Computer self-efficacy, anxiety and attitudes towards use of technology among university academicians: a case study of University of Port Harcourt Nigeria

The 21st century also called ICT literacy includes not only the traditional concept of literacy, but it also encompasses the ability to incorporate new technologies into teaching and learning. The paper focus on computer, self-efficacy, anxiety and attitudes towards use of technology, as it influence the behavioral intention of the university academicians to accept and use ICT for teaching and learning. The University of Port Harcourt Nigeria was use as a case study, and 100 questionnaires were administered and collected. The technology usage by the academic staff shows that 74% are willing to use ICT once or more a day. 51% of the respondents said that the use of ICT is voluntary. Three null hypotheses were stated. The findings shows that the Uniport academic staff had medium computer anxiousness, they have moderate computer self efficacy and high attitudes towards use of technology. Therefore, as attitudes towards use of technology increase, computer self efficacy also increase and this cause a gradual decrease in computer anxiety. The most influential construct is attitudes towards use of technology. This was determined by the regression analysis and the hypotheses. The knowledge gained from this study is beneficial to university administrators, academic staff and the Nigerian ICT policy makers

Kredibiliti media dan penyertaan dalam persekitaran pengdemokrasian maklumat di Malaysia

Perkembangan teknologi telah mengubah landskap industri media dengan mewujudkan persaingan antara media tradisional dan media baru. Seiring itu, takrifan konstruk kredibiliti media juga turut berubah bersesuaian dengan perubahan landskap media ini. Kajian ini bertujuan membentuk dan menguji ukuran baharu kredibiliti media. Turut menjadi fokus kajian ini, ialah bagaimana pendidikan dan persepsi mempengaruhi penggunaan media dan bagaimana penggunaan media serta kredibiliti media mempengaruhi penyertaan khalayak dalam menyuarakan pendapat. Untuk mendapatkan data, 210 responden ditemubual dengan kaedah survei. Responden terdiri daripada mereka yang berumur antara 20 hingga 70 tahun dan tinggal di Mukim Kajang, Selangor. Hasil kajian menunjukkan responden meletakkan kredibiliti berita sebagai dimensi kredibiliti media yang lebih utama berbanding dengan dimensi kredibiliti medium. Selain itu penggunaan media tidak mempunyai hubungan yang signifikan dengan kredibiliti media secara keseluruhan, tetapi mempunyai hubungan yang signifikan dengan dimensi kredibiliti medium. Kredibiliti media juga tidak mempunyai hubungan signifikan dengan penyertaan tetapi sebaliknya, penggunaan media menunjukkan hubungan yang signifikan dengan penyertaan

Nomenclature varian Melanau Sarawak dari era kolonial ke abad 20: analisis kritis 100 tahun interaksi kebahasaan genetik

Kajian varian Melanau (VM) ini dianalisis dari era kolonial, iaitu pada awal abad ke-19 sehinggalah abad ke-20. Huraian ini dianalisis secara kritis dari sudut ilmu linguistik perbandingan. Sesungguhnya, kajian terhadap VM ini, mula dicetuskan oleh para mubaligh dan diikuti oleh golongan antropolog. Kajian pada awal abad ke-19 dan ke-20 lebih tertumpu kepada pengumpulan bentuk-bentuk kosa kata bahasa Melanau dan lokasi penempatan etnik tersebut. Kajian VM sekitar abad ke-20 dilihat terus berkembang. Pada peringkat ini, kajian fosil linguistik yang menekan pada aspek interaksi kebahasaan yang bersumberkan pada aspek genetik mula diberikan penekanan. Kajian VM dari tahun 1890-1970-an memperlihatkan satu perkembangan kajian yang boleh dikatakan sebagai satu usaha yang tidak pernah putus yang dilakukan oleh para pengkaji untuk mengungkap VM ini. Bermula daripada ahli mubaligh atau pendakwah, kajian VM ini diteruskan lagi oleh golongan budaya dan para ahli linguistik. Usaha yang telah dilaksanakan oleh para pengkaji ini harus dipuji kerana melalui kajian ini masyarakat dunia akan lebih mengenali dan memahami nilai budaya masyarakat

Preliminary study of online training implementation from multiple perspectives in Malaysian public sectors

In a constantly changing and evolving global and organizational environment, it is necessary to improve the skills of human resources. The innovation of information technologies nowadays has contributed to the exponential expansion in online training in Malaysia. The number employees attending online training courses have increased tremendously but very low percentage of course completion have been reported, thus raised many questions in the implementation of online training in Malaysian public sectors. This study was conducted to construct a research framework on online training implementation in Malaysian public sectors. The criteria of online training implementation are also being determined through different perception of stakeholders. Based on the literature review, the study posited four constructs adopted from Kirkpatrick’s learning theory through Multiple Perspectives Theory. The preliminary study conducted involves 3 set of interviews with respondents involved in providing online training at Malaysia’s National Institute of Public Administration (INTAN) as providers or consultants of public sectors online training. The preliminary findings showed that the criteria are applicable with the mentioned criteria in the literature review thus suitable to be mapped into the conceptual framework

The history of UTAUT model and its impact on ICT acceptance and usage by academicians

This paper started with the review of the history of technology acceptance model from TRA to UTAUT. The expected contribution is to bring to lime light the current development stage of the technology acceptance model. Based on this, the paper examined the impact of UTAUT model on ICT acceptance and usage in HEIs. The UTAUT model theory was verified using regressions analysis to understand the behavioral intention of the ADSU academic staffs’ acceptance and use of ICT in their workplace. The research objective is to measure the most influential factors for the acceptance and usage of ICT by ADSU academic staff and to identify the barriers. Two null hypotheses were stated: (1) the academic staff of ADSU rejects acceptance and usage of ICT in their workplace. (2) UTAUT does not predict the successful acceptance of ICT by the academic staff of the Adamawa State University. In summary, our findings shows that the four constructs of UTAUT have significant positive influence and impact on the behavioral intention to accept and use ICT by the ADSU academic staff. This shows that university academic staff will intend to use ICT that they believe will improve their job performance and are easy to use. The facilitating conditions such as appropriate hardware, software, training and support should be in place by the management. In the Adamawa State University, EE and SI are found to be the most influential predictors of academic staff acceptance of ICT and use among the four constructs of UTAUT. The greatest barriers are time and technical support for staff. Knowledge gained from the study is beneficial to both the university academic staff and the Nigerian ICT policy makers

Queue backlog as a node metric for RPL protocol

The current de-facto routing protocol over WSN developed by IETF Working Group (6LOWPAN) named as Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy networks (RPL) [1], to enable IPv6 packets carrying over IEEE 802.4 and to empower the usage of IoT over WSN. Because of the potential large networks, number of nodes and the fact that multiple coexisting applications will be running in the same physical layer, RPL in the network layer faces throughput challenges. For the purpose of overcoming these problems many researchers focused on multipath solutions including a Back-Pressure routing protocol for data collection called BackIP [2], however it shows a superior throughput performance, BackIP have shortcomings of higher delay and limited applicability. In this paper, we introduce a node metric based on nodes Queue Backlogs for RPL protocol, which leads to better throughput performance while maintaining the delay and the ability to use with the different network applications. This metric depends on the Packet Queue length of the nodes with the consideration of other link and node metrics, like ETX or Energy usage, leading to better load balancing in the network. Moreover we discuss the needed design changes to enable our metric to perform in an efficient way. Keywords-IOT, RPL, WSN, Back Pressure, Queue Backlog, Objective Functio

Public beliefs about lightning in Malaysia

Outcomes of a comprehensive survey on the public beliefs in Malaysia with regard to the nature of lightning and lightning safety have been presented. A questionnaire survey is done among 100 respondents, comprised of an equal number of participants from each gender. Despite the sample is biased towards educated layers of the society, the concepts of a sizable fraction of the sample are in contradiction with accepted scientific norms. Only 54% of the sample indicated disagreement with incorrect statements in the questionnaire. The percentage that agreed with correct statements is slightly below 50%. Such information plays a vital role in developing lightning safety guidelines for a given region. It is advisable to plan the safety modules in line with these beliefs, at least at the initial stage, rather than having myth-busting type approaches from the right beginning

Megarectum in pregnancy causing coital penetration failure

Megarectum rarely occur in adults. Rectal innervation abnormality or rectal muscle dysfunction could be the underlying pathophysiology, but there are cases where no specific cause is found. Only a handful of cases of megarectum in pregnancy were reported in the literature. Raised progesterone and reduced motilin level during pregnancy may affect bowel motility and predispose pregnant patients to this unusual condition. Clinical presentation ranges from bowel symptoms e.g. chronic constipation, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain to dysfunctional labour including labour dystocia and obstructed labour. We hereby present a 23 year old lady in early pregnancy who presented with coital penetration failure due to megarectum. We wish to discuss the impact, outcome and management of this rare condition in pregnancy

Human gait recognition: viewing angle effect on normal walking pattern

Gait recognition has recently gained interest of researchers as it performs identification of subjects at a distance from the camera. However, due to the changes in the viewing angles, it gets cumbersome for a system to perform recognition based on the walking pattern of an individual. In this work, the aim is to propose a simple baseline method for the purpose of human recognition based on the shape of its body and walking pattern when the subject is observed from different viewing angles. The recognition is also tested on the subjects in a scenario where the individual subjects are registered while walking in normal walking pattern followed by the testing in normal walking mode, apart from being observed at different viewing angles. Gait periodicity is estimated after extracting the silhouettes of an individual, followed by obtaining the total silhouette representation of an individual using Matlab. The total silhouette representations obtained from the probe gait data are compared to the gallery gait data representations for the purpose of similarity computation by calculating the RMS value between the said representations. Higher the value, lesser is the similarity & vice versa

Social learning approach in designing persuasive e-commerce recommender system model

Intention to purchase in existing online business practice is learned through observation of information display by online seller. The emergent growth of persuasive technologies currently holds a great potential in driving a positive influence towards consumer purchase behavior. But to date, there is still limited research on implementing persuasion concept into the recommender system context. Drawing upon the principle design of persuasive system, the main purpose of this study is to explore social learning advantages in creating persuasive features for E-Commerce recommender system. Based on Social Cognitive Theory, the influence of personal and environmental factors will be examined in measuring consumer purchase intention. In addition, dimensions of social learning environment are represented by observational learning theory and cognitive learning theory. From those reviews, this study assumed that social learning environment can be created based on attentiveness, retentiveness, motivational, knowledge awareness and interest evaluation cues of consumer learning factors. Furthermore, the persuasive environment of recommender system is assumed to have positive influence towards individual characteristics such as self-efficacy behavior, perceived task complexity and confused by over choice. Findings from those reviews have contributed to the development of a research model in visualizing social learning environment that can be used to develop a persuasive recommender system in E-Commerce and hence measures the impact towards consumer purchase intention