Does culture matter? A qualitative and comparative study on eLearning in Germany and China

eLearning offers the exciting opportunity to acquire new material at any time and any place. It is also a means to teach a large number of people simultaneously, which is an important aspect when thinking about challenges in fast growing countries like China. We suggest that the successful usage of eLearning requires the consideration of didactic socialization. While prior research has primarily focused on the overall success factors of eLearning, there is little understanding about how a specific learning culture context influences its usefulness. This study intends by a use of a proxy approach to investigate culture-sensitive success factors of eLearning measures regarding overall satisfaction and learning success. The results of the comparison of the German and East Asian learning context show that there are culturally specific requirements of eLearning success that cater to the specific didactic socialization

An empirical examination of interdisciplinary collaboration within the practice of localisation and development of international software

Acceptance on international markets is an important selling proposition for software products and a key to new markets. The adaptation of software products for specific markets is called software localisation. Practitioner reports and research suggests that activities of developers and translators do not mesh seamlessly, leading to problems such as disproportionate cost, lack of quality, and delayed product release. Yet, there is little research on localisation as a comprehensive activity and its human factors. This thesis examines how software localisation is handled in practice, how the localisation process is integrated into development, and how software developers and localisers work individually and collaboratively on international software. The research aims to understand how localisation issues around the above-mentioned classifications of cost, quality and time issues are caused. Qualitative and quantitative data is gathered through semi-structured interviews and an online survey. The interviews focused on the individual experiences of localisation and development professionals in a range of relevant roles. The online survey measured cultural competence, attitude towards and self-efficacy in localisation, and properties of localisation projects. Interviews were conducted and analysed following Straussian Grounded Theory. The survey was statistically analysed to test a number of hypotheses regarding differences between localisers and developers, as well as relationships between project properties and software quality. Results suggest gaps in knowledge, procedure and motivation between developers and translators, as well as a lack of cross-disciplinary knowledge and coordination. Further, a grounded theory of interdisciplinary collaboration in software localisation explains how collaboration strategies and conflicts reciprocally affect each other and are affected by external influences. A number of statistically significant differences between developers and localisers and the relevance of certain project properties to localisation were confirmed. The findings give new insights into interdisciplinary issues in the development of international software and suggest new ways to handle interdisciplinary collaboration in general

A model for representing the motivational and cultural factors that influence mobile phone usage variety

Mobile phone usage involves the mobile phone, the telecommunications system, mobile phone users, and the adoption and use of the system. Mobile communications is a complex and rapidly changing industry consisting of the hardware, software, network and business aspects. Mobile phone users are influenced by demographic, social, cultural and contextual factors that complicate the understanding of mobile phone usage. Advances in technology and market competition drive the addition of new services and features. In contrast, human cognition and attention are more constrained and many users find it difficult to cope with the cognitive demands of mobile phone technology. The aim of this study is to develop a model for representing the influence of motivational needs and cultural factors on mobile phone usage variety. The link between motivational needs and mobile phone usage variety, the cultural factors that influence mobile phone usage variety, as well as usage spaces as an approach to representing usage variety, are researched. The research encompasses a literature study, structured interviews, a pilot study and a survey. The pilot study and survey yielded data about mobile phone usage of university students under the age of 30 in South Africa. The results from the statistical analysis were triangulated with the findings of the literature study and the observations made about mobile phone usage during this two-year period. A final survey was conducted to verify the model. The contribution of this study is a mobile phone technology usage model (MOPTUM) for representing the motivational and cultural factors that influence mobile phone usage variety in such a way that users can use the model to express their mobile phone usage needs in non-technical terms while marketers and designers can use the model to convert the expressed user needs into the features required. MOPTUM draws on concepts and models from sociology, computer-supported cooperative work, human-computer interaction and technology adoption models from the field of marketing. MOPTUM verifies some existing findings on mobile phone usage and then integrates and extends these existing models to provide a new model for understanding the motivational and cultural factors that influence mobile phone usage variety.ComputingPh. D. (Computer Science

Making local knowledge matter: Exploring the appropriateness of pictorial decision trees as interaction style for non-literate communities to capture their traditional ecological knowledge

Sustainable natural resource management is one of the fundamental development challenges humanity faces today. The scale of the issues involved and the inadequacy of existing paradigms mean that there is an urgent need for innovative and appropriate solutions to enable scientifically-informed sustainable resource management of key environments. Local and indigenous communities often possess unique Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) about their natural resources, which despite being increasingly recognised as critical for sustaining and protecting the environment, it is difficult to capture in a digital format, in particular given the environment in which many communities live and their lack of technical knowledge. Yet, their knowledge is required in digital form to reach a wide audience and particularly those stakeholders who need to base their decisions on the knowledge provided. This thesis draws knowledge from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), HCI for Development (HCI4D), Software Engineering, Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICT4D), Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PGIS) and Citizen Science to develop and evaluate methods and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) tools to enable communities to capture and share their local environmental conditions, information that can in turn lead to improvements in environmental governance and social-environmental justice. One core challenge in this endeavour is to enable lay users, especially those with limited technical skills or no prior exposure to technology and no (or basic) literacy or no formal education, to use smartphones to capture their TEK and share data with relevant stakeholders. To achieve that, this thesis explores whether pictorial decision trees are appropriate as an interaction mode for non-literate participants to capture geographical data. In the context of three case studies, taking place in Republic of the Congo and focusing on enabling local communities to participate in socio-environmental monitoring schemes regarding their forest, this thesis explores the opportunities and challenges in collaboratively developing software to realise this vision. The research findings and the methodological framework provide an approach and guidelines for the development and evaluation of ICT solutions in similar, challenging vii environments. The most significant finding of the thesis is that while pictographs are easily understood by participants, when employed in pictorial decision trees they proved to be challenging for them due to the categorisation and hierarchical structure of decision trees. Alternatively, interaction modes that employ audio or physical interfaces can alleviate these issues and assist participants to collect geographical data. This thesis also demonstrates how a participatory and iterative design approach led to the conception and evaluation of interaction modes that increase participants’ accuracy from 75% towards 95% and improve participants’ satisfaction, which could in turn increase the sustainability of the project. Finally, a number of methodological approaches were evaluated and amended in order to design and evaluate ICT solutions with non-literate, forest communities

Culture, demography and individuals' technology acceptance behaviour: A PLS based structural evaluation of an extended model of technology acceptance in South-Asian country context

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The models that predict the factors of individuals’ acceptance behaviour are predominantly based on a technology acceptance model (TAM) or the TAM’s conceptualisation. Although the TAM has a parsimonious structure and good explanatory power across the time, population and context, it is still criticised by a number of researchers. Categorically, it is criticised due to: inherent ‘cultural bias’ that limits its generalisability across cultures (national to organisational level); its underlying conceptualisation of predicting acceptance behaviour solely based on an ‘individual-based reactions’ that limits its applicability over the group’s effect (normative and social influence); and finally, due to its presupposition to examine the effect of ‘external variables’ through the only mediation effect of beliefs’ perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) that limits its ability to be extended beyond its boundaries by adding further factors directly or indirectly affecting intention behaviour (BI). To overcome mentioned limitations, an extended technology acceptance model to suit a developing country context is presented. The model attempted to delineate the direct relationship between behavioural beliefs, normative and control beliefs, management support beliefs, and task-specific beliefs towards acceptance intention and usage. In addition, the model examined the overlooked moderating impact of demographic and situational variables (age, gender, organisational type, academic position, educational level, experience usage and voluntariness) and cultural dimensions (masculinity-femininity, individualism-collectivism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance) on indirect relations predicting acceptance behaviour. This study used a quantitative methodology to investigate the correlational paths. Using a cross-sectional survey method, data was collected from 504 academics working in 25 public and private higher educational institutions in Pakistan. Overall response rate was 53.9% (i.e. 504 out of 935). After data-screening, the final model was tested with 380 subjects. Hypothetical relationships were examined using structural equation modelling (SEM) based on the partial least squares (PLS) at the first stage, and with analysis of moment structures (AMOS) at the second stage. The indirect exploratory effect of the moderators was examined using multi-group analysis (MGA) method. The study findings indicate that the extended model achieved an acceptable fit with the data and most of the hypothetical paths were significant. Specifically, in the direct relationships, out of 20 paths representing 12 hypotheses, 11 were supported leaving 9 as unsupported. The highest variance explained by the independent variables towards dependent variables was quite similar in PU and BI (R2=26% in both using PLS; R2=34% in BI and 33% in PU using AMOS). The highest significant path was perception of usefulness, followed by academic tasks and resource facilitations towards intention; and perception of ease of use, subjective norms, and institute support towards perception of usefulness. The findings of moderating factors i.e., demographics revealed that subjects younger in age, female in gender and bachelor degree in education were influenced by the perception of ease of use, and normative beliefs; control beliefs were influenced by the organisation being private; management support at institute level was more influential in private organisations with mandatory settings; and the effect of perception of usefulness and normative beliefs was decreased with the increased experience. From the cultural perspective, the highly sensitive path was between normative beliefs and the perception of usefulness, so that the effect was stronger for subjects who were feminine in nature, collectivist in society, and high on power distance. Demographic factor academic-position and cultural dimension uncertainty avoidance did not produce any moderation effect. Finally, based on the findings, limitations and implications for theory and practices are devised.University of Sindh Jamshor