Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Are educators’ anxiety levels or demographics related to their voluntary use of networked resources? In this study, one year of logins and online time for 189 randomly selected educators with accounts on Tenet (Texas Education Network) were correlated with six interval-level subject attribute variables: (a) writing apprehension, (b) oral communication apprehension, (c) computer anxiety, (d) age, (e) teaching experience, and (f) telecomputing experience. The usage data were also correlated with three nominal-level subject attribute variables: (a) gender, (b) professional specialty, and (c) teaching level. Results indicated that writing apprehension was significantly and negatively correlated with network use, and that telecomputing experience and online time were significantly and positively correlated. No other subject attribute variables were found to be correlated with logins or time spent online. These results, and the lack of significant relationships for computer anxiety and oral communication apprehension, lead the authors to suggest that writing apprehension be addressed within the contexts of initial telecomputing training, and increased access to telecommunications tools be made available as users’ online experience increases.
Harris et al. (Fri,) studied this question.