Abstract:
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) influences most aspects of life and
work, and the education sector, especially higher education, is not an exception to this.
The higher education environment has a range of generations working in it, as it is the
environment keeping and retaining lecturers up to an older age than most sectors. Under
this premise, this study contributes to an understanding of the influences of generational
differences amongst lecturers and how it affects the way they integrate technologies into
the classroom for teaching and learning.
The main aim of this research study was to determine the influence of generational
identities and how they affect different lecturers in the way they integrate technology into
the classroom for teaching and learning. To explore this influence, lecturers from three
higher learning institutions from two Southern African countries were engaged in how they
integrate and use technology in class.
A qualitative research design was followed for this interpretive research inquiry, and data
was collected through semi-structured interviews with 34 lecturers from the three higher
learning institutions. Transcripts of the interviews were analysed using a computer-aided
qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) tool called Leximancer. Actor-Network
Theory (ANT) was also used as an analysis framework. Literature reviews and strategic
plans of the three institutions were used as secondary data.
The findings indicate that belonging to a certain generation does not influence the way a
lecturer integrates and uses technology in the classroom. Other prominent factors, such as
students, use, and technology, emerged as factors of importance that influence a lecturer
to integrate and use technology in the classroom. The study contributes to the body of
knowledge with the findings from the empirical evidence as well as proposing the
generational technology integration framework that covers aspects of technology
integration based on generational identity aspects of the lecturers. The framework is based
on the tenets of ANT’s moments of translation and fused with the main tenets of the
Generational Theory, which informs the framework on the typical features of a generation.
