Isomursu, M., Ervasti, M., Isomursu, P., & Kinnula, M. (2010, January). Evaluating Human Values in the Adoption of New Technology in School Environment. In System Sciences (HICSS), 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 1-10). IEEE. DOI=10.1109/HICSS.2010.452 © 20010 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. Author version of the accepted article Evaluating Human Values in the Adoption of New Technology in School Environment Minna Isomursu, Mari Ervasti VTT [minna.isomursu;mari.ervasti] @vtt.fi Pekka Isomursu Oulu University of Applied Sciences pekka.isomursu@oamk.fi Marianne Kinnula University of Oulu marianne.kinnula@oulu.fi Abstract This paper describes the results of a value analysis of adopting a technology-supported attendance control service in a primary school. The results are based on a case study that explored a 14-week trial where two classes of elementary school children used an attendance control system that was implemented using networked technology components, including smart cards, NFC-enabled mobile phones and card readers, a web-portal, and SMS messaging. Even though the design goals of the system were directed towards creating value primarily for the parents and teachers, the analysis of subjective perceived value showed that the children were the most satisfied user group of the system. A model of human values adopted from social psychology was used for modeling and interpreting the value experienced by the children. 1. Introduction The vision of ubiquitous computing [25] depicts that computing and technology-supported services will be available and used everywhere and by everyone. Technology will integrate with practically all the imaginable and yet unimaginable areas of our lives. During the last decades, technology has fast escaped the context of offices and professional users towards more versatile usage settings. This paper presents a case study that explores adoption of new technology in the school environment. The study took place in Finland, where the school system is based on public schools. The community administration is responsible for maintaining schools that adhere to the educational and operational requirements set by the state. Therefore, public authorities play an important role in adopting new technologies in the school environment. This means that investments are covered with public funding and decisions for adopting new technologies are done through public decision making processes. In the case of public services, goals and criteria for adopting may differ significantly from the private business environment, where the goals usually deal with maximizing profits and can be justified with economical reasons. With public services, it can be difficult or meaningless to show the created value only through economical measures. Evaluating the value of adopting new technology in an environment that is fully financed by public authorities, and serves a wide variety of people with different needs, is challenging. The schools do not operate in a business environment, trying to generate revenues and operate at minimum cost level. Instead, schools create value for the society and the families using their services on a whole different scale. The benefits of adopting new technology in such settings must include other value parameters in addition to traditional cost or time savings. Human values are often difficult to articulate unambiguously [13]. In this paper, we explore how Schwartz’s [24] value model could be used in modeling and articulating the value created for the end users.