Differences in intention to use educational RSS feeds between Lebanese and British students: A multi‑group analysis based on the technology acceptance model

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) offers a means for university students to receive timely updates from virtual learning environments. However, despite its utility, only 21% of home students surveyed at a university in Lebanon claim to have ever used the technology. To investigate whether national culture could be an influence on intention to use RSS, the survey was extended to British students in the UK. Using the Technology Adoption Model (TAM) as a research framework, 437 students responded to a questionnaire containing four constructs: behavioral intention to use; attitude towards benefit; perceived usefulness; and perceived ease of use. Principle components analysis and structural equation modelling were used to explore the psychometric qualities and utility of TAM in both contexts. The results show that adoption was significantly higher, but also modest, in the British context at 36%. Configural and metric invariance were fully supported, while scalar and factorial invariance were partially supported. Further analysis shows significant differences between perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use across the two contexts studied. Therefore, it is recommended that faculty demonstrate to students how educational RSS feeds can be used effectively to increase awareness and emphasize usefulness in both contexts

Factors influencing students' acceptance of m-learning: An investigation in higher education

M-learning will play an increasingly significant role in the development of teaching and learning methods for higher education. However, the successful implementation of m-learning in higher education will be based on users' acceptance of this technology. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to study the factors that affect university students' intentions to accept m-learning. Based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) (Venkatesh et al., 2003), this study proposes a model to identify the factors that influence the acceptance of m-learning in higher education and to investigate if prior experience of mobile devices affects the acceptance of m-learning. A structural equation model was used to analyse the data collected from 174 participants. The results indicate that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, influence of lecturers, quality of service, and personal innovativeness were all significant factors that affect behavioural intention to use m-learning. Prior experience of mobile devices was also found to moderate the effect of these constructs on behavioural intention. The results of this research extend the UTAUT in the context of m-learning acceptance by adding quality of service and personal innovativeness to the structure of UTAUT and provide practitioners and educators with useful guidelines for designing a successful m-learning system

Examining the moderating effect of individual-level cultural values on users’ acceptance of E-learning in developing countries: a structural equation modeling of an extended technology acceptance model

In this study, we examine the effects of individual-level culture on the adoption and acceptance of e-learning tools by students in Lebanon using a theoretical framework based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). To overcome possible limitations of using TAM in developing countries, we extend TAM to include subjective norms (SN) and quality of work life constructs as additional constructs and a number of cultural variables as moderators. The four cultural dimensions of masculinity/femininity (MF), individualism/collectivism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance were measured at the individual level to enable them to be integrated into the extended TAM as moderators and a research model was developed based on previous literature. To test the hypothesised model, data were collected from 569 undergraduate and postgraduate students using e-learning tools in Lebanon via questionnaire. The collected data were analysed using the structural equation modelling technique in conjunction with multi-group analysis. As hypothesised, the results of the study revealed perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), SN and quality of work life to be significant determinants of students’ behavioural intention (BI) towards e-learning. The empirical results also demonstrated that the relationship between SN and BI was particularly sensitive to differences in individual-cultural values, with significant moderating effects observed for all four of the cultural dimensions studied. Some moderating effects of culture were also found for both PU and PEOU, however, contrary to expectations the effect of quality of work life was not found to be moderated by MF as some previous authors have predicted. The implications of these results to both theory and practice are explored in the paper

A cross-cultural examination of the impact of social, organisational and individual factors on educational technology acceptance between British and Lebanese university students

This paper examines the social, organisational and individual factors that may affect students' acceptance of e-learning systems in higher education in a cross-cultural context. A questionnaire was developed based on an extended technology acceptance model (TAM). A total sample of 1173 university students from two private universities in Lebanon and one university in England participated in this study. After performing the satisfactory reliability and validity checks, the hypothesised model was estimated using structural equation modeling. The findings of this study revealed that perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), social norms (SNs), perceived quality of work life (QWL), computer self-efficacy (SE) and facilitating conditions (FC) are significant determinants of behavioural intentions (BIs) and usage of e-learning system for the Lebanese and British students. QWL, the newly added variable, was found the most important construct in explaining the causal process in the model for both samples. Differences were found between Lebanese and British students with regard to PEOU, SN, QWL, FC, SE and actual usage; however, no differences were detected in terms of PU and BI. Overall, the proposed model achieves acceptable fit and explains for 69% of the British sample and 57% of the Lebanese sample of its variance which is higher than that of the original TAM. Our findings suggest that individual, social and organisational factors are important to consider in explaining students' BI and usage of e-learning environments

Perception of student's satisfaction towards online learning: A study among SBMS' students in UUM

Online learning is one of the biggest concerns in Ministry of Higher Education in order to achieve Malaysia’s goal towards access, quality and efficiency. Online learning is known to be one of the medium in education that reduce the space, time and cost for students and at the same time provide a competitive advantage to the university. This study attempts to examine the perception of School of Business Management students in online learning satisfaction towards online learning system in Universiti Utara Malaysia. Factors used in this study to evaluate the satisfaction over online learning system are user interface design, online course design, perceived ease of use and perceived of usefulness. It is important to know the levels of student satisfaction towards online learning system from the perspective of student’s behaviour and the design of system in order to enhance the quality of online education. This study also examined the level of usage for online learning system used in Universiti Utara Malaysia among School of Business Management students. A total of 331 students participated in the research from four different courses; Marketing, Human Resource Management, Entrepreneurial and Business Administration. In order to test the hypotheses, SmartPLS version 2.0 was used and the findings of this study showed that the user interface design, online course design, perceived ease of use and perceived of usefulness have a significant relationship to student online learning satisfaction

Measuring the effect of immediacy on consumer engagement behaviours in social media settings

This thesis presents evidence of how immediacy affects consumer engagement behaviour in a social media setting. It answers the research question: Does immediacy influence consumer engagement behaviours with brands on Facebook? This research context is important and timely because of the rapidly increasing usage of social media by consumers and the resultant unexplored marketing challenges faced by brand managers. This thesis is informed by Social Impact Theory (SIT) (Latané, 1981), which proposes that immediacy is a determinant of influence in off-line environments. This study focuses upon three forms of immediacy, physical, social and temporal, that are identified within prior literature. This thesis measures the effect and develops SIT to account for immediacy as a social influence determinant of social media behaviour. The thesis follows a mixed method approach using focus groups and experimental design to measure the impact of each form of immediacy on four types of engagement behaviour: page liking, content liking, content sharing and content commenting. A series of three focus groups and three experimental studies were conducted with a total of 312 student participants who were presented with Facebook pages (created specifically for this study). Each Facebook page treatment was modified so that it contained either a high, low or neutral levels of each of the three types of immediacy identified in the literature and the subsequent change in participant engagement behaviour was measured. The results show that social immediacy significantly affects brand engagement intentions in terms of page liking, content liking and content sharing, whereas physical immediacy significantly affected page liking and content liking intentions. Temporal immediacy did not show any effects on the engagement intentions being measured in this thesis. This thesis presents three original contributions to knowledge. First, it makes a theoretical contribution by measuring the effects of three types of immediacy as social impact factors on engagement behaviours in social media. Second, it makes a contextual contribution by exploring how immediacy is perceived in the context of Fan pages, and by identifying other factors that can moderate the social impact of immediacy on consumer behaviour. Finally, this thesis measures the effects of product involvement, Facebook intensity usage and gender as moderators of social impact in social media settings

Developing design process model and measuring acceptance of polytechnic cooperative e-retail website

Research on the process model of e-retail web design using Content Management System (CMS) remains scarce. CMS is one way of developing website quickly, with less cost and usage of IT expertise. Researchers mostly focus on identifying the significant relationship towards particular website especially on web design and suggest for practical implementation. Previous studies on web development are on the architecture of CMS while the use of CMS attracts little interest among researchers. Only a number of researchers concentrate on the process development of e-retail website especially using CMS. To fill the practical gap, this research proposed a process model of e-retail website through SDLC and extended the model with the introduction of internet marketing. It was tested in the development of a e-retail website. Each stage is discussed in details along the way of the web development. After the website was successfully developed, this research examined the acceptance of e-retail website by measuring consumers’ behavioural intention and actual usage using Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). In addressing the theoretical gap, this research provides an empirical test of three forms of self-efficacy (Computer Self-efficacy, Internet Self-efficacy, and Online Shopping Self-efficacy) and anxiety (Computer Anxiety, Internet Anxiety, and Online Shopping Anxiety) towards behavioural intention to shop online. The research subjects were 91,830 polytechnic students from 33 polytechnics in Malaysia. A total of 357 fulltime polytechnic students from five polytechnics in Malaysia have been involved in this research. From a list of students’ name, self-administered survey questionnaires were distributed at response rate of 77.8%. Correlation and Multiple Regression were used to test the significant relationship while Hierarchical Regression was used to test the moderator of gender. The research reveals that Performance Expectancy, Social Influence, Facilitating Condition and Online shopping Self-Efficacy are found to have significant effect on students Behavioural Intention to use polytechnic co-operative eretail business. E-retailer needs to encourage the potential customer to make on-line purchasing because it is no longer a norm against the use of the Internet and computer. The process model is readily transferable to another website so that it describes as sufficient for use. The future research shall apply the extended UTAUT in different subject (adult) and the process model shall extend until the Return on Investment (ROI)

Alter ego, state of the art on user profiling: an overview of the most relevant organisational and behavioural aspects regarding User Profiling.

This report gives an overview of the most relevant organisational and\ud behavioural aspects regarding user profiling. It discusses not only the\ud most important aims of user profiling from both an organisation’s as\ud well as a user’s perspective, it will also discuss organisational motives\ud and barriers for user profiling and the most important conditions for\ud the success of user profiling. Finally recommendations are made and\ud suggestions for further research are given

Prospects and Problems on Internet Services Use Among the Faculty Members and Students of a Government-Subsidized University in Catanduanes

Technology is said to be a “great education equalizer†since it gives teacher and learner access to enormous and almost boundless world knowledge using their school’s desktop or laptop computers. Through the Internet, the Filipino students can learn at same level with students of more advanced institutions in highly industrialized countries in the world. This study employed the descriptive method research that utilized questionnaire to determine the prospects of internet and the problems on internet use of the respondents. Specifically, this study determined the level of knowledge and the degree of seriousness of the problems on internet use among the faculty members and students of the Catanduanes State University for school year 2015-2016. Result of the study showed that faculty members and students of the said government-subsidized university in Catanduanes have high level of knowledge on internet and have serious problem on internet use.  There was significant relationship between the level of knowledge and degree of seriousness of the problems on internet use. The problem met is related to the gap of internet access or the supporting infrastructure available for both faculty and students. The internet services particularly at this institution should be rationalized and made available to all students anywhere in the campus. Awareness as to the benefits and convenience that can be offered by the Internet resources and services can ultimately be seen when efforts on changing attitudes of these sectors in higher institutional levels are to be focused together with the physical or technological architecture