Adopting the UTAUT model to understand academic use of emerging technologies among Moroccan nursing students

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic transitions from traditional classroom learning to online learning. However, there is a paucity of data in Moroccan nursing students on the plausibility of emerging technologies to support online learning. OBJECTIVE: Using the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model, this study investigated whether socioeconomic factors and voluntariness of use moderated the associations of domains of UTAUT model with number of emerging technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequently, this study examined the moderation effect of user status and learning devices on the relationship between domains of UTAUT model and number of emerging technologies. METHOD: Data were from a publicly available survey among Moroccan nursing students. Socioeconomic factors were explored as potential moderators of the associations of performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), social influence (SI), and facilitating conditions (FC) with number of emerging technologies. Poisson pseudolikelihood regression with multiple levels of fixed effects were applied to analyze the associations in the groups of Level 2 of study, Level 3 of study, class size50. RESULTS: The sample was dominated by females, age between 21 and 24 years, level 3 of study, previous users, future users, and using desktop. There were the moderate correlations among domains of the UTAUT model. Laptop, desktop, and smartphone are key driving factors of learning performance of nursing students. The classical UTAUT models were confirmed to be in the samples of Level 2 of study, Level 3 of study, and class size <=50. The revised UTAUT model indicated that laptop, desktop, smartphone, previous user, and future user moderated the relationships of PE, EE, SI, and FC with number of emerging technologies. CONCLUSION: Findings highlight the importance of learning devices in the number of emerging technologies among Moroccan nursing students. The findings of this study provide policy makers to rethink about how to improve academic performance among the nursing students.