Level of Internet Use Among Science Teachers Involved in a Professional Development Project

This study examined the level of instructional use of Internet among science teachers involved with an in-service professional development project. An instrument on Level of Use of innovation was modified for the study. A criterion sample of teachers to be interviewed via telephone was randomly selected from a pool of 347 K–12 teachers. Somers' d and contingency coefficients were determined to see whether any relationship exists between a teacher's Level of Use and the following categories: (a) amount of experience with the Internet; (b) availability of resources support and access to the Internet in classroom and at home; (c) number of teacher and student users at school, (d) gender; and (e) type of school. Results of step-wise multiple regression indicate that classroom access, instructional experience of using Internet with students, availability of resource support and number of teacher users at school are the best predictors of teacher's Level of Use. Chi square test for comparisons between groups of completers and noncompleters of On-Line West Virginia K–12 RuralNet courses also revealed that a lack of classroom access to Internet and lack of resource/technical support at school contributed significantly to lower level of use among noncompleters.