Investigating electronic portfolio in pre-service teacher education in the gulf region

Thus although this dissertation, ¿Investigating electronic portfolios in pre-service teacher education in the Gulf Region,¿ has a specific focus on two particular countries in the Gulf Region, it reflects questions that are currently being asked at many organizations for higher education world wide, which are overall questions guiding the research

The extension of website usability model and its evaluation criteria for Malaysia higher education institution

Website usability research is a consistently developing field. It has attracted many researchers based on their capabilities and constraints that are available for website usability. Even though there are many research about website usability, it devours the cause of inconsistency due to many websites usability aspects that offered by the researchers. There are lacks of research on website usability that focused on higher education institution website. It comprises the usability as the second order and satisfaction as mediator as well as the use of usability attributes such as content, navigation, learnability, accessibility, interface design and satisfaction to measure the higher education institution websites. In this sense, it is important to identify the constructs when assessing the higher education institution website usability in order to be able to design decent usability guidelines that support the measurement instrument and hence generate better results. The research is carried out to propose the extension of website usability model that has element of mediator and second order in the model. There are few constructs that are identified to evaluate the website usability such as effectiveness, efficiency, accessibility, learnability, satisfaction, navigability, content, interface design and intention to use. A mixed method that included qualitative and quantitative approach were used in this study. Interview with experts are conducted to obtain a better view about the model and construct in the research. Then, the instrument is needed to undergo content validity examination by experts, pre-test and pilot test to be utilized for assessment of the instrument. The final instrument of website usability, namely the Questionnaire Website Usability (QWU) that have 9 constructs and 45 items of questionnaire to evaluate the website and validate the extension website usability model were strengthened through a study conducted on 654 respondents. The data analysis using Partial Least Square – Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the relationship between constructs in this research. The research has found that the usability has a significant relationship with satisfaction and in turn, satisfaction has a significant relationship to the intention to use. Based on the measurement model for usability as second order shows that all requirements are fulfiled and significant. The findings have also discovered that the satisfaction is mediated between usability and intention to use. The finding contributes to the knowledge in the field of website usability. It has demonstrated that satisfaction as a mediator plays a vital role in a website usability model. This has been shown by the user perception on the website that they have used. The website usability attributes as a second order makes the model simpler and reduces the complexity of the model. The extension model contributes to the development of additional theoretical linkages which is between usability construct, satisfaction and intention to use. In conclusion, the total of 9 constructs and 45 items of the website usability model are identified and validated as the main attributes to be used in evaluating website usability. The findings of this research also could be used by website developer and government agencies to develop a better plan to enhance the website usability

Three Research Essays on the Effects of Charity Website Design on Online Donations

This dissertation, which comprises three essays, examines the effects of charity website characteristics on people\u27s attitudes and online donation behaviors based on the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (Essay 1), the halo effect (Essay 2), and self-schema, congruity, and visual rhetoric (Essay 3). Essay 1: The Elaborating Role of Personal Involvement with Charity Giving and Helper\u27s High on the Effects of Website Quality: Multiple Roles of Variables Although the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) has been utilized for decades, researchers have not leveraged its full capabilities and richness in understanding the multiple roles postulate and employing the central and peripheral routes to persuasion. The central theme of this study is that cues can assume multiple roles, serving as central or peripheral cues, depending on an elaboration state. Moreover, this study asserts that a variable cannot be determined as a central or peripheral cue without consisting the elaboration state and associated theoretical explanations. This study theorizes and empirically tests the multiples roles postulate in the context of charity website and online donations. Using websites as a persuasion channel, this study investigates the effects of charity website quality, consisting of information content quality and system quality, on attitude toward the charity website, which in turn influences willingness to donate to the charity website. In keeping with the multiple roles postulate, this research investigates two charity-specific motivational constructs, personal involvement with charity giving and helper\u27s high as elaboration states, proposing that people with high personal involvement are more likely to be persuaded by information content, including financial, performance, and donation information. Likewise, individuals who reflect greater helper\u27s high, will rely more on system quality characteristics (including navigability, download delay, visual aesthetics, and security) in evaluating and forming their attitudes toward the charity websites. The results of structural equation modeling supported all hypotheses. This study extends the ELM by supporting the multiple roles postulate that has not received adequate attention in prior research and introducing charity-specific elaboration motivations. Essay 2: Beautiful is Good and Good is Reputable: Multi-Attribute Charity Website Evaluation and Reputation Formation under the Halo Effect The halo effect has been extensively employed to understand how people make judgments of quality about an object. However, there is little research on how people evaluate multi-attribute objects and what types of salient halos exist in their evaluation. In addition, little research has investigated the initial reputation formation of an unknown object. Based on these two research lacuna, the purposes of this study is to identify if there are evidences of various salient halos in evaluating multi-attributes objects and to theorize initial reputation formation. To accomplish these research objectives, this study employs charity websites as a multi-attribute donation channel consisting of three dimensions of information contents (mission, financial, and donation assistance information) and four dimensions of system functionalities/features (i.e., navigability, download speed, visual aesthetics, and security). This study proposes collective halo, aesthetics halo, two-sided quality halo, quality halo, and reputation halo in the context of charity website evaluation. The results of structural equation modeling and other analyses show evidence of the proposed halos. Essay 3: The Effects of Schema Congruity and Visual Consistency on Social Judgment of Charity Websites Effectively designed websites can positively enhance the donors\u27 perceptions so as to facilitate online donations. Drawing on extensive research on self-schema, congruity, and visual rhetoric, this study examines the effects of schema congruity (SC) and visual consistency (VC) on the perceived warmth and competence of charity websites. This study theorizes schema-visual congruity, an interaction between SC and VC. Using a controlled lab experiment, this study finds significant main effects of schema congruity and visual consistency on perceived warmth and competence. Also, there is a positive interaction between SC and VC, supporting the need for schema-visual congruity as a determinant of perceived warmth and competence. Consistent with prior eCommerce and donation research, this study finds that positive perceptions of charity websites (i.e., warmth and competence) increase attitude toward donation to the website, which in turn influences donation intention

Trusting IT Artifacts: How Trust Affects our Use of Technology

Despite recent interest in the role of trust in Information Systems, the potential of IS to foster trust in business relationships remains largely untapped. In order to better realize this potential, this dissertation examines three areas of IS trust research for which research is particularly limited: (1) the IT artifact as a target of trust, (2) IS-based source credibility as an antecedent of trust, and (3) the effect of anonymity on trust in online environments. The objective of this dissertation is to examine the effects of IS on trust in each of these areas. To do so, a multi-paper dissertation format is adopted in which each area examined constitutes a distinct, though complimentary, study. Together, these studies further research on how IS can enhance trust in business relationships

Generating Value from Open Government Data

A driving force for change in society is the trend towards Open Government Data (OGD). While the value generated by OGD has been widely discussed by public bodies and other stakeholders, little attention has been paid to this phenomenon in the academic literature. Hence, we developed a conceptual model portraying how data as a resource can be transformed to value. We show the causal relationships between four contextual, enabling factors, four types of value generation mechanisms and value. We use empirical data from 61 countries to test these relationships, using the PLS method. The results mostly support the hypothesized relationships. Our conclusion is that if openness is complemented with resource governance, capabilities in society and technical connectivity, use of OGD will stimulate the generation of economic and social value through four different archetypical mechanisms: Efficiency, Innovation, Transparency and Participation

Validity of DeLone and McLean\u27s Model of Information Systems success at the web site level of analysis

The DeLone and McLean Model of Information Systems (IS) Success is one of the most cited and commonly-used models in the IS literature. Generally, the model has been used mainly to explain IS success at the individual level of analysis. However, in rare occasions it has been utilized on its entirety to measure success at the organizational level of analysis. In this study, the DeLone and McLean Model of IS Success is applied at the organizational level of analysis in the E-commerce environment. We gather website features from 448 top retailers, categorize them following DeLone and McLean’s taxonomy, and introduce them as the independent variables in our model. The results of our study provide support for utilizing the model to explain the dimensions and relationships of IS Success at the organizational level of analysis. At this higher level, website features that map to quality perceptions of system quality, information quality, and service quality do exist. In terms of relationships between these dimensions; the analysis suggests that both system quality and service quality positively affect system use; and system use strongly affects net benefits as measured by organizational sales. Furthermore, as an extension of the DeLone and McLean model, we add direct paths from all three qualities to net benefits (sales). Results from this extension of the model suggest that information quality and system quality directly affect net benefits. Results from this study have strong implications for the IS field and especially for the e-commerce environment. First, it provides support for utilizing real world objective data as outcomes of the analysis. Second, it provides support for utilizing the DeLone and McLean model at the organizational level of analysis as a tool to help researchers and practitioners understand the different dimensions of IS Success and how they affect each other. Third it provides practitioners, web development instructors, and web developers with real objective website feature groups that directly affect organizational sales

Online Social Presence (OSP) In E-Tailing: Construct Development And Testing

This research proposes and validates the Online Social Presence (OSP) scale and framework as an effective means of addressing the struggle e-tailers have encountered in attempting to create persuasive and effective online retailing experiences, which persuade customers to purchase their products and services. Online Social Presence (OSP) reexamines and extends the original social presence theory to the complex and dynamic e-tailing environment to address research that indicates that the typical online shopping experience lacks warmth and sociability. A robust mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed to validate the Online Social Presence (OSP) as containing three reflectively measured first-order constructs (intimacy, immediacy, and authenticity) which formatively create the second-order construct of OSP. The research process included qualitative item generation and qualitative and quantitative item purification procedures. PLS-SEM was employed to validate a twenty-one item validated OSP scale and establish nomological validity of the OSP scale and framework in the context of e-Satisfaction as an established outcome variable

The importance of aesthetics on customers' intentions to purchase smartphones

This thesis examines how an aesthetic appreciation of a smartphone influences perceived value and purchase intention. A review of the aesthetics, perceived value and purchase intention literature helped in shaping two key issues: 1. What are the physical attributes of aesthetics? 2. How does aesthetics influence purchase intention? To investigate these questions and drawing on the available literature, a model is developed that helps explain how aesthetic appreciation of an object formed from different dimensions of value perceived by viewing a smartphone with these aesthetic properties, influences customers’ purchase intention. The research design used mixed methods led mainly by a quantitative approach. The first research phase was exploratory, involving a focus group with respondents from different age groups in Australia. Analysis of the transcribed data was used to refine the theoretical framework of this thesis. In the second stage, a survey methodology was employed. Initially, a pilot study was undertaken with 65 respondents from different age groups who were volunteer UWS students and /or employees. Results from the pilot study were used to revise and rephrase measurement items. Following the pilot study, the main study was undertaken by recruiting an online panel of 415 respondents in Australia. Data were analysed and hypotheses were tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling techniques (PLS-SEM). The findings of this research address the central research questions. Firstly, shape, colour, design and touch were found as the four different criteria of aesthetic measurement of a smartphone. The findings for the second research question showed that while aesthetics can have a direct link with purchase intention, it cannot be a strong determinant of purchase intention. In addition, for a growing array of fairly standardised technology products such as smartphones, functional value is no longer the only determinant of purchase intention. Customers no longer rely on functional attributes of a smartphone as a criterion that influences their purchase intention. However, the use of social value as a mediator in the link between aesthetics and purchase intention could lead to purchase intention. Aesthetics could explain more than 60% of the variance in purchase intention. Findings from this study showed that approval from a person’s social network of an aesthetically pleasing object increases the likelihood of purchase intention. Following social value, emotional value was found as the second determinant of purchase intention and a mediator that increases the possibility of intention to purchase an aesthetically pleasing object. The primary contribution arising from this study is the development and testing of a multidimensional concept of aesthetics, which is then used to verify two alternate paths by which aesthetics can influence consumer purchase intention. This finding strengthens the argument that, for a growing array of relatively standardised technology products such as smartphones and tablets, aesthetics has become an important criterion by which consumers evaluate and differentiate between product and service offerings to make purchasing decisions (Jordan, Thomas & McClelland 1996; Kalins 2003; Postrel 2003). The study concludes that aesthetics can impact purchase intention directly, but the effect is stronger when mediated by different dimensions of value customers may perceive by viewing an aesthetically pleasing object. Only a handful of studies (e.g., Swilley 2012; Cox & Cox 2002; Stich 2004; Lam & Mukherjee 2005) have viewed aesthetics as a construct and there is a paucity of research about how aesthetics can influence different components of perceived value and purchase intention for a product with mainly utilitarian attributes. An online panel was used to collect data for this study. This involved the identification and explanation of all steps to ensure the quality of the data gathered. Accordingly, the other contributions of this study are the guidelines for future researchers who might be interested in using an online web-based survey for data collection. The guidelines provide a framework for assuring the validity and reliability of the responses. THESIS RESTRICTED TO ABSTRACT ONLY UNTIL 25/02/202

Mjerenje uspješnosti interaktivnih mobilnih informacijskih sustava na osobnoj razini upotrebe

Information technology is not only crucial for the success of commercial business, but also an important part of individuals daily activities. There are many technological solutions used to make our life easier. However, not every technological solution is successful. The research into the meaning of success regarding the interactive mobile information systems, benefits both science and industry. This dissertation deals with the improvements to the DeLone and McLean information systems success model and proposes new success dimensions, as well as relationships between these dimensions, in order to explain the success of todays interactive mobile information systems that are used at the individual level (e.g. for entertainment, informationseeking, communication, etc.). The main contributions of this thesis are a valid and reliable measuringinstrument questionnaire, and a valid and reliable multi-dimensional interactive mobile information systems success model. Both developed artefacts are results of the application of the design science methodology and represent valuable toolsthat serve both science and practice. Scientists can use these artefacts as a theoretical basis for similar studies, while providers of interactive mobile information systems can use these artefacts to measure the success of their products, in order to find out which features contribute to the perception of benefits as a result of system use in a greater or lesser degree, to detect whether users have the intention of system reuse, and use this information as a strategy for future system improvements.Informacijska tehnologija nije samo ključna za uspjeh komercijalnih poduzeća, već je također važan dio svakodnevnih aktivnosti pojedinaca. Postoji mnogo tehnoloških rješenja koje koristimo kako bismo si olakšali život. Međutim, nije svako tehnološko rješenje uspješno. Istraživanje što znači uspjeh u slučaju interaktivnih mobilnih informacijskih sustava, predstavlja korist ne samo za znanost već i za industriju. Disertacija se bavi unapređenjem DeLone i McLean modela uspješnosti informacijskih sustava i predlaže nove dimenzije uspješnosti kao i odnose između tih dimenzija kako bi se objasnila uspješnost današnjih interaktivnih mobilnih informacijskih sustava koji se koriste na individualnoj razini (npr. za zabavu, informiranje, komuniciranje itd.). Glavni doprinosi ove disertacije su valjan i pouzdan mjerni instrument upitnik te valjan i pouzdan višedimenzionalni model uspješnosti interaktivnih mobilnih informacijskih sustava. Oba razvijena artefakta nastala su kao rezultat primjene metodologije znanosti o dizajnu (engl. design science) te predstavljaju vrijedan alat koji služi znanosti i praksi. Znanstvenici mogu koristiti ove artefakte kao teorijske osnove za slična istraživanja, a pružatelji interaktivnih mobilnih informacijskih sustava primjenom ovih artefakata mogu izmjeriti uspješnost svojih proizvoda, otkriti koje značajke sustava više ili manje utječu na percepciju dobiti kao posljedicu upotrebe sustava, otkriti da li korisnici imaju namjeru nastaviti koristiti sustav, te koristiti ove informacije kao strategije za buduća poboljšanja sustava

Mjerenje uspješnosti interaktivnih mobilnih informacijskih sustava na osobnoj razini upotrebe

Information technology is not only crucial for the success of commercial business, but also an important part of individuals daily activities. There are many technological solutions used to make our life easier. However, not every technological solution is successful. The research into the meaning of success regarding the interactive mobile information systems, benefits both science and industry. This dissertation deals with the improvements to the DeLone and McLean information systems success model and proposes new success dimensions, as well as relationships between these dimensions, in order to explain the success of todays interactive mobile information systems that are used at the individual level (e.g. for entertainment, informationseeking, communication, etc.). The main contributions of this thesis are a valid and reliable measuringinstrument questionnaire, and a valid and reliable multi-dimensional interactive mobile information systems success model. Both developed artefacts are results of the application of the design science methodology and represent valuable toolsthat serve both science and practice. Scientists can use these artefacts as a theoretical basis for similar studies, while providers of interactive mobile information systems can use these artefacts to measure the success of their products, in order to find out which features contribute to the perception of benefits as a result of system use in a greater or lesser degree, to detect whether users have the intention of system reuse, and use this information as a strategy for future system improvements.Informacijska tehnologija nije samo ključna za uspjeh komercijalnih poduzeća, već je također važan dio svakodnevnih aktivnosti pojedinaca. Postoji mnogo tehnoloških rješenja koje koristimo kako bismo si olakšali život. Međutim, nije svako tehnološko rješenje uspješno. Istraživanje što znači uspjeh u slučaju interaktivnih mobilnih informacijskih sustava, predstavlja korist ne samo za znanost već i za industriju. Disertacija se bavi unapređenjem DeLone i McLean modela uspješnosti informacijskih sustava i predlaže nove dimenzije uspješnosti kao i odnose između tih dimenzija kako bi se objasnila uspješnost današnjih interaktivnih mobilnih informacijskih sustava koji se koriste na individualnoj razini (npr. za zabavu, informiranje, komuniciranje itd.). Glavni doprinosi ove disertacije su valjan i pouzdan mjerni instrument upitnik te valjan i pouzdan višedimenzionalni model uspješnosti interaktivnih mobilnih informacijskih sustava. Oba razvijena artefakta nastala su kao rezultat primjene metodologije znanosti o dizajnu (engl. design science) te predstavljaju vrijedan alat koji služi znanosti i praksi. Znanstvenici mogu koristiti ove artefakte kao teorijske osnove za slična istraživanja, a pružatelji interaktivnih mobilnih informacijskih sustava primjenom ovih artefakata mogu izmjeriti uspješnost svojih proizvoda, otkriti koje značajke sustava više ili manje utječu na percepciju dobiti kao posljedicu upotrebe sustava, otkriti da li korisnici imaju namjeru nastaviti koristiti sustav, te koristiti ove informacije kao strategije za buduća poboljšanja sustava