E-learning benchmarking survey: A case study of University Utara Malaysia

E-learning has emerged as a new paradigm in today’s education.Many e-learning applications have been developed to meet the increasing demand by education institutions.Previous research mainly focused on a variety of factors that influence the uptake of e-learning.However, very little is known about the quality and the extent of usage of these applications among end users. This study presents results that contain information on the uptake and use of e-learning.The uptake of e-learning is measured by the extent to which different technologies were used by students.A mail survey was conducted to examine the uptake of e-learning among undergraduates.The respondents for this study comprised of 419 respondents representing 16.8% from a random sample size of 2500 students. Thirty four applications available from Universiti Utara Malaysia Learning information system (Learningzone) were grouped into six categories that served as e-learning benchmarks to assess the uptake of e-learning among undergraduates.The results show that accessing for course materials, communications, viewing information are the commonly used applications while helpdesks and support, and link to other centres are least popular among undergraduates

Temporal dispersion separation and schedule flexibility impact on job satisfaction for Malaysian virtual teams

Job satisfaction of Malaysian virtual teams supporting e-commerce and shared service support are constantly challenged from working long irregular hours fulfilling global supply chain management in a temporal dispersed virtual organization.The work time demand is felt even more as the temporal dispersion variance between parties in communication widens.This research was initiated to understand how satisfied employees are working under such conditions and whether having good management policies such as flexible work arrangement reduce the impact and restore job satisfaction.Findings from the quantitative survey of 301 ITO and BPO respondents located in the MSC flagship town of Cyberjaya reveal that Malaysian virtual teams are generally satisfied with their work condition.Whilst work time demand remains a temporal dispersion challenge, flexible work arrangement has no interaction effect to improving relation of work time demand and job satisfaction.It nevertheless is a predictor of job satisfaction

Adoption of electronic commerce amongst small and medium enterprises

This paper presents initial phase research results that indicate the adoption of e-commerce applications among Malaysian SMEs from the manufacturing sector.Thruough a review of related research on innovation adoption and diffusion, two dimensional model was developed to depict e-commerce adoption.The results indicate that simple e-commerce apprications would be adopted first before SMEs embarked on more complex e-commerce applications.In terms of extent of usage, it was found that a majority of Malaysian mamfacturing SMEs hove adopted ecommerce applications on a parallel basis while vety few SMEs have substituted e-commerce applications for traditional method- of conducting business

Exploring the Association between Mobility Fluctuations and Socioeconomic Indicators Using Data Mining Techniques in Indonesia and Malaysia

Human mobility has become a global issue during the Covid-19 pandemic and is believed to be a critical factor in the transmission of Covid -19. Thetimetable for the government'smovement controlhasstimulated the fluctuation ofnational mobility. However, the characteristics of variations between regions of the country are not yet understood. The purpose of this study was to characterise community mobility fluctuations in Indonesia and Malaysia and identify the association between socioeconomic indicators and mobility fluctuations in regions. This secondary and exploratory research investigated 34 Indonesian provinces and 14 Malaysian states. Data mining approaches using the CRISP-DM framework and the Knime Analytics platform were used. As a result, Indonesia and Malaysia show strength of mobility fluctuations in decreasing order: transit stations, workplaces, residential areas. Malaysia shows higher mobility fluctuations than Indonesia, which may indicate the community's response to the Covid-19 pandemic. As socioeconomic indicators, Human Development Index (HDI), poverty rate, and labor force participation are associated with the fluctuation of mobility. Therefore, regions with high fluctuation in mobility will likely have high HDI, high labour force participation rates, and low poverty rates. High-mobility areas include capitals and other cities with high density populations. This study provides evidence that socioeconomic indicators are determinants of mobility fluctuation during the pandemic. Regional governments may use the findings to anticipate community mobility and planning policies when similar pandemic conditions occur

Work time demand and job satisfaction of geographically dispersed team: The mediating role of organizational support

Employee job satisfaction is often attributed to amongst others the level of co-worker and supervisory support in an organization.For geographically dispersed teams (GDT), the ability to support team members remains a spatiotemporal challenge with limited face-to-face contact, time zone differences, cultural and language impediments.The inability to collaborating and organizing work across different time zones with few overlapping hours exert psychosocial stress that impedes job satisfaction.This research was undertaken to gauge the satisfaction level of Malaysian GDTs working under such conditions and the effect of organizational support to buffer the impact and restore job satisfaction. Outcome of the quantitative survey involving 306 Information Technology Outsourcing and Business Processing Outsourcing respondents located in multimedia-super corridor flagship town of Cyberjaya shows a causal linkage between work time demand and job satisfaction. The finding also reveals that job satisfaction is partially mediated by organizational support in relation with work time demand

The effectiveness of work stress coping strategies : An analysis of probit model

This study finds that the work stress levels that are faced by ICT personnel range from mild to moderate. The estimated probit model finds that there is personality differentiation in the effectiveness of stress coping strategies. The significant and effective coping strategy. is "'seeking treatment". The "escape from situation" coping strategic is found to be significant but ineffective. Thus, it is recommended that in alleviating work stress, "seeking treatment" is the best strategy It is found that the high risk group that have higher work stress are non-Malays, married, field of specialization of accounting/business/ economics, job status of junior management, and less than 2 years of services

Determinants of priority for lifelong learning: A study of Universiti Utara Malaysia City Campus students

The objectives of the study were to examine students’ perceived priority for lifelong learning; and to investigate the factor(s) that influence their priority for lifelong learning. The sample comprised of 234 students from UUM City Campus, who are currently pursuing their studies on a part-time basis. A model was developed to examine the relationships between the factors that are perceived to be associated with lifelong learning participation. Factor analysis and reliability test were carried out on items adapted from Education Participation Scale (EPS) by Boshier and Collins (1983). Five factors were identified that were perceived to influence students’ priority for lifelong learning namely,social contact, professional advancement, cognitive interest, external expectation and emotional relief. Regression analysis was performed to examine the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. The results showed that priority for lifelong learning was only associated with adult learners’ cognitive interest while other factors were not significantly associated with their priority for lifelong learning

Affective Technology Acceptance Model: Extending Technology Acceptance Model with Positive and Negative Affect

Research works on TAM, TAM2, TAM3 and UTAUT has always focused on cognitive aspect of technology acceptance in the past two decades. Acceptance of technologies such as eCommerce, Mobile and ERP that considered emotion and affect are still less. This creates a gap in the technology acceptance research, which consider the role of affect into technology acceptance model. This study considers the role of affect of a knowledge worker that work in Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC)-status organizations in Malaysia on their behavioural intention to use knowledge sharing tools (KS tools) in their day-to-day tasks. Hence, Affective Technology Acceptance (A.T.A) model has been proposed. The behavioural intention on the acceptance of KS tools will be hypothesize in the Affective Technology Acceptance (A.T.A) model. Positive (PA) and Negative (NA) affect as the role of affect construct were introduce in this model to investigate its influence on KS tools usefulness and ease of use among employees in Multimedia Super Corridor organizations. The findings of this study highlighted that NA has no impact on perceive usefulness. The findings also showed that PA has very significant positive influence on PU, PEOU and BI with impact on PEOU being the greatest

Mortgage selection and consumer confusion in the Malaysian mortgage market

The study aims to investigate the criteria used by mortgage consumers in deciding their mortgage choice. To achieve the objective, questionnaires were distributed to mortgage consumers who took up mortgage between year 2007 to 2011.The results show that consumers perceived interest rate as the most important factor in determining their mortgage choice. However, the lowest interest rate is not the ultimate determinant factor, interest rate be considered in isolation. Consumers also need to take into account the ability to service the monthly repayment and the amount is a function of the loan tenure. Ultimately, the ability to service the monthly repayments would determine the eligibility to obtain a mortgage. Therefore, consumers’ confusion is related to the level of interest rate since interest rate is not the sole determinant of mortgage choice