International Indexed & Referred Research Journal, July, 2012. ISSN- 0975-3486, RNI-RAJBIL 2009/30097;VoL.

III *ISSUE-34
Research Paper- Education
A Study of Computer Self-efficacy
Among D.Ed. Student Teachers
July, 2012 * Prof. Ms. Geeta R. Thakur
* Asst. Prof., Pillai's College of Education and Research, New Panvel Dist. Raigad
Introduction :- frequently in the present study.
In recent years when Information and Com- Sample :-
munication Technology has advanced on all fronts, The sample for the present study comprises
its use as an instrument of education has assumed 186 D.Ed. student teachers of different training insti-
added significant at all levels and types of education. tutions affiliated to the North Maharashtra Univer-
The 1998 UNESCO World Education Report, states, sity. At the first stage, the sample of colleges was
"To effectively harness the power of the new ICTs to selected using stratified sampling technique in which
improve learning, the teachers must have the knowl- the strata comprised of D.Ed. rural colleges affiliated
edge and skills to use the new digital tools and re- to North Maharashtra University situated in Pachora
sources to help all students achieve high academic and Shirsoli taluka of Jalgaon district. At the second
standards." Teacher education is faced with the chal- stage, the student teachers were selected randomly.
lenges of preparing a new generation of teachers to The number of student teachers included for the study
effectively use the new learning tools in their teaching was 186 of which 66 were boys and 120 were girls.
practices. However in integrating computers in edu- Tools of Research :-
cation, researchers have proposed that high computer Questionnaire used to collect data for this
self-efficacy could be important factors in helping study was divided into two sections. The first section
people learn computer skills and use computers. dealt with the demographic characteristics such as
(Busch, 1995). sex, stream, computer access at home or outside,
Kinzie, Delcourt, and Powers (1994) defined internet access and previous knowledge of computer.
self-efficacy as an individual's confidence in his or The second section of the questionnaire was the Com-
her ability, which may impact the performance of tasks. puter Self-efficacy Scale (Murphy, Coover, and Owen,
Computer self-efficacy is a belief of one's capability to 1989). It has 29 items preceded by the phrase "I feel
use the computer (Compeau & Higgins, 1995). Com- confident". The subject responded on a five point Likert
puter experience may lead students to believe that type scale. Total scores for Computer Self-efficacy
they can use computer for teaching-learning purpose. Scale ranged from 29 to 145, with high scores indicat-
Heightened self-efficacy may cause students to ex- ing a high degree of confidence in a subject's ability
pend little effort toward learning new computer ap- to use computer. The reliability for scale was accept-
plications. Brosnan (1998) argued that better com- able with Cronbach alpha value of 0.9049.
puter self-efficacy could increase persistence in study- Result :-
ing computing. 67.7 per cent students have computer knowl-
Objectives of The Study :- edge. Only 16.13 per cent of the student have com-
1. To study computer self-efficacy of D.Ed. student puter at home. Internet is used by only 23.66 per cent
teachers of rural areas of Jalgaon district. of the students. 60.22 per cent of the student teachers
2. To compare computer self-efficacy of D.Ed. student have high self-efficacy. Only 15.05 per cent of the
teachers of rural areas of Jalgaon district with respect student teachers showed very high computer self-ef-
to their sex, stream, access to computer, previous ficacy level, whereas only 7 percent of the student
knowledge of computer and access to internet. teachers showed low computer self-efficacy. Nobody
Design of The Present Study :- had very low computer self-efficacy level.
The study employed descriptive type of re- Discussion :-
search. The present study attempts to compare the The findings suggest that D.Ed. student
self-efficacy and reported use of internet of D.Ed. teachers have high computer self-efficacy Computer
students with different variables i.e. sex, stream, com- knowledge found as determining factor of high self-
puter knowledge and access to computer. For this efficacy. Most of the student under study have com-
purpose, the causal-comparative method has been used pleted MS-CIT course. Zhang and Espinoza (1998)

6 RESEARCH ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION

International Indexed & Referred Research Journal, July, 2012. ISSN- 0975-3486, RNI-RAJBIL 2009/30097;VoL.III *ISSUE-34
also reported that past enrollment in computer pro-
gramming courses was found to be positively related
to self-efficacy and computer self-efficacy positively
related to plans to take more computer related courses.
A recent study conducted by Wallace (1999) investi-
gated and described four main factors that influenced
the development of computer self-efficacy. One of the
important factors was computer knowledge.
Conclusions :-
Computers become a prevalent tool in our
daily lives, regardless of whether one likes to use it or
not. So faculty should in addition to integrate com-
puter use in their courses, make regularly available a
wide range of short-format, hands-on workshops and
demonstrations in which student teachers can be given
individual attention. The subjects of the workshops
and demonstrations should parallel applications be-
ing integrated into course activities, in order to en-
hance exposure and high levels of practice. In addi-
tion to allocating fiscal resources to on-campus hard-
ware and infrastructure, universities should also pro-
vide for upgrading of users' skills and user support
(Green, 1998; Shaw & Giacquinta, 2000), and remote
connectivity to the campus network for all students.
Miura (1987) has suggested that self-effi-
cacy may be an important factor related to the acqui-
sition of computing skills. Heightened self-efficacy
may cause students to expend little efforts towards
learning new computer concepts. Brosnan (1998)
argued that better computer self-efficacy could increase
persistence in studying computing. High self-efficacy
is an important factor in helping people learn com-
puter skills and use computers. The present study
represents a further step in understanding the role
that computer self-efficacy plays in the use of the com-
puter.

R E F E R E N C E
1 Bandura, A. 1977. Self-efficacy:Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84, 191-215.
2 Chatterjee, A. 2007. D.Ed. Teacher Training. Crescent Publishing Corporation, New Delhi.
3 Compeau, D.R. & Higgins, C.A. (1995). Computer self-efficacy:Development of a measure and initial test. MIS Quarterly, June,
189-211.
4 Compeau, D.R. and Higgins, C.A. (1995) Computer self-efficacy: Development of a measure and initial test. MIS Quarterly, 19 (2),
189-212.
5 Dahiya, S. S. 2004. ICT: Its Integration in Teacher Education, University News, 42(22), May 31-June 06. pp.7-11.
6 French, D., Hale, C. Johnson, C. and Farr, G. (eds) 1999. Internet-based Learning: An introduction framework for higher education
and business. Kogan page, London.
7 Kinzie, M.B. and Delcourt, M.A.B. (1991) Computer technologies in teacher education: The measurement of attitudes and self-
efficacy. Paper presented at annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, Chicago. (ERIC Document No. ED 331
891).

RESEARCH ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION 7