Educational Usage of Mobile Devices: Differences Between Postgraduate and Undergraduate Students

The rapid increase of smartphone usage in recent years has provided students the opportunity to participate in mobile learning (m-learning) anywhere, anytime. Academic institutions are also following this trend to launch many m-learning services. This article investigates the differences of the user needs between undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students though an online survey with 140 Library Information Systems (LIS) subjects in a Japanese university in order to provide solid foundations for future m-learning studies. We find that UG and PG students do not show significant differences in adopting m-learning by smartphones despite the fact that they have different learning patterns. The m-learning frequencies of smartphones generally range from weekly to monthly, where using search engines is the most frequent, and reading academic resources is the least frequent. They tend to use these services for handling their daily routines (such as search engine, social networks) rather than their academic activities (such as using online databases to search for academic materials). Further, the results also show that content displaying issues (e.g., small display screen, text unable to enlarge) are barriers for most subjects in using these m-learning services.postprin

Adoption of a personal learning environment & network (PLE&N) to support peer- based lifelong learning

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The impact of social media on consumers' acculturation and purchase intentions

YesSocial media has emerged as a significant and effective means of assisting and endorsing activities and communications among peers, consumers and organizations that outdo the restrictions of time and space. While the previous studies acknowledge the role of agents of culture change, it largely remains silent on the role of social media in influencing acculturation outcomes and consumption choices. This study uses self-administered questionnaire to collect data from 514 Turkish-Dutch respondents and examines how their use of social media affects their acculturation and consumption choices. This research makes a significant contribution to consumer acculturation research by showing that social media is a vital means of culture change and a driver of acculturation strategies and consumption choices. This study is the first to investigate the role of social media as an agent of culture change in terms of how it impacts acculturation and consumption. The paper discusses implications for theory development and for practice

Interrelationship between big data and knowledge management : an exploratory study in the oil and gas sector

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between big data and knowledge management (KM). Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts a qualitative research methodology and a case study approach was followed by conducting nine semi-structured interviews with open-ended and probing questions. Findings: Useful predictive knowledge can be generated through big data to help companies improve their KM capability and make effective decisions. Moreover, combination of tacit knowledge of relevant staff with explicit knowledge obtained from big data improvises the decision-making ability. Research limitations/implications: The focus of the study was on oil and gas sector, and, thus, the research results may lack generalizability. Originality/value: This paper fulfills an identified need of exploring the relationship between big data and KM which has not been discussed much in the literature.Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering2016-2017 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalbcm

The moderating role of income on consumers' preferences and usage for online and offline payment methods

In this paper we examine consumer attitudes towards a payment method, which is a key factor affecting the probability of completing a transaction offline and online. More specifically, we constructed a model that surveyed the offline and online usage of prepaid e-cash, debit cards, credit cards and cash. User perceptions of the attractiveness of e-cash and various traditional payment means were also empirically assessed. Consumer attitudes towards a payment technology were found to be influential on users' perceptions in both online and offline environments. User perceptions of offline purchases with a payment technology had significant and positive effects on the corresponding online usage perceptions. The effects of our research model are contingent on the income level of users. Our findings have significant implications, as they could help shed light on why consumers abandon their shopping carts and do not complete their transactions, which could potentially play a significant role when it comes to designing applications targeting sspecific consumer segments.Department of Industrial and Systems Engineerin

Grit across nations : the cross-national equivalence of the Grit-O Scale

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Closed-form optimality characterization of network-assisted device-to-device communications

International audience—This paper considers the mode selection problem for network-assisted device-to-device (D2D) communications with multiple antennas at the base station. We study transmission in both dedicated and shared frequency bands. Given the type of resources (i.e., dedicated or shared), the user equipment (UE) decides to transmit in the conventional cellular mode or directly to its corresponding receiver in the D2D mode. We formulate this problem under two different objectives. The first problem is to maximize the quality-of-service (QoS) given a transmit power, and the second problem is to minimize the transmit power given a QoS requirement. We derive closed-form results for the optimal decision and show that the two problem formulations behave differently. Taking a geometrical approach, we study the area around the transmitter UE where the receiving UE should be to have D2D mode optimality, and how it is affected by the transmit power, QoS, and the number of base station antennas. I. INTRODUCTION Emerging multimedia services and applications introduce new traffic types and user behaviors [1]. To address the higher demands imposed on wireless networks, more spectrally effi-cient and energy efficient approaches should be developed. Device-to-device (D2D) communication underlaying cellular networks is proposed to improve cell spectral and energy efficiency of the network [2], [3]. In D2D transmission mode, user equipments (UEs) communicate directly to their intended receivers as opposed to the conventional cellular mode where they communicate through the base station (BS). D2D mode can bring proximity gains and reduce the transmission time. Users in the D2D mode can transmit either in a separate frequency band or via spectrum sharing with cellular users. In the former case, D2D communications do not interfere with cellular users. This case is interesting due to its potential applications, such as public safety and multicasting for local multimedia services and robustness to infrastructure failure. On the other hand, spectrum sharing can be employed to efficiently utilize the resources which allows for better area spectral efficiency [4]. The gain from spectrum sharing can be assured if the interference is controlled by proper mode selection and resource management. However, depending on the network topology and channel conditions, it may not always be beneficial to choose the D2D mode for a UE