Abstract
Empirical studies of mobile technology in education are scarce. According to the literature review, different theoretical studies criticizing the current models of technology acceptance and adoption are seeking for changes, but not many research works have been conducted in the field. There are few empirical data about the university’s strategy in adoption and implementation of mobile technology as well.This research confirms the lack of such empirical studies, especially regarding user’s responses to mobile technology and their adaptation strategies in education. Hence, more rigorous research is needed to understand the perceptions and adaptation process of university’ participants. Furthermore, the literature review suggests a lack of theoretical consensus on adaptation of mobile technology in education.Theory shows that the education needs a holistic view of mobile technology adoption and investigation of its different aspects and components. Few research works were conducted in investigating a whole organizational implementation.This dissertation aims at understanding the strategy of university for adopting and implementing the mobile technology.This research is articulated around two main research questions:•Why is mobile technology used in higher education? (at the strategic level)•How is mobile technology used in higher education?This study is an exploratory research in order to allow the theory to emerge from the empirical results and this research is inspired from the Grounded Theory.In total, two case studies were conducted. Two French engineering universities were selected as our fields of study:•First case study is carried out during a 6-month direct observation at engineering university A (equal to 1155 hours) including 193 students and 88 faculty members.•Second case study is carried out during a 4-month direct observation at engineering university B (equal to 704 hours) including 115 students and 29 faculty members.In addition, 15 semi-directive interviews were conducted with professors in charge of mobile technology project, the university’ director, head of the department as well as IT and administrative staff. All data were coded and analyzed.During this research, we constantly compared our findings and the coded data to the emerging incidents and to the emerging concepts with the purpose of generating categories and comparing with the findings acquired from the fields of research.The main contributions can be classified into four categories:• Utilization of mobile technology (according to students, faculty members use),• An analysis of the participant’s perceptions of the adopted mobile technology• An analysis of participant’s coping activities (IT related, Task related and self-related) and three phases of adaptation process (individual, organizational, and group level)• A study of the main university’s strategy towards the adoption of mobile technology and how far it supports changes towards mobile technology appropriation.The conclusion brings managerial implications, theoretical implications and some recommendations for further studies in order to deepen the research and to answer several hypotheses issued from our results.