The goal of an LMS, devised by a growing number of universities, is to offer faculty instructional support. The actual use of these programs, however, suggests thatsupport is elusive. An experience at National Taiwan University illustrates how a university can increase faculty usage through better LMS design.

Despite a steady supply of equipment and continuous training, teachers' use of computers for instruction seems to be limited. Whether the problem is due to teachers' ability or usage of computers for instruction is not well understood. In order to better understand the role of ability and usage in technology integration, teachers' proficiency of technology integration was evaluated by separate ability and usage scales. Based on performance indicators from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), two scales were developed that measured teachers' self-perceived ability and their frequency of usage of technology integration. The survey was administered to grade 1–9 teachers in Taiwan ( n = 3729). The results showed a positive correlation between teachers' technology integration ability and usage (Pearson r = .56). Further examination using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) confirmed the structure of the scales and revealed a higher correlation between the two scales after adjusting for measurement error.

Background Student teachers struggle with a wide range of problems because they are lacking professional knowledge, inexperienced in dealing with colleagues and students, and unfamiliar with school environments. It is essential for the survival of student teachers to establish supportive relationships for professional and personal help. Traditional support mechanisms for student teachers, such as cooperating teachers and university supervising teachers, often fail to provide the needed help. Analysing student teachers' help-seeking behaviour provides an avenue to explore the support they received. Purpose The study investigates how student teachers seek assistance. Using a Help-seeking behaviour questionnaire, student teachers' critical problems and their efforts to find assistance are examined. Sample The participants were 40 student teachers in a secondary education teacher certificate programme at a university in Taipei, Taiwan. The participants belonged to a class of about 100 student teachers who did their internships at local junior and senior high schools. The participants were teaching in eight subjects, and about two-thirds were female. Every student teacher was assigned a supervising teacher from the university and a cooperating teacher at the placement school. Design and methods The questionnaire asked the student teachers to pick a critical problem that they had encountered during the previous week. They were asked to describe the problem, whom they asked for help, how many times and through which communication channel the help was provided. The questionnaire was administered during March and May 2001. Critical problems were sorted into categories. Frequencies and percentages of the help-seeking instances were accumulated for different people and problem categories. Results Some student teachers requested help many times; others made a limited number of requests. The number of requests ranged from 1 to 38 per problem, with an average of 12 requests per problem. Among the requests for help (n = 935), only 2% were directed to university supervisors. The student teachers sought help from the cooperating teacher 15% of the time, and 41% of the time they asked student teacher peers for assistance. About 90% of the communication was face to face, 9% was by phone and 1% was by email. The largest number of requests dealt with problems of individual students (19%). The second and third largest problem categories were administration and policy issues (16%) and lack of spare time (15%). Conclusions Peer support should be cultivated in teacher training programmes because peer student teachers' help was most frequently sought. Cooperating teachers and university supervising teachers' communication with student teachers can be improved. Various ways of contacting student teachers can be encouraged, but face-to-face communication must still be supported. It is important to keep finding new ways to assess the effectiveness of student teacher support. The results of the Help-seeking behaviour questionnaire can be used to examine the impact of programmes to improve student teaching.