Implementation strategies and the technology acceptance model: Is "ease of use" really useful or easy to use in implementation?

The large investment in information technology in the education sector has made the investigation of technology acceptance important for this sector. In this paper, a questionnaire was given to 282 one-year full-time postgraduate students in education to assess their computer acceptance and intended professional usage in the future. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used as the framework for analysis. Results of the study suggest an overall consistency of TAM factors examined for explaining usage; however, several areas were identified where individual teacher acceptance differed in their computer acceptance decision-making when compared with previous studies. Specifically, the pre-service teachers in this study made computer acceptance decisions largely based on the usefulness of the computer while ease of use was limited to being only a secondary consideration. However, significant gender differences exist in our findings as well, with male respondents most likely to indicate an insignificant effect on the ease of use factors in influencing usage intention, and with female prospective teachers indicating a influence of ease of use similar to what has been found in prior TAM studies. Implications of gender and context on the significant differences in the determinant, ease of use, are discussed.