Suku Sinnappan

Effects of Cognitive Style on User Acceptance of Blogs and Podcasts

Blogs and podcasts are emerging Web technologies that have been adopted by educators to facilitate on-campus and distance education. However, little is known about user acceptance of these technologies. In this paper, we empirically test a theoretical model to examine the effects of individual’s cognitive style on user acceptance of blogs and podcasts. We incorporated a course blog and series of lecture podcasts in a Web programming course and collected students’ feedback on the technology usage. Empirical findings suggest that individual’s cognitive style has significant effects on user acceptance of blogs and podcasts. However, students with innovative cognitive style are more likely to perceive these technologies as useful and easy-to-use as compared to their adaptor counterparts. Also, innovators perceive podcasts as more useful than blog whilst blog as more easy-to-use than podcasts.

Effect of media richness on user acceptance of blogs and podcasts

Effective communication has long been recognised as a key element in problem solving and decision making within and among organisations including educational institutions. With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies, the communication choices have also been expanded. Media Richness Theory (MRT) has long been used to examine the effect of traditional and new media on decision making. However, less is known about media richness of Web 2.0 technologies. This paper attempts to examine the media richness capabilities of two popular Web 2.0 technologies, blogs and podcasts, and its effect on user acceptance of these two technologies in Computer Science education. A theoretical model is presented using MRT and technology acceptance model (TAM). Students enrolled in Bachelor / Master of Computer Science programs participated in an online survey that helped in evaluating the proposed model. The study findings confirm the significant effect of media richness on user acceptance of blogs and podcasts but contradict MRT as rich medium (podcast) exerted weaker influence on user acceptance as compared to lean medium (blog).

Credibility-based twitter social network analysis

Social Network (SN) members in Twitter communicate in varied contexts such as crisis. Formations within social networks are unique as some members have more influence over other members; members with more influence are known as leaders or pioneers. Finding leaders in a social network is the central factor in information dissemination; therefore, the main objective of this paper is to utilize social network information to identify leaders in Twitter during crisis situations. We propose a new approach to identify social network leaders based on their credibility which is drawn from their trustworthiness and expertise utilizing the “Follow the Leader” model based on the content quality generated by SN members. Our approach is highly innovative and the empirical results demonstrate that our approach can identify SN community leaders in a specific context (crisis) and has significant practical benefits.

Intelligent agent based architecture for internet marketing

The Symposium on the Application of Artificial Intelligence in Industry was held in conjunction with the Sixth Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI-2000), Melbourne Australia, August 2000. It was the second of the Symposium series aiming to highlight actual applications of Artificial Intelligence in industry and to share and compare experiences in doing so. The Symposium brought together researchers and developers of applied Artificial Intelligence systems. The symposium is the leading forum in the Pacific Rim for the presentation of innovative applications of AI in industry.