Participation and Psychological Ownership on Teachers’ Beliefs of a Cloud-based VLE

Abstract

Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use constitute important belief factors when technology adoption decisions are made within a non-mandatory setting. This paper investigated the roles played by users’ participation and psychological ownership on these beliefs about using a virtual learning environment (VLE). Participation is conceptualised as the extent of activities and behaviours teachers exhibit in a VLE, while psychological ownership refers to the feelings of ownership developed for it. As technology become ubiquitous, psychological ownership is increasingly becoming a relevant phenomenon in technology adoption research, where people can feel psychologically attached to a particular technology. It is proposed that such phenomenon can also occur when using a VLE. Hence, hypothesised relationships were tested with 67 Malaysian teachers from three schools who are using a cloudbased learning platform. Measures were adopted and adapted from established scales used in previous studies. Results from partial least square analysis found significant effect of participation on psychological ownership (β = 0.661, p < 0.001), while psychological ownership had significant effect on perceived usefulness (β = 0.589, p < 0.001) and perceived ease of use (β = 0.632, p < 0.001). This study provides initial evidence for participation and psychological ownership to be included in examining users’ belief about educational technologies.