Darren B. Nicholson

A stream runs through IT: using streaming video to teach information technology

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report student and faculty perceptions from an introductory management information systems course that uses multimedia, specifically streaming video, as a vehicle for teaching students skills in Microsoft Excel and Access.Design/methodology/approach – Student perceptions are captured via a qualitative survey administered at the end of the course in which a multimedia component is employed. Faculty perceptions are the experiences of the authors who also taught the courses that contained the multimedia component.Findings – Results from the survey indicate that using a multimedia component to convey course material provides benefits to students in the form of greater satisfaction with the learning process, a greater understanding of the material, as well as a reduction in the amount of effort required to complete homework assignments. Furthermore, from an instructor perspective, a marked reduction in visits from students who required additional exposure to previously...

Exploring the Use of Virtual World Technology for Idea-Generation Tasks

While the potential value of Virtual World Technologies (VWTs) lies in their promise to facilitate communication through new and novel forms of collaboration, there is a lack of prior research that examines how VWTs compare to other types of information and communication technologies (ICT) commonly used to support collaborative work. This study investigates the effects of VWTs on group ideation outcomes; specifically, it compares the use of Second Life to a chat environment for idea generation tasks. As hypothesized, groups using VWTs for an idea generation task generated significantly more unique ideas and enjoyed using the environment more than the chat environment. Contrary to our predictions, no significant difference between the two environments was observed for satisfaction, group cohesion, and social presence.

Virtual World Entrepreneurship

Virtual worlds are three-dimensional environments in which individuals represented by avatars can buy and sell virtual content and real world products. Virtual world entrepreneurs have been able to generate significant, real world profits in these simulated environments. Extending the work of Zhao, Seibert, and Hills [1], the authors examine the role of virtual world technology self-efficacy and virtual world entrepreneurial learning as indirect predictors of virtual world entrepreneurial intentions. Findings from three waves of data collected during a field study reveal that virtual world entrepreneurial self-efficacy mediates these relationships. Implications and future research on entrepreneurship in virtual worlds are discussed.