceptance has received considerable attention in the educational technology literature. In recent years, many frameworks have been proposed, modified, and applied to better understand the factors underlying students’ acceptance of e-learning. Despite the important progress made with the acceptance literature, extant empirical examinations have unfortunately often produced discordant findings. Researchers frequently advance situational factors as possible moderating influences on technology to explain the high degree of variance unexplained in specific technology acceptance situations. Generalized models have been proposed that attempt to integrate situational variables to account for the high degree of situational variability that occurs across technology acceptance contexts. Abdullah and Ward proposed such a general extended technology acceptance model in the context of e-learning (GETAMEL). In the current paper, our objective is to quantitatively evaluate the GETAMEL, and consider it with respect to a situative perspective on technology acceptance in order to more fully characterize the dynamical relationships and situational factors influencing determinants of e-learning acceptance. This study, drawing on a survey of 132 college students, validates the GETAMEL employing a partial least square path modeling approach.

Preservice Teachers’ Learning to Plan Intellectually Challenging Tasks

This study explores how and under which conditions preservice secondary science teachers (PSTs) engage in effective planning practices that incorporate intellectually challenging tasks into lessons. Drawing upon a situative perspective on learning, eight PSTs’ trajectories of participation in communities of practice are examined with a focus on planning throughout student teaching. Data include 32 sets of teaching artifacts, interviews with PSTs, interviews with methods course instructors, and interviews with mentor teachers. The analyses show that instructional tasks observed at the beginning of lessons link to the ways in which PSTs engage in the three interrelated processes of (a) framing instructional goals, (b) constructing a lesson scenario, and (c) addressing problems of practice. The consistencies and changes observed in the PSTs’ trajectories of planning reveal the dynamic, responsive, and contentious nature of planning situated in local contexts. Three implications for designing productive learning opportunities for PSTs are discussed.