Abstract
As a teaching tool, Wikipedia is used by an increasing number of professors from many universities around the world. Wikipedia is very influential in allowing students and teachers to learn together and having various skills for students. In this chapter, the influenced main factors of the teaching uses of Wikipedia in higher education are determined and also the relationship between these factors are tried to be explained with the technology acceptance model (TAM) through the structural equation model (SEM). With this aim, teaching use of Wikipedia in all faculty members of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya are used as data and the data is analyzed by LISREL software package. After the analysis, it is found that sharing attitude and use behaviour factors have important role in the model and there is a direct strong impact of sharing attitude on use behavior.
TopIntroduction
Recently, as a result of the development of information technology, people can reach to information fast and easy. For this reason, the use of e-learning, e-books and e-encyclopedia tools has become popular. One of these tools, the world's largest free online encyclopedia Wikipedia is often used in academic studies, books and conferences. Also, as a teaching tool Wikipedia is used by an increasing number of professors from many universities around the world. Wikipedia is very influential in allowing students and teachers to learn together and having various skills (such as educational projects, brainstorming, learning languages, editing or creating articles, etc.) for students.
The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), developed to explain and predict individual behavior of technology acceptance and use, is one of the most widely used models for explaining the factors that have the most impact on user acceptance of information systems. The relationship between the perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEU) which are two important variables of TAM, can be analyzed by the Structural Equation Model (SEM). The Structural Equation Model is a comprehensive statistical method used to explain the relationship between variables in social and behavioral sciences.
In this chapter, the influenced main factors of the teaching uses of Wikipedia in higher education are determined and also the relationship between these factors are tried to be explained with TAM through the SEM. With this aim, teaching use of Wikipedia in all faculty members of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya are used as data and the data is analyzed by LISREL software package. After the analysis, it is found that sharing attitude and use behaviour factors have important role in the model and there is a direct strong impact of sharing attitude on use behavior.
Key Terms in this Chapter
SA: Sharing attitude is the attitude toward a behavior is defined as an individual's positive or negative evaluation of performing.
LISREL: Is the statistical software package used in structural equation modeling analysis.
Wikipedia: Is one of the world's most visited and used online encyclopedia.
TAM: The technology acceptance model (TAM) is an information systems theory that models how users come to accept and use a technology.
PEU: Percieved ease of use is the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free from effort.