What Are the Barriers Preventing Academic Staff From Using New Technologies in Teaching and Learning?

I asked this question on Quora, as I mentioned last year to see if people had any interesting experiences and insights in this area, and then went on to explore the question further including undertaking some small scale research.


The reason that I wanted to explore this question is that often teaching staff attend staff development sessions and say that they see a value using a certain tool or technology - but the use doesn’t always occur. I’ve had a look for research in this area to see what themes might emerge from that which might help us think about how to remove barriers that exist.


The research I looked at has focused on the perspectives of academic staff and managers in Higher Education, and teachers in schools. The main perceived barriers to general educational technology use seemed to be:

• teacher’s lack of time (Chen, 2009)

• teacher’s lack of interest (Chen, 2009)

• lack of rewards given to teachers (Chen, 2009)

• lack of money (UCISA, 2010)

• lack of academic staff knowledge (UCISA, 2010)

• poor available equipment (Brill and Galloway, 2007)

Some other studies look at individual technologies and the specific barriers connected with them. For example the barrier for those trying to use Computer Assisted Language Learning was that existing off the shelf software they tried to use was not appropriate for their needs (Lee 2000), and they couldn't afford to get their own bespoke software made. Users of Second Life found barriers to be the unusual way that identity is constructed in the environment (Warburton, 2009), and the need for cross departmental work to make the development work worthwhile (Davidson and Goldberg, 2010).

There has also been research that looks more deeply at the reported perceptions, rather than just reporting them.

Lane and Lyle in 2010 looked at how teacher age, gender and experience affected perceptions of the strengths of the barriers. They found that the main influences were teacher experience, and expertise with the technology.

Ertmer (1999) looked at what she called first-order barriers, that is those extrinsic to the teacher like time constraints, and second-order barriers which are rooted in teachers beliefs and therefore usually unnoticed by them.

However you look at all this, the barriers that are reported in the research are wide ranging. Some need to be addressed at a high level in educational institutions, but as Learning Technologists we can work on removing barriers such as lack of academic staff knowledge right away.

Note that in this study I started my search using the term 'barriers' and not using the term ‘obstacles’. Research such as Rockwell et al (1999), and Freeman and Capper (2000) are examples of research papers using that term.

If you want to look at any of the research mentioned above, I’ve listed them below.

• Brill, J. and Galloway, C. (2007) ‘Perils and Promises: University Instructors’ Integration of Technology in Classroom-Based Practices’ British Journal of Educational Technology 38(1) pp.95-105.

• Chen, B. (2009) ‘Barriers to Adoption of Technology: Mediated distance education in Higher Education Institutions’ Quarterly Review of Distance Education 10(4) pp.333-338.

• Davidson, C. and Goldberg, D. (2010) Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

• Ertmer, P. (1999) ‘Addressing first- and second-order barriers to change: Strategies for technology integration’ Educational Technology Research and Development 47(4). pp.47-61.
• Freeman, M. and Capper, J. (2000) ‘Obstacles and opportunities for technological innovation in business teaching and learning’ International Journal of Management Education. 1(1). pp37-47.

• Lane, C. and Lyle, H. (2010) ‘Obstacles and Supports Related to the use of Educational Technologies: The Role of Technological Expertise, Gender, and Age’ Journal of Computing in Higher Education. 23(1). pp.38-59.

• Lee, K. (2000) ‘English Teachers' Barriers to the Use of Computer-assisted Language Learning’ The Internet TESL Journal. 6(12).
• Rockwell, S. et al (1999) ‘Incentives and obstacles influencing higher education faculty and administrators to teach via distance’ Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration. 2(4)

• UCISA (2010) Survey of Technology Enhanced Learning for Higher Education in the UK. Oxford: www.ucisa.ac.uk.

• Warburton, S. (2009) ‘Second Life in Higher Education: Assessing the Potential for and the Barriers to Deploying Virtual Worlds in Learning and Teaching’ British Journal of Educational Technology 40(3) pp.414-426.

[Photo by linder6580]