The intention to use mobile digital library technology: A focus group study in the United Arab Emirates

IGI Global (“IGI”) granted Brunel University London the permission to archive this article in BURA (http://bura.brunel.ac.uk).This paper presents a qualitative study on student adoption of mobile library technology in a developing world context. The findings support the applicability of a number of existing constructs from the technology acceptance literature, such as perceived ease of use, social influence and trust. However, they also suggest the need to modify some adoption factors previously found in the literature to fit the specific context of mobile library adoption. Perceived value was found to be a more relevant overarching adoption factor than perceived usefulness for this context. Facilitating conditions were identified as important but these differed somewhat from those covered in earlier literature. The research also uncovered the importance of trialability for this type of application. The findings provide a basis for improving theory in the area of mobile library adoption and suggest a number of practical design recommendations to help designers of mobile library technology to create applications that meet user needs

Designing short-term, faculty-led study abroad programs: A value co-creation framework

Study abroad education has become an increasingly important educational program for teaching global learning and intercultural competence, maturity, and sensitivity of students. However, tuition costs of study abroad tours can be daunting. Thus, the question arises how value can be defined and, more importantly, how value is created. This chapter adopts the lens of service-dominant logic (SDL) and value co-creation to suggest that students should be engaged as an active co-creator of their study abroad experience. Based on focus groups and an analysis of student reflection papers, this chapter proposes that the value process of short-term, faculty-led study abroad tours consists of three stages: (1) value proposition and potential; (2) resource integration and value co-creation, and; (3) assessment of value realization. The framework provides faculty with a way to understand, adapt, and manage the resource integration and influence students' perceptions of their study abroad experience