Kenneth J. Stevens

An analysis of the business characteristics of adopters and non-adopters of World Wide Web technology

The World Wide Web has received considerable media attention in recent times. Little is known concerning the technology’s appeal for commercial applications, and the topic deserves investigation. This study aims to analyze the differences between adopter and non‐adopter businesses according to their organizational characteristics.Six characteristics consistently associated with the adoption of technology, business size, age, industry, use of an IT support unit and IT budget, and degree of technology experience, are selected from the literature. A sample of 245 adopter businesses is gathered using on‐line directories and “keyword” searches of the World Wide Web. A sample of 245 non‐adopter businesses is obtained from the state business telephone directory.The study finds a number of interesting associations. No significant relationship is found between business size and World Wide Web adoption. Adopters tend to be younger yet more experienced with technology than non‐adopters. Businesses that made use of IT budgets and IT support units also tended to be adopters, however adoption did not rely on the existence of these two factors.The study raises a number of additional findings that are of interest but are not directly related to this work. These findings merit further research.

The Introduction and Assessment of Three Teaching Tools (WebCT, Mindtrail, EVE) into a Post Graduate Course

This paper discusses the use and assessment of three teaching tools (WebCT, Mindtrail, and EVE) in a postgraduate course. Firstly, the postgraduate course is introduced and the reader is provided with an overview of the course, Information Systems Auditing, an explanation of the manner in which the course was delivered, the cohort attending, the staff teaching the course, and the use of information Technology (IT) in the course. The paper then provides an overview of each of the tools used including their description, rationale, deployment and use in the course. Web CT assisted with supporting delivery of the course and class discussions, Mindtrail helped in the marking and assessment of student assignments, while EVE assisted in the identification and control of plagiarism by students in their assignments. Following descriptions of the use of these tools in the course, an assessment was carried out as to their usefulness, from both an academic staff and student perspective. Students’ perspectives were gathered by use of a questionnaire at the end of the course. The overall impression of WebCT was that it was a worthwhile tool to support the course and will be used in future courses. Mindtrail was adopted to improve both the assignment marking quality and the feedback given to students and we found that the explicit construction of the knowledge tree (marking guide) assisted in focusing on the important issues of the assignment and thus provided a more ‘objective’ marking process. EVE analyses documents for plagiarism and was adopted as a deterrent in the major assignment. The lecturers’ believe that its use was most worthwhile and demonstrated the academic staff’s seriousness about stopping plagiarism. A number of deficiencies identified with the tools and recommendations for its their improvement are also presented. An analysis of students’ perceptions of the three tools revealed that WebCT was rated greater than ‘moderately useful’ and those students who had a high WebCT access rate, perceived that WebCT was more useful than students in a lower access rate category. Students also found WebCT easy to use, and improved communications between students and instructors during the course. Similarly, Mindtrail was perceived as greater than ‘moderately useful’ by the students and contained ‘moderately detailed’ feedback on their major assignments. EVE similarly was perceived as ‘moderately useful’ by the students, provided ‘moderately detailed’ feedback to students, and students believed that is was a good idea to prevent/control plagiarism. Overall both the students and the academic staff perceived the three tools as being useful to the completion and running of the course, and the results provide a solid base for the continued use of these tools.

The implications of E-commerce for software project risk: a preliminary investigation

When a business introduces the use of e-commerce applications the software related business risks the business faces change. A corresponding change may also occur in the risks faced by the developers of the e-commerce applications. Unrecognised changes in the risks involved in software projects have considerable implications for a business. This paper reports the outcomes of the preliminary phase of a study into the implications of e-commerce for software project risk in financial institutions. Firstly, the analysis draws on the e-commerce and systems development literatures to determine the differences between e-commerce development projects and traditional development projects. Four key areas of difference were found between traditional projects and e-commerce including changes in the development process outcomes, changes in the development processes and methods, changes in stakeholder groups and changes in determining application requirements. Secondly, the differences are analysed against a set of software project risk factors from a recent reputable study. Each of the risk factors was affected in some way. Some of these impacts appear to be temporary, while others appear highly dependent upon the individual circumstances of the organization undertaking the project. Some risks did, however, appear to be permanently increased or decreased, thus signalling a fundamental difference in the overall risk profile of e-commerce projects when compared to traditional projects. Whether the impacts are temporary, contextual or permanent, they all have implications for way in which risk in e-commerce software projects is assessed and managed.