New interactive teaching technologies and education process at the UAE University: What are the uses, obstacles and added values?

This study revolves around the use of new teaching technologies as media in course delivery. It examines the differences in the uses of and gratifications from new teaching technologies in a sample of students who are digital natives and a sample of instructors who are mostly reluctant to adopt and use new teaching technologies in their course delivery. The purpose is to assess the usefulness, as well as the effective use, of new tools from both students’ and instructors’ perspectives. By using a TAM approach, the study investigates the educational benefits from those technologies by listing the different uses and expectations in students and instructors. The study also focuses on identifying the potential barriers posed by those technologies in the teaching and learning processes, as well as identifying the added values brought by those technologies to the teaching process. But more than identifying the uses of and gratifications accruing from new teaching technologies, the study highlights the mental fracture operating between nonlinear-thinking digital natives and linear-thinking instructors, a gap that places the education community in front of new challenges, as it imposes a deep re-adaptation of class pedagogy and teaching methods.