A Design Functionality Study of IDM Web-Stores

One of the advantages of conducting business over the Internet is the ability to collect information about customer preferences in order to serve them accordingly. Personalisation provides a means of doing this. In this paper, we have attempted to study the effect of personalisation on the success of IDM web-stores. The major contribution of our paper is the extension of the IDM Platform Functionality Model of Srinivasan et al [24] to include personalisation. The second contribution is the investigation of six personalisation features that specify and describe this functionality in its various forms. We have used both quantitative and qualitative research techniques such as click-stream analysis and emphatic design in a focus group. Our findings suggest that personalisation is a significant component of IDM web-store design

Evaluation of a personalized digital library based on cognitive styles: Adaptivity vs. adaptability

Personalization can be addressed by adaptability and adaptivity, which have different advantages and disadvantages. This study investigates how digital library users react to these two techniques. More specifically, we develop a personalized digital library to suit the needs of different cognitive styles based on the findings of our previous work (Frias-Martinez, et al., in press). The personalized digital library includes two versions: adaptive version and adaptable version. The results showed that users not only performed better in the adaptive version, but also they perceived more positively to the adaptive version. In addition, cognitive styles have great effects on users’ responses to adaptability and adaptivity. These results provide guidance for designers to select suitable techniques to develop personalized digital libraries

Investigation of behavior and perception of digital library users: A cognitive style perspective

Cognitive style is an influential factor in users’ information seeking. The study presented in this paper examines how users’ cognitive styles affect their behavior and perception in digital libraries. Fifty participants took part in this study. Two dimensions of cognitive styles were considered: (a) Field Dependence/Independence; (2) Verbalizer/Imager. The results showed that Intermediate users and Verbalizers have not only more positive perception, but they also complete the tasks in effective ways. Implications for the design of personalized digital libraries are also discussed

User Representation in eCommerce and Collaboration Applications

The development of the Internet was originally based on the assumption that a user remains anonymous. However, more and more services need to know the user for providing personalized services or for presenting the user to other users. As in real life, a user will interact with different services hosted by different providers. With the current approach users have to provide and update information about their identity and interests for each service independently. That results in cold-start problems for new services and in inconvenience for the user. In this paper we argue that user-centric global identity management is needed for future e-commerce and collaboration applications. We present the current state of art in the area of identity management, discuss needs and possibilities for future developments, and show some results of the work we have done in this context. 1

Legal Issues of Personalized eCommerce Applications

Most e-commerce applications require the collection and storing of information about customers. As a consequence, the performed transactions involve legal issues. For two years, the authors have been involved in a project, which studies the potentials of personalization of e-commerce systems from the particular angle of SMEs. The paper picks up a couple of scenarios that many e-commerce vendors face when implementing personalization on their Web sites. The specific focus of the discussion is the legal use of costumer profiles for e-commerce applications. Since most legal issues are difficult to understand for non-lawyers the paper makes use of a case study, which shows explicitly what ecommerce vendors need to keep in mind when implementing personalization on their Web sites

E-Learning: From A Pedagogical Perspective

The steady growing innovations in the area of information and communication technology have raised new concepts and possibilities in different life aspects. In the field of further education and professional training, electronic learning and Web-based education are perhaps the most prominent ones. Proponents of this technology claim that e-learning courses are at least as effective as corresponding traditional ones, and therefore sometimes a very good substitute for it. Although there are so many similarities between traditional and e-learning systems, confronting the extended range of e-learning users -with very different prior knowledge of the domain, backgrounds, learning styles, interests and preferences- is no more possible with the “one-size-fits-all” approach. Hence, creation and management of instructional content would be the major hazard in e-learning industry. Contents should be provided considering social, cultural and pedagogical characteristics of the learners. E-learning covers a wide set of applications and processes. With such an extended scope, covering number of available e-learning tools is extensive. Though, in recent years, features and capabilities of authoring tools have been drastically improved. Concepts such as “adapting to the needs of learners” and “personalized content” make authoring tools play a more prominent role in the process of creating learning contents. In this paper, we propose a new pedagogical perspective in web-based learning environments. This perspective explores the most prominent opportunities of the information technology era, in order to ensure a more meaningful learning. Advantages, limitations and particularly deficiencies of e-learning systems are investigated based on this perspective. Also, in order to cover the importance of authoring tools in the performance of e-learning systems, capabilities and limitations of current available authoring tools are comparatively studied. These comparisons are based on criteria such as compatibility with e-learning standards, the amount of time and cost needed for the instructional design and potential features. Outcomes of the study emphasize on the importance of the learning variables such as cognitive, social and affective learners’ characteristics, which play a critical role in the design and implementation of web-based learning systems. These outcomes would certainly be of significant help with enhancing the decision making procedure for managers and presidents of learning areas, which may be overwhelmed by all the technology decisions they have to make, the number of choices available, and the terminology they may not be familiar with. These outcomes would basically lead to determining basic factors of learner satisfaction and therefore improving educational performance