Introducing a Strategic Information Systems Planning Meta-Method for Cooperative Inter-Organization Relationships

Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) and aligning IT with business has been in a key focus of IS managers for decades already. Constant changes in business environment and developments in technologies are hardly making the effort any easier. Characteristic for available SISP-methods is their focus on a single organization. However, in current network economy the role of interorganizational systems is increasing creating a need for InterOrganizational Strategic Information Systems Planning (IOSISP). In this paper a general requirements for such are sought and presented in a form of meta-method

Students’ and teachers’ perceptions of self-assessment and teacher feedback in foreign language teaching in general upper secondary education – A case study in Finland

This qualitative case study examined how foreign language teachers in Finnish general upper secondary schools enhance self-regulated learning (SRL) with self-assessment and teacher feedback. Nine students and ten teachers from six schools were interviewed, and the data were analyzed using content analysis. The results revealed that self-assessment is used in courses but not extensively, and most teachers do not teach their students to self-assess their learning. Most stu-dents consider teacher feedback to be useful, but they reported a lack of oral feedback. The participants expressed contradictory perceptions regarding their motivation, as students do not find teacher feedback to be motivating, while teachers believe their feedback is motivating. To a certain extent, teachers enhance SRL with self-assessment and feedback, but their practices could be improved.Peer reviewe

Feedback practices in foreign language emergency remote teaching in Finland

This case study investigated students’ perceptions of teacher feedback in foreign language emergency remote teaching in Finnish general upper secondary education. A total of 251 students from seven schools answered an online questionnaire. The results showed that students found teacher feedback to be encouraging, clear, instructive and general. Compared to students with higher course grades, students with lower course grades found teacher feedback to be discouraging, vague, unclear, and demotivating. Students perceived the quantity of oral feedback to be scarce. The results imply that feedback was not personalised to match students’ individual needs, and that teachers mostly relied on written feedback. Teachers can use these findings to reflect on their approach to feedback in emergency remote teaching and redesign strategies to diversify their feedback practices.Peer reviewe

Explaining Accessibility: Possible Variables in Users’ Abilities, Tasks, and Contexts in IT Artefact Use

The interconnection between the two information technology (IT) artefact qualities, accessibility and usability, is challenging to define. Efforts to design and develop accessible IT artefacts should encompass the broadest range of user abilities in identified tasks and contexts. We lack sufficient research on information systems and human-computer interactions that presents a comprehensive model to explain what variables these key components of accessibility contain and how they interconnect. To address this gap in the literature, I draw on theories beyond human-computer interactions, tasks, and contexts to posit the influence of human abilities on IT use by referring to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) framework that the World Health Organization developed. In this paper, I theoretically describe accessibility, its components, and their relationships in the IT use context based on which I present an accessibility model. Furthermore, I argue that accessibility is a moderating variable between system features and usability. Therefore, accessibility is a major determinant of user acceptance

Towards Design Theory for Accessible IT Artefacts

Accessibility in the use of information technology (IT) artefacts, such as websites, applications, and user interfaces, means that they are designed in such a way that people with the broadest range of abilities can use them. However, although accessibility is a human right, IT artefacts often remain inaccessible. Aside from the available accessibility guidelines, we need sufficient design theories that explicitly state how accessibility should be addressed and designed to develop accessible IT artefacts for all users. This dissertation summarises four articles that address this problem. These studies are conducted with qualitative approaches that include a narrative literature review, a systematic literature review and a design science method comprising a participatory design and interviews. The first article develops an explaining theory of accessibility to gain an understanding of the construct of accessibility, showing possible variables of human abilities, tasks and contexts and their relationships in IT use. The second article illustrates the factors in management, development, user, and IT artefact features, including the roles and actions that these domains have and how they affect the realisation of accessibility. The other two articles contribute to accessibility guidance to improve and support content creators’ text production and writing process of accessible online text in the web context. The dissertation underscores three key determinants of the knowledge of accessibility: (1) assumptions of users’ abilities; (2) users’ actual needs; and (3) factors in the development chain. The foregoing factors contribute to the knowledge of accessibility and would help researchers, particularly design scientists, form prescriptive knowledge for practitioners to achieve accessible IT artefacts. Thus, researchers could better identify the variables, relationships and affecting factors in human abilities, management, development, content creation, tasks, and contexts that need to be addressed when designing IT artefacts for certain tasks and use contexts.Informaatioteknologia-artefaktien (IT-artefaktien), kuten verkkosivustojen, sovellusten ja käyttöliittymien saavutettavuus tarkoittaa sitä, että ihmiset erilaisine ominaisuuksineen ja kykyineen voivat käyttää niitä. Vaikka saavutettavuus on ihmisoikeus, IT-artefaktit eivät kuitenkaan ole aina saavutettavia. Käytettävissä olevista saavutettavuusohjeista huolimatta tarvitsemme suunnitteluteorioita, jotka ohjaavat IT-artefaktien suunnittelua, jotta niistä tulisi saavutettavia kaikille IT-artefaktin käyttäjille. Tämä väitöskirja on yhteenveto neljästä artikkelista, jotka käsittelevät tätä ongelmaa. Tutkimukset ovat tehty laadullisilla menetelmillä, joihin on sisältynyt narratiivinen kirjallisuuskatsaus, systemaattinen kirjallisuuskatsaus sekä suunnittelutieteellinen menetelmä sisältäen osallistavan suunnittelun ja haastattelut. Ensimmäisessä artikkelissa kehitetään kuvaileva saavutettavuuden teoria, jolla saadaan käsitys saavutettavuuden rakenteesta ja joka näyttää mahdolliset muuttujat ihmisen kyvyissä, tehtävissä ja konteksteissa, sekä niiden väliset suhteet. Toinen artikkeli kuvaa saavutettavuuteen vaikuttavia tekijöitä johtamisen, kehityksen, käyttäjän ja IT-artefaktin ominaisuuksien näkökulmista, mukaan lukien roolit ja toimenpiteet, joita näillä kohteilla on. Kaksi muuta artikkelia kehittävät ohjeistuksen sisällöntuottajien työn tueksi saavutettavan verkkotekstin tuottamiseksi. Väitöskirjassa esitetään kolme ratkaisevaa tekijää saavutettavuuden tietämyksessä: (1) olettamukset käyttäjien kyvyistä (2) käyttäjien todelliset tarpeet ja (3) tekijät kehitysketjussa. Näiden tekijöiden tuntemus auttaa erityisesti suunnittelutieteilijöitä muodostamaan ohjaavaa tietoa ammattilaisille saavutettavien IT-artefaktien saavuttamiseksi. Täten tutkijat voivat paremmin tunnistaa muuttujat, niiden väliset suhteet ja saavutettavuuteen vaikuttavat tekijät, jotka liittyvät käyttäjän kykyihin, johtamiseen, kehittämiseen, sisällöntuottamiseen, tehtäviin ja kontekstiin, kun IT-artefaktia suunnitellaan tiettyä tehtävää ja käyttökontekstia varten.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

What Kind of Feedback is Perceived as Encouraging by Finnish General Upper Secondary School Students?

Our main aim in this study was to compare encouraging feedback practices in Finnish general upper secondary foreign language classes and examine how students perceive language teachers’ assessment practices. The participants were 160 students of English, 95 students of Swedish, and 27 students of French from six general upper secondary schools. The data comprised one open-ended question and one Likert scale question with nine items. Both qualitative and quantitate methods were used to analyze the data. The results showed that content was the most important feature in feedback that was perceived as encouraging by students. The results further indicated that students considered teacher assessment practices to be primarily summative, but differences were also found between schools. The evidence from this study suggests that students appreciate teacher feedback, but do not perceive it to be an intrinsic part of teacher assessment practices. The importance of formative assessment and feedback should be more heavily emphasized in foreign language teacher education

What Kind of Feedback is Perceived as Encouraging by Finnish General Upper Secondary School Students?

Our main aim in this study was to compare encouraging feedback practices in Finnish general upper secondary foreign language classes and examine how students perceive language teachers’ assessment practices. The participants were 160 students of English, 95 students of Swedish, and 27 students of French from six general upper secondary schools. The data comprised one open-ended question and one Likert scale question with nine items. Both qualitative and quantitate methods were used to analyze the data. The results showed that content was the most important feature in feedback that was perceived as encouraging by students. The results further indicated that students considered teacher assessment practices to be primarily summative, but differences were also found between schools. The evidence from this study suggests that students appreciate teacher feedback, but do not perceive it to be an intrinsic part of teacher assessment practices. The importance of formative assessment and feedback should be more heavily emphasized in foreign language teacher education

Understanding motivators and challenges in accessibility development

We analyzed secondary data from nine studies including a total of 1962 respondents on what motivates web practitioners such as user experience developers, web designers, and web masters’ intention to promote accessibility, and what challenges they encounter during accessibility development. In this exploratory study, we adopt the viewpoint of motivation and challenges and aim to study them from intrinsic and extrinsic viewpoints. We then interpreted intrinsic and extrinsic motivators and intrinsic and extrinsic challenges that should be addressed in the management of accessibility work so that the main accessibility milestones become implemented in the design of information technology artifacts. We retrieved recommendations for top management and superiors to gain and support practitioners’ motivation and to address challenges in accessibility development to avoid ethical conflict in accessibility development. These findings strengthen an understanding of possible ethical conflicts in accessibility development and help to act responsibly in the accessibility development of information systems.© 2023 Association for Information Systems.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

How to Incorporate Accessibility to Design Principles for IS Artefacts?

Design principles are used to specify design knowledge and describe the aim of artefact instantiation. Accessibility research aims to create artefacts that can be used by all users. However, schemes for design principles lack the tools to define accessibility explicitly. This study proposes extensions to scheme design principles for accessibility-related design science research. We draw accessibility domain-specific characteristics from the literature to include accessibility in design principles for Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) instantiations. We extended the components of design principles with the following attributes: HCI Artefact Features; Contextual factors; Computer Input Modalities; Computer Output Media; Human Sensory Perception; Human Cognition; Human Functional Operations. We devised a checklist for researchers to follow the variations in accessibility. The extensions are intended to foster researchers to incorporate accessibility in producing a more accurate formulation of design principles.© 2024 The Authors. This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0). doi:10.3233/FAIA231154fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

UNDERSTANDING MOTIVATORS AND CHALLENGES IN ACCESSIBILITY DEVELOPMENT

We analyzed secondary data from nine studies including a total of 1962 respondents on what motivates web practitioners such as user experience developers, web designers, and web masters’ intention to promote accessibility, and what challenges they encounter during accessibility development. In this ex-ploratory study, we adopt the viewpoint of motivation and challenges and aim to study them from in-trinsic and extrinsic viewpoints. We then interpreted intrinsic and extrinsic motivators and intrinsic and extrinsic challenges that should be addressed in the management of accessibility work so that the main accessibility milestones become implemented in the design of information technology artifacts. We re-trieved recommendations for top management and superiors to gain and support practitioners’ motiva-tion and to address challenges in accessibility development to avoid ethical conflict in accessibility development. These findings strengthen an understanding of possible ethical conflicts in accessibility development and help to act responsibly in the accessibility development of information systems