Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Adelua Olajide Olawole and Maruff Akinwale Oladejo
accept the modern medium of information dissemination. Attitudes towards technology can therefore
predict the electronic usage or otherwise by students with disabilities.
Also, Computer Self-Efficacy (CSE) has been identified as another psychological factor that can
determine students with disabilities’ eLearning usage. According to ( Bandura 1986: p. 391), general
self-efficacy (GSE) refers to "people's judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses
of action required to attain designated types of performance". The concept of computer self-efficacy
emerged from the general self-efficacy literature. Computer Self-Efficacy (CSE) therefore according to
(Compeau & Higgins 1995), measures one’s confidence in mastering a new technology or software
with certain degree of confidence. Also, (Stephens & Shotick 2001), opined that computer selfefficacy
is an individuals’ beliefs in their ability to use technology in order to solve problems, make
decisions, and to gather and disseminate information. Also, (Foucher and Prince 2003) argued that in
the field of eLearning, students who decide to use the inter system have a sense of self-efficacy
higher than those who choose not to use the system.
Furthermore, how technological confident one is, needs to be considered while discussing electronic
usage. This is because the technological confidence of one has been reported to be a determinant of
electronic usage (Akinniyi, 2010). In fact, (Akinniyi 2010) established that individual’s technological
confidence is positively and significantly related to such individual’s eLearning adoption and usage
(r=.023). The Researchers were therefore inclined to examine further, the relationship that exists
between these psycho-social variables with respect to students with disabilities’ eLearning usage,
which appears to have received little attention in Nigeria. This becomes highly important because
attention now shifts to inclusive educational system, whereby students with or without disabilities
receive instructions in regular educational Institutions.
1.3 Statement of the problem
The issue of acceptance of eLearning technology by learners has attracted many researchers in
information systems. However, it appears that only few research have investigated the influence of
psycho-social factors on the acceptance and usage of eLearning technology by students with
disabilities in Nigeria. Hence, the problem of this study is to examine the predictive power of some
psycho-social factors on eLearning usage by students with disabilities in Nigeria. To this end, the
following research questions and null hypotheses were answered and tested in the study:
Research Question 1: To what extent would the selected factors namely gender, nature of disability,
computer self-efficacy, technological confidence and attitude towards technology, when taken
together, predict the eLearning usage of students with disabilities in Nigeria?
Research Question 2: What are the relative contributions of each of the selected factors to the
prediction of eLearning usage of students with disabilities in Nigeria?
Hypothesis 1: There is no significant gender difference in eLearning usage of students with
disabilities in Nigeria.
Hypothesis 2: There is no significant difference in eLearning usage of students with disabilities based
on the nature of disability in Nigeria.
2. Methodology
2.1 Design
The adopted research design for the present study is the descriptive survey which is “ex-post facto” in
nature. An “ex-post facto “study according to a scholar is described as :
A systematic empirical inquiry in which the scientist does
not have direct control of independent variables because their
manifestations have already occurred or because they are inherently
not manipulable. Inferences about relations among variables are made
without direct interaction from concomitant variation of independent and
dependent variable, Kerlinger (in Oladejo, 2010: 264).
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