Vimala Balakrishnan

Malaysian Facebookers: Motives and addictive behaviours unraveled

Malaysians were reported to have the most number of Facebook friends, spend more time on Facebook and might be addicted to Facebook as well. This paper explored Facebook usage pattern, motivations and psychological/behavioural factors affecting the users. A focus group study was first conducted to explore motives to use Facebook and symptoms related to excessive Facebook usage. The themes emerging from this were then used in addition to Uses and Gratifications theory and Browns Addiction framework to further explore Facebook usage pattern, motivations and behavioural issues among a large group of students. Results show that Malaysian students use Facebook actively, similar to other studies done worldwide. Factor analyses yielded five motives to use Facebook: Social Networking, Psychological Benefits, Entertainment, Self Presentation and Skill Enhancement. As for the behavioural symptoms, Salience, Loss of Control, Withdrawal and Relapse and Reinstatement emerged as the four main symptoms. These results show that in general Malaysian students use Facebook for similar motives as reported in literature. However, it is interesting to note that they also exhibited behavioural symptoms, such as Salience, Loss of Control, Withdrawal and Relapse and Reinstatement due to excessive Facebook usage.

Exploring the relationship between urbanized Malaysian youth and their mobile phones: A quantitative approach

Mobile phones have become a ubiquitous consumer item. This paper aims to explore mobile phone usage, extending work beyond teenage years to examine the role of mobile phones among urbanized Malaysian youth, specifically university students. Four main categories were identified, namely, mobile phone purchasing factors and reasons to use, mobile phone usage and also behavioral issues. A mixed-mode approach involving questionnaire surveys and 24-h diaries were used to gather the relevant data. A total of 417 respondents participated in this study. The salient results indicate respondents in this study consider brand, trend and price to be the three most important purchasing factors while socializing and privacy emerged as the two most important reasons to use mobile phones. Behavioral issues related to addiction and inappropriate use of mobile phones was also observed among the respondents. Gender analysis revealed females to use their mobile phones more to socialize, gossip and as a safety device. The findings of this study could prove to be beneficial to those exploring the mobile phone adoption and usage pattern in a developing country such as Malaysia.

Cyberbullying among young adults in Malaysia

The study explored cyberbullying prevalence among young adults in Malaysia.Social media emerged as the primary tool used.No significant differences for gender and age on cyberbullying activities.Internet frequency significantly predicts cyberbullying.A significant cyber-victim-cyberbully cycle was observed. This study investigated the extent of young adults (N=393; 17-30years old) experience of cyberbullying, from the perspectives of cyberbullies and cyber-victims using an online questionnaire survey. The overall prevalence rate shows cyberbullying is still present after the schooling years. No significant gender differences were noted, however females outnumbered males as cyberbullies and cyber-victims. Overall no significant differences were noted for age, but younger participants were found to engage more in cyberbullying activities (i.e. victims and perpetrators) than the older participants. Significant differences were noted for Internet frequency with those spending 2-5h online daily reported being more victimized and engage in cyberbullying than those who spend less than an hour daily. Internet frequency was also found to significantly predict cyber-victimization and cyberbullying, indicating that as the time spent on Internet increases, so does the chances to be bullied and to bully someone. Finally, a positive significant association was observed between cyber-victims and cyberbullies indicating that there is a tendency for cyber-victims to become cyberbullies, and vice versa. Overall it can be concluded that cyberbullying incidences are still taking place, even though they are not as rampant as observed among the younger users.

Students' learning styles and their effects on the use of social media technology for learning

The participatory, collaborative, and independent learning styles were investigated.The social media acceptance model was proposed.The factors Self and Performance were found to influence students intention of using social media.The factor Self had the greatest influence on all learning styles.Students with participatory style focused more on Self than those of the collaborative style did. Students with different learning styles approach learning differently. With the rise of social media technologies, investigating the effect of these styles on their intentions to use social media for learning has become all the more important. This study explored the factors affecting students intentions to use social media for learning based on their learning styles (i.e., participatory, collaborative, and independent), using the social media acceptance model. By convenience sampling, 300 Malaysian students were recruited via an online survey (Nparticipatory=116; Nindependent=97; and Ncollaborative=87). The survey was prepared by drawing on the social media acceptance model. It was piloted before the final data collection step was conducted in August 2013. The demographic details of the students were analyzed using Statistical Program for Social Sciences 21, while path modeling and multivariate analyses were conducted using SmartPLS 2.0. The results revealed the significant effect of Self and Performance on students intentions to use social media regardless of their learning styles. A pair-wise comparison revealed that Self was more significant in participatory students than in collaborative students. Effort was found to be the least significant factor, indicating the popularity of social media among students. Further insight into the different factors that drive students with different learning styles to use social media will help educators use this technology to assist learning more effectively.

Stemming and lemmatization: A comparison of retrieval performances

The current study proposes to compare document retrieval precision performances based on language modeling techniques, particularly stemming and lemmatization. nStemming is a procedure to reduce all words with the same stem to a common form whereas lemmatization removes inflectional endings and returns the base or dictionary form of a word. Comparisons were also made between these two techniques with a baseline ranking algorithm (i.e. with no language processing). A search engine was developed and the algorithms were tested based on a test collection. Both mean average precisions and histograms indicate stemming and nlemmatization to outperform the baseline algorithm. As for the language modeling techniques, lemmatization produced better precision compared to stemming, however the differences are insignificant. Overall the findings suggest that language modeling techniques improves document retrieval, with lemmatization technique producing the best result.

Using social networks to enhance teaching and learning experiences in higher learning institutions

The paper first explores the factors that affect the use of social networks to enhance teaching and learning experiences among students and lecturers, using structured questionnaires prepared based on the Push–Pull–Mooring framework. A total of 455 students and lecturers from higher learning institutions in Malaysia participated in this study. Multiple linear regressions revealed five factors: E-Learning Perception, Academic Reasons, Ease of Use, Convenience and Social Networking to be positively associated with Teaching and Learning Benefits obtained from the use of social networks. These factors were then used to develop Book2U – a social e-learning tool which integrates the popular features of social networks. User testing revealed Book2U was well received by the majority of the respondents. It is believed that teaching and learning activities in educational sectors can be improved by using social network and e-learning-integrated tools, such as Book2U.

Fun learning with Edooware - A social media enabled tool

The current study investigated if university students are receptive in using social media enabled tools as part of their learning processes. The Social Media Acceptance Model focussing on six key constructs: Self, Performance, Social Influence, Facility, Effort and Functionality was used as a guide to build Edooware, an educational tool that supports myriad of social media functionalities. Both pre and post-evaluation questionnaires were used to gauge students perceptions on their learning experiences. A sample of 68 students from two different courses evaluated Edooware. Analysis revealed significant improvements for Self, Social Influence and Functionality after using Edooware. It can be inferred that the students were particularly attracted to some of the features provided in Edooware that are not available in the current learning platform. Educational institutions should look into the possibility of incorporating social media enabled tools to improve students learning experiences. Students perceptions in using social media enabled tools for learning.Six constructs: Self, Performance, Social Influence, Facility, Effort, Functionality.An educational tool (Edooware) was built and tested based on the six constructs.Pre and post-evaluation questionnaires among 68 students.Improvements for Self, Social Influence and Functionality after using Edooware.

Determinants of mobile wireless technology for promoting interactivity in lecture sessions: an empirical analysis

The aim of this paper is to identify adoption factors of mobile wireless technology to increase interactivity between lecturers and students during lectures. A theoretical framework to ascertain lecturers’ intentions to use mobile wireless technology during lectures (dependent variable) is proposed with seven independent variables. The independent variables were ease of use and usefulness from Technology Acceptance Model; trust from Wireless Internet via Mobile Devices model and Mobile Services Acceptance Model; self-efficacy from Social Cognitive Theory; enjoyment from Motivational Model; social influence from Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology; and uncertainty avoidance from Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (Hofstede et al. in Cultures and organizations: software of the mind, 3rd edn. McGraw-Hill, New York, 2010). Four lecture observations were conducted and interaction barriers identified. Interviews with 22 selected lecturers were conducted to elicit perceptions of mobile wireless technology use during lectures and validate the framework’s variables. Interview results from thematic analysis strongly validated mobile wireless technology’s usefulness as a supporting, collaboration and real-time interaction tool, especially among introvert students. Ease of use, self-efficacy and enjoyment are supported through familiarity with mobile wireless technology. Majority of the respondents are apprehensive that mobile wireless technology might cause disruptions during lectures, with concerns of redundancy, dependency and misuses amongst students (attributes of uncertainty avoidance). None of the respondents are currently using mobile wireless technology for interaction during lectures, thus lending credence to social influence. Very few respondents agree that use of mobile wireless technology can reduce students’ boredom and make lectures more enjoyable, and few perceive intermittent wireless connection will affect user trust. Knowledge of significant mobile wireless technology adoption factors and concerns may be important and applicable to tertiary education in Malaysia.

Implicit user behaviours to improve post-retrieval document relevancy

The collection of user feedback as indications of users interests resulted in a growing interest in improving users search experiences. In this article, we describe a method that integrates multiple implicit feedback approaches to unobtrusively monitor users interactions to improve document search results relevancy. The study gathered users feedback based on the dwell time, click-through data, page review, and also text selection. An experiment was conducted to assess the performance of the proposed integrated model. Collected data were analysed and compared at three ranking levels, that is, top 10, 15 and 25. Both the mean average precisions and normalised discounted cumulative gain values indicate the integrated model to significantly outperform the baseline (TF-IDF) at each of the varying levels. Moreover, a comparison across all the models also show the integrated model to have the best search performance further indicating that merging multiple feedback techniques improves the overall document relevancy. Results also show page review and text selection have the lowest and highest precisions, respectively among all the four implicit feedback models, however the differences are insignificant. Overall it can be concluded that integrated implicit feedback significantly improves post-retrieval document relevancy compared to stand-alone feedback, and also when no feedback is available.

A trust model for recommender agent systems

This paper aims to improve trust models in multi-agent systems based on four vital components, namely: reliability, similarity, satisfaction and trust transitivity. A number of different methods of computing these components were analyzed by considering the most representative existing trust models. The four trust components were identified from existing models then a trust model named trust transitivity–satisfaction–similarity–reliability (TtSSR) was proposed based on these components. TtSSR applied fuzzy logic for computing the identified components. Then by integrating the identified components and using Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution as a decision-making method, TtSSR selects the most trustworthy provider agent. The performance of TtSSR was compared with existing trust models using a simulator, specifically with Bayesian Network Model, Probability Certainty Distribution Model, and Dynamic Trust Model which are based on probability and TREPPS which is based on fuzzy logic. The experimental results revealed that TtSSR can significantly improve the accuracy of trust models; while the result of simulations demonstrated that the average accuracy of TtSSR in selecting a trustworthy agent is better than other models. Generally, the results indicated that when these four components were integrated, they performed significantly better in selecting a trustworthy agent as compared to other models.