The Internet as a Meta-Medium: Emerging Uses of the World Wide Web A Tutorial

The Internet is currently conceptualized as a network of information systems, and is intended to deliver and receive primarily computer services. The evolution of the network, however, promises to soon provide not only information but also broadband entertainment and integrated communication services, as strongly implied by the recent AOL/Time Warner merger. The question is whether the Internet is poised to supplant traditional media such as radio, telephone and television, or whether it will simply supplement these entertainment channels. The purpose of this tutorial is to bring together key members of industry and academe to engage the audience in a discussion of the emerging developments in convergent multimedia suggested by AOL\u27s recent merger activity. Dennis Gonier, Senior Vice President of America OnLine, and George Shirk, Editor of Wired News at HotWired, will represent the views of the Internet industry, while noted systems theorists and multimedia researchers Jim Courtney and Janna Poora will represent the academic view on multimedia convergence

Mobile Computing in the Organization: The Influence of Temporal Orientation Styles

From the perspective of cultural difference, we are able to produce new, deep, continuing, and rapid insights into people’s lives and needs. As firms internationalize, there is a growing need to understand how cultural factors might affect adoption and utilization of IT in organizations with diverse workforces. Previous studies have examined how beliefs and behaviors related to time can influence how both individual employees and work groups perceive their work, their organization, and each other, and how those perceptions play a role in the productivity of the organization. This study examines the temporal orientation of knowledge workers as an antecedent to their attitudes toward adoption of mobile computing technologies

A Method for Interpretively Synthesizing Qualitative Research Findings

In the qualitative research world, one can use a method called meta-synthesis to interpretively assess a compiled body of literature on a specific topic, though it has seen little application in business research let alone in management information systems scholarship. However, because methods for qualitative inquiry have gained more popularity in the information systems discipline, this method holds great promise in supporting efforts toward theoretical generalization for qualitative researchers. Accordingly, in this paper, we present a methodological tutorial on the nature and practice of analytically synthesizing a body of qualitative research for developing and explicating theory

Motivations for Mobile Devices: Uses and Gratifications for M-Commerce

Uses and Gratifications is a media use paradigm useful for diagnosing user motivations for computer and technology usage. This study documents the exploratory processes of developing a mobile device uses and gratifications motivational inventory, beginning with qualitative inquiry and proceeding through exploratory analysis of motivational dimensions for usage. Results indicate that mobile device uses and gratifications are mainly centered on the speed and connectivity with which associated data and information services are available for busy technology users

Individual Adopter Differences Among Jordanian Technology Users

This paper draws upon innovation diffusion theory and more recent conceptualizations of IT adoption behavior to examine differences among Jordanian Internet across Rogers’ adopter categories. We extend Rogers’ theory by characterizing adopter categories based on personality, attitudinal and situational variables recently found to be salient in IT adoption behaviors, and determine that young, educated and upwardly-mobile members of developing economies in the Middle East and North Africa region are the best target for increasing the effectiveness of diffusion of information and communication technology initiatives

IP Teleconferencing in the Wired Classroom: Gratifications for Distance Education

Students have various motivations for participating and engaging in courses offered by distance education technologies over the Internet. While many of these courses have traditionally been Web-based asynchronous offerings, enhanced technology and reduced costs of IP-enabled teleconferenced synchronous course sections are encouraging more institutions to adopt this effective option for delivering important content to several physical locations at the same time. This study examines differential student motivations for participating in local and distance teleconferenced sections of an information technology course, enabled by Internet-based videoconferencing. This research lends support to three hypotheses concerning technologymediated distance education systems. First, that traditional college age students prefer the local section of a distance education course on measures of satisfaction with the teleconferenced course, while non-traditional (age 25-34) students do not share this preference. Second, that older, non-traditional, students rate a distant course higher for satisfaction than do 18-24 year old students. Finally, that the social presence advantages of Internet-enabled teleconferencing appeal more to socially-oriented students than they do to students with a low social orientation. An unexpected, but serendipitous, finding of this research was that the group that could likely derive the greatest benefits from Internet-enabled distance education - older, non-traditional students - also may be more comfortable with the use of that technology, based on their higher reported degrees of selfperceived technical competency

Understanding the Organizational Impact of Radio Frequency Identification Technology: A Holistic View

The adoption and deployment of radio frequency identification technology (RFID) in retail supply chains results in an influx of data, supporting the development of better information and increased knowledge. This impacts not only an organization’s information technology infrastructure, but also the quality and timeliness of its business intelligence and decision-making. This paper provides an introduction to RFID technology and surveys a variety of its applications, then examines and discusses the impact of RFID technology on organizational IT infrastructure, business intelligence, and decision-making. Propositions are advanced to provide the basis for the development of specific hypotheses to be empirically tested in future studies, and a conceptual research framework for understanding the organizational impact of RFID technology is proposed. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol2/iss2/3

Teaching Introductory Programming to IS Students: The Impact of Teaching Approaches on Learning Performance

Introductory programming courses are typically required for undergraduate students majoring in Information Systems. Instructors use different approaches to teaching this course: some lecturing and assigning programming exercises, others only assigning programming exercises without lectures. This research compares the effects of these two teaching approaches on learning performance by collecting data from two sections of an introductory programming course in an urban public university. One section used lectures and assignments while the other used assignments only. Data analysis included tests within each dataset, tests across the two datasets, and tests of a simple model over the combined dataset. Results indicated that both approaches are effective, but the exercises-only approach is more effective than lectures combined with exercises. Further analysis indicated that students’ current programming skills, prior programming experience, and grade expectations are significant antecedents of learning performance in the course. Results support the conclusion suggesting that when teaching introductory programming courses, instructors may want to consider choosing the student-centered active learning over the traditional lecture format in order to improve students’ learning performance. This study contributes to the improvement of teaching and learning effectiveness as well as efficiency of introductory programming classes to the benefit of instructors and students, alike