Glen Van Der Vyver

An Electronic Commerce Initiative in Regional Sri Lanka: The Vision for the Central Province Electronic Commerce Portal

This paper presents the findings from the first stage of a preliminary study which assessed the potential for an electronic commerce portal in Sri Lankas Central Province. Sri Lanka is an island state of contrasts in terms of its electronic commerce and overall ICT capability. In the Capital of Colombo, ICT and electronic commerce capability are relatively sophisticated while in regional Sri Lanka even the most basic ICT infrastructure is almost non‐existent and/or non‐reliable. The proposed electronic commerce portal in Central Province is well aligned with the key strategic objectives of the E‐Sri Lanka Initiative. The portal will be a resource enabler and facilitator for the adoption of electronic commerce by SMEs and MEs. It is also envisaged that the portal will facilitate the development of regional ICT capability as well as providing significant benefits to general community. This paper concludes with an outline of the infrastructure and implementation plan for the proposed electronic commerce portal in Central Province.

The Search for the Adaptable ICT Student

The ‘new’ ICT professional should be an articulate problem-solver who understands business and technology, in particular how technology can solve business problems. Furthermore, the ideal ICT student should be adaptable. The adaptable student embraces change, learns quickly, understands the job market, thrives on variety, is autonomous, predicts change, and acts as a change agent in the organization. This study examines the adaptability of a sample of second-year Australian ICT students. The evidence suggests that these students are less adaptable than might be expected of people who have chosen to study a subject characterized by change. One reason for this might be the fact that these students have limited knowledge about the realities of work in ICT beyond negative perceptions about stress and long hours. A small number of more mature students with some work experience appear to be more adaptable. An interesting paradox emerges. Younger students in particular appear to be highly adaptable in their personal lives and seek careers that maximize personal choice. On the other hand, they still prefer a degree of stability, a relatively defined career path, job security, and a career that is relatively stable.

Using a Team-Based Approach in an IS Course: An Empirical Study

[Executive Summary]: Adaptive and fluid applications development methodologies such as Prototyping, RAD, FAD and Extreme Programming have emerged in recent years in response to organisational realities that include rapid change, uncertainty and ambiguity. These methodologies are well suited to the team-based approach that has become so important in the modern organisation. Yet, many educational programmes in the West still focus on individual learning and assessment. This paper reports on a pilot study where team-based methods are incorporated into a demanding undergraduate IS (Information Systems) course. We review some of the new approaches to applications development, in particular team-based approaches and examine how they are highly relevant to the way business is conducted today. The study involves students who were enrolled in an undergraduate course in database development. A learning environment that incorporates elements of the “real world” and a strongly group-focused approach was designed. Although the course is relatively ‘technical’, it is a core course for many programmes and therefore attracts enrollments from students with varying levels of prior technical knowledge and ability. Based upon the results of diagnostic tests, GPA and a survey, students were allocated to groups that were specifically designed to foster group learning. Each group had a balance of skills and included at least one person identified as a lead programmer, who had scored 85% or above in the test, had a high GPA’s and exhibited confidence in overall and course-specific technical abilities. Groups were required to complete a variety of tasks relating to the creation and maintenance of databases and database programming. The group-based had a most promising influence on performance, particularly for those students who came from less technical background and / or had struggled in programming courses previously. People with limited technical knowledge and/or an average amount of technical aptitude do benefit from working in small teams with people who are technically strong. Furthermore, these benefits seem to extend to performance indicators that are related to the group task. A number of problems emerged, however: Students expressed lower levels of overall satisfaction and made a number of negative comments about the new innovations. We are also not sure that lead programmers gained as much as the others from the experience. The course was unexpectedly demanding for the lecturer. These demands included additional preparation and consultation time, dispute resolution, mentoring and sorting out problems related to group dynamics. A course of this nature demands a significant project and there were complaints about workload. In some groups, not everybody made a satisfactory contribution.

Effectiveness of E-Learning Course Materials for Learning Database Management Systems: An Experimental Investigation

Many colleges and universities world-wide utilize the Internet as a vehicle for E-learning. A course on database management systems (DBMS) is a foundational course that underpins many information systems (IS) degree programs and is pivotal in determining the success of its graduates. Thus, pedagogies that improve the learning for students in a DBMS course are important to not only the faculty and students but to their employers as well. This paper describes the results of a designed experiment to measure the effectiveness of two pedagogical approaches in an e-learning environment. The results are mixed but provide evidence that providing the texts multiple choice questions with answers via the Internet improves performance on the final examination not only on the multiple choice questions but also on the theory questions. These new results need further testing in different environments but provide an initial improvement worthy of consideration for those teaching a DBMS class.

Higher education course content: paper-based, online or hybrid course delivery?

[Abstract]: The emergence of the Internet has made many institutions involved in the delivery of distance education programs re-evaluate the course delivery framework. A variety of models and techniques co-exist in an often uneasy alliance at many such institutions. These range from the traditional distance learning model, which remains paper-based, to the purely online model. Recently, hybrid models have emerged which apparently attempt to forge elements taken from several models into a unified whole. Many of these hybrid models seek to eliminate paper-based materials from the tuition process. While many arguments are put forward about the efficacy of purely electronic delivery mechanisms, cost containment is often the driving motivation. This study explores student perceptions of the various delivery mechanisms for distance learning materials. In particular, it seeks to determine what value students place on paper-based delivery mechanisms. The study surveys a group of undergraduate students and a group of graduate students enrolled in the Faculty of Business at a large regional Australian university.

Are Universities to Blame for the IT Careers Crisis

[Abstract]: At a time when the IT industry in general and the IT academy in particular face major challenges,some accuse universities of producing graduates with poor or inappropriate skills. This qualitative study, based on interviews with fifteen senior IT executives and managers in the Australian financial services industry, examines what employers seek when they recruit new graduates. We find that employers now expect much more from IT graduates. They require a blend of technical, business and people skills combined with the right attitude. Furthermore, requirements are highly mediated by contextual factors such as company size and corporate culture. We also find that universities are not perceived as negatively as some would have it. Universities face a significant challenge in producing graduates with much wider skill sets. Although this study was conducted in Australia, we are of the opinion that the issues discussed are relevant in the wider international context.

Factors Influencing the Decision to Choose Information Technology Preparatory Studies in Secondary Schools: An Exploratory Study in Regional/rural Australia

[Abstract]: The career paths of students are influenced and shaped by the subject choices that are made in the final years of secondary schooling. This paper presents the findings of an empirical study that identified the key factors influencing the decision of rural / regional Australian students to choose or not choose to study Information Processing and Technology. The findings revealed that career oriented, extrinsic factors play an important role in motivating the selection of I.P.T. at school and, by implication, information technology at university. There are few apparent gender differences but there is limited evidence to suggest that males may be more influenced by extrinsic motivators and females by intrinsic motivators. Although the factors used in the study were initially identified largely via informal processes, they all appear to influence the decision to take I.P.T. The focus on career-related factors and the instrumentality of taking I.P.T. could explain the drop-off in students taking the subject. This has potentially significant implications as regards the future supply of good information technology professionals

Assessing for competence need not devalue grades

[Abstract]: Norm-based assessment is under fire from some quarters because it is often unfair and is out of touch with the demands of the job market. Criterion-referenced assessment is touted as the answer by others but problems remain, in particular with regards to the maintenance of standards. This study examines the use of competency-based assessment in an undergraduate database course. The findings suggest that it is possible to create an assessment instrument that is relevant to particular skills required in the job market but does not inflate grades across the board. A remarkable idiosyncrasy emerges in that the distribution of scores assumes a bi-polar shape with a significant number of high grades and a significant number of grades at the lowest passing level or failing grades.

Conceptual frames of references and their influence on e-commerce system development

The complexity and uncertainty that is inherent in the e-commerce environment poses a number of challenges to the development of e-commerce applications. Key stakeholders consistently use heuristics to make sense of the challenges they face. The most pervasive of these heuristics is framing, whereby people rely on a conceptual set to organise their perceptions. This process has some benefits but it can also lead to a narrow approach, ignorance concerning important elements of the decision environment and an absolute reliance on a specialist area of knowledge. This has significant implications for coherence of effort and vision, elements crucial to the success of e-commerce projects. This paper uses a case study, qualitative approach in order to establish whether there is evidence for the operation of the framing heuristic, particularly within the context of risk perception, within a variety of e-commerce system development environments.