Full length article Effects of study levels on students' attitudes towards interactive whiteboards in higher education Liliana Mata, Gabriel Lazar, Iuliana Lazar * Vasile Alecsandri University of Bacau, Calea Marasesti 157, 600115 Bacau, Romania article info Article history: Received 1 April 2015 Received in revised form 3 July 2015 Accepted 22 July 2015 Available online xxx Keywords: Higher education Interactive whiteboards Students' attitude abstract The present study aims at exploring the effects of the study levels of the participants involved in the research on the students' attitudes towards interactive whiteboards (IWB) in higher education. A questionnaire with 28 items was distributed in AprileMay 2013 in order to determine the students' attitudes towards interactive whiteboards. 210 students who had been in the undergraduate studies, 24 in the master studies and 12 in the doctoral studies had responded to the survey. The questionnaire had 4 sections, focused on availability of use of IWB and the components of pedagogy, psychology and group interaction. The methodology used involved a multiple response set format in order to identify the percentage of choices for each category of issues, while the Krushal Wallis, JonckheereeTerpstra and ManneWhitney U tests were used to determine differences. The results obtained revealed the fact that there were relevant differences between students at different study levels concerning their attitude towards certain factors that define pedagogical, psychological, group interaction and availability of use of IWB factors. The greatest effect induced by higher study levels was observed at the availability of use of IWB factor, respectively at the perception on using IWB in the educational process. Although there are some positive interactions regarding interactive whiteboards, students accept only gradually the intro- duction of the new technologies, along with their progression in study level. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Interactive whiteboards (IWB) are being increasingly used as educational resources in higher education all over the world, and in recent years they were also introduced in Romanian universities. Indeed, many countries, including the USA, Canada, Mexico Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, China and Russia are particularly interested in using IWB in classroom teaching, unlike Romania, where there is yet poor interest of authorities in this matter. The students' attitudes are a constant relevant benchmark for univer- sity teachers and decision factors at the level of local, as well as national educational policies. The need for conducting this study relies on the finding that there are gaps in the domain of research on the identification of students' attitudes towards the use of interactive whiteboards in educational activities. First and fore- most, it was found that most of the research conducted in this domain has so far focused mainly on investigating the attitudes of teachers and students in pre-university education (Lai, 2010; Moss et al., 2007; Turel, 2011; Yanez & Coyle, 2011; Yang, Wang, & Kao, 2012) and to a lesser degree on those from higher education. One of the main reasons was definitely represented by the introduction of the interactive whiteboard, particularly in primary and middle education, to facilitate teaching and learning activities. Secondly, it was found that there is no standardized, certified tool to measure the students' attitude towards using IWB at the level of higher education. There are studies that aim at developing such a tool, as well as at verifying its validity and reliability only in the context of middle education (Sad, 2012; Turel, 2011). Thirdly, it was found that the accent has fallen more on experimental studies, aimed at measuring the impact of IWB upon the results of learning and less on questionnaire-based research aimed at exploring the attitudes and perceptions of students and teachers regarding these new technologies in the process of education. Such studies that exploit the questionnaire as a research method are useful as they provide updated information on the students' attitudes towards various aspects related to the integration of IWB in conducting educational activities in higher education. The most problematic aspect consists of the small number of scientific studies in the domain of exploiting interactive whiteboards in pre-university Romanian education and * Corresponding author. E-mail address: ilazar@ub.ro (I. Lazar). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.07.044 0747-5632/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Computers in Human Behavior 54 (2016) 278e289