Transitioning to Online Teaching During the Pandemic Period: The Role of Innovation and Psychological Characteristics.

Given the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the forced adoption of online teaching in several academic institutions across the world, we set out an objective in this paper to examine salient factors that may affect the decision to use online teaching by faculty members (teaching staff). We propose and validate a model based on an extended innovation diffusion theory and 284 online survey responses from Ghana and find that the attitude towards online teaching is predictably influenced by relative advantage and observability. Contrary to theory, complexity boosts rather than inhibits the attitude towards online teaching.