A study of the influences of computer interfaces and training approaches on end user training outcomes

Effective and efficient training is a key factor in determining the success of end user computing (EUC) in organisations. This study examines the influences of two application interfaces, namely icons and menus, on training outcomes. The training outcomes are measured in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and perceived ease of use. Effectiveness includes the keystrokes used to accomplish tasks, the accuracy of correct keystrokes, backtracks and errors committed. Efficiency includes the time taken to accomplish the given tasks. Perceived ease of use rates the ease of the training environment including training materials, operating system, application software and associated resources provided to users. In order to facilitate measurement, users were asked to nominate one of two approaches to training, instruction training and exploration training that focussed on two categories of users, basic and advanced. User category was determined based on two questionnaires that tested participants\u27 level of knowledge and experience. Learning style preference was also included in the study. For example, to overcome the criticisms of prior studies, this study allowed users to nominate their preferred interfaces and training approaches soon after the training and prior to the experiment. To measure training outcomes, an experiment was conducted with 159 users. Training materials were produced and five questionnaires developed to meet the requirements of the training design. All the materials were peer reviewed and pilot tested in order to eliminate any subjective bias. All questionnaires were tested for statistical validity to ensure the applicability of instruments. Further, for measurement purposes, all keystrokes and time information such as start time and end time of tasks were extracted using automated tools. Prior to data analysis, any \u27outliers\u27 were eliminated to ensure that the data were of good quality. This study found that icon interfaces were effective for end user training for trivial tasks. This study also found that menu interfaces were easy to use in the given training environment. In terms of training approaches, exploration training was found to be effective. The user categorisation alone did not have any significant influence on training outcomes in this study. However, the combination of basic users and instruction training approach was found to be efficient and the combination of basic users and exploration training approach was found to be effective. This study also found out that learning style preference was significant in terms of effectiveness but not efficiency. The results of the study indicates that interfaces play a significant role in determining training outcomes and hence the need for training designers to treat application interfaces differently when addressing training accuracy and time constraints. Similarly, this study supports previous studies in that learning style preferences influence training outcomes. Therefore, training designers should consider users\u27 learning style preferences in order to provide effective training. While categories of user did not show any significant influence on the outcomes of this study, the interaction between training approaches and categories of users was significant indicating that different categories of users respond to different training approaches. Therefore, training designers should consider the possibility of treating differently those with and without experience in EUC applications. For example, one possible approach to training design would be to hold separate training sessions. In summary, this study has found that interfaces, learning styles and the combination of training approaches and categories of users have varying significant impact on training outcomes. Thus the results reported in this study should help training designers to design training programs that would be effective, efficient and easy to use

CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR ERP IMPLEMENTATION - THE CASE OF QATAR

Due to ERP high failure rate, Enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation issues have been highly addressed in the literatures. Some studies have concentrated on the effect of perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU) on behavioral intention (BI) based upon the theory of technology acceptance model (TAM), others focused on the critical success factors (CSF) of ERP implementation from personal or organizational perspectives. However, few studies put them together to examine the influence of PU and PEOU on BI which are key factors to ERP acceptance besides investigating the most important critical success factors of ERP implementation. This study is a specific attempt that developed a framework extending TAM model with computer self-efficacy (CSE) to examine behavioral intention to use ERP and then explored the major ERP key success factors that can turn the process of the implementation to a success in Qatari environment. Data has been collected from 40 different organizations of different business lines in Qatar out of which 321 valid responses were analyzed. Descriptive, Reliability, and correlations analyses were conducted on the sample respectively, then followed by Linear Regression Analysis that was done to validate the model’s significance. PU, PEOU and CSE, indicated significant relations with the behavioural intention to use ERP systems in Qatari organizations and contributed to 56% of its variation. Then a Descriptive Analysis was conducted to rank the CSFs in order of significance from ERP end user perspective. The study concluded that PU, PEOU and CSE are significant factors to predict ERP implementation and adoption. Moreover, it explored the major critical success factors that brings success to implementation process in Qatari organizations, which are Top management support, followed by User training on software, and finally Project management process

The Importance Of End-User Analysis In New Information System Adapters: Lessons Learned From Practice

The implementation of Information System (IS) in new-IS adapters can remain unused even when they developed properly. The previous research shows that the unsuccessful IS utilization problem primarily related to behavioral issues rather than technical issues. The behavioral issues should be addressed in the stakeholder analysis, an activity in the inception phase of requirement engineering. End-users of an IS are one of the focuses in stakeholder analysis. We studied the correlation of the end-user analysis in new-IS adapters with the successfulness of IS utilization. We conducted a qualitative studied on 20 IS development projects. The findings show strong correlation of the end-user behavior and the IS adoption. We suggest the end-user analysis is necessary for the IS development project in new-IS adapters. We concluded that it is recommended to formally get the end-user commitment before starting the IS development process. Keyword : Information System, end-user analysis, new-IS adapters, end-user commitmen

JISC Research Data MANTRA Project at EDINA, Information Services, University of Edinburgh: Evaluation

This document reports on the findings of an evaluation of the Research Data MANTRA project at the University of Edinburgh. The MANTRA project ran from 1 August 2010 to 31 July 2011 and, as part of the JISC Managing Research Data programme's training materials projects, produced training materials in research data management for postgraduate researchers of specific disciplines. This evaluation is intended to provide, after a light-touch review, an impression of the extent to which the project achieved its goals and suggestions for where further work may be useful

Successful acquisition of IT systems

School of Managemen

Milestones for Teaching the Spreadsheet Program

There are different manners of teaching a spreadsheet program. In any case, it is intended that the teacher settles the objectives of the course and adapts them to the particular audience he/she has to deal with. This paper aims at providing any teacher whatever his/her specific objectives and his/her audience with elements to help him/her building a course. It focuses mainly on two important issues: 1 - select in all that may be said about such complex tools, what is prior to know and to teach, i.e. what leads to autonomy in using but also to autonomy in learning (because everything cannot be taught) and 2 - show how concepts are closely related to good formatting considerations. A method based on the "invariants of information processing" is outlined, partially illustrated and an implementation is described throughout a course designed for students preparing a master in Education Sciences.Comment: 11 Page

Performance Analysis of Open Source Machine Learning Frameworks for Various Parameters in Single-Threaded and Multi-Threaded Modes

The basic features of some of the most versatile and popular open source frameworks for machine learning (TensorFlow, Deep Learning4j, and H2O) are considered and compared. Their comparative analysis was performed and conclusions were made as to the advantages and disadvantages of these platforms. The performance tests for the de facto standard MNIST data set were carried out on H2O framework for deep learning algorithms designed for CPU and GPU platforms for single-threaded and multithreaded modes of operation Also, we present the results of testing neural networks architectures on H2O platform for various activation functions, stopping metrics, and other parameters of machine learning algorithm. It was demonstrated for the use case of MNIST database of handwritten digits in single-threaded mode that blind selection of these parameters can hugely increase (by 2-3 orders) the runtime without the significant increase of precision. This result can have crucial influence for optimization of available and new machine learning methods, especially for image recognition problems.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, 4 tables; this paper summarizes the activities which were started recently and described shortly in the previous conference presentations arXiv:1706.02248 and arXiv:1707.04940; it is accepted for Springer book series "Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing

Optimization of stand-alone photovoltaic system by implementing fuzzy logic MPPT controller

A photovoltaic (PV) generator is a nonlinear device having insolation-dependent volt-ampere characteristics. Since the maximum-power point varies with solar insolation, it is difficult to achieve an optimum matching that is valid for all insolation levels. Thus, Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) plays an important roles in photovoltaic (PV) power systems because it maximize the power output from a PV system for a given set of condition, and therefore maximize their array efficiency. This project presents a maximum power point tracker (MPPT) using Fuzzy Logic theory for a PV system. The work is focused on a comparative study between most conventional controller namely Perturb and Observe (P&O) algorithm and is compared to a design fuzzy logic controller (FLC). The introduction of fuzzy controller has given very good performance on whatever the parametric variation of the system

End user development: Satisfaction with tools and satisfaction with applications

This study explored the relationship between end user developers’ perceptions of their applications and their perceptions of the tools used to create them. Satisfaction with a user developed application was found to be significantly correlated with satisfaction with the tool used to create the application. The role of experience in this relationship was also explored, and possible implications of the findings are discussed