Yu-Hui Tao

The use of unified theory of acceptance and use of technology to confer the behavioral model of 3G mobile telecommunication users

Abstract Although Taiwan’s 3G services started its operation in 2003, the main profit source for every telecommunication company is still the cheaper fees of airtime minutes. Therefore, this study is directed on how these companies design the marketing tactics closer to the consumers’ need under the dual influences of the decreasing individual’s contribution and the low utility rate, as well as how to improve customers’ willingness to adopt 3G mobile telecommunication services. Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) is used as the model to carry out expert interviews and consumers’ questionnaire investigation. This study found that the factors that significantly influenced the “behavioral intention” include “performance expectancy”, “social influence”, and “facilitating conditions”, while the traditional known “effort expectancy” did not. Moreover, three non-assumed relationships were discovered during the Structural Equation Model analysis, which helped to revise the UTAUT model for 3G telecommunication services. The results of this study can be helpful to Taiwan’s mobile telecommunication companies to adjust their corporate strategies and tactics for providing customer-oriented 3G services to both existing and potential customers, such that the overall 3G market can be expanded as well as a win-win situation for the 3G industry and their consumers can be achieved.

The effect of emoticons in simplex and complex task-oriented communication: An empirical study of instant messaging

Many studies have shed light on general computer-mediated communication, instant messaging (IM), and emotion or emoticons, but little is known specifically about the impacts of emoticons in task-oriented IM communication in the workplace. Therefore, the current study addresses this issue by conducting an exploratory experiment to (1) categorize workplace IM messages into coherent groups, (2) identify the most commonly used emoticons (emblems) for expressing positive, negative, and neutral emotions in the case company, (3) test the differences in the emotional effects of the received text messages with and without emoticons on the reader/s, and (4) examine the intention to use emoticons in IM in the workplace. The results showed that (1) negative emoticons could cause a negative effect in both simplex and complex task-oriented communication, (2) positive emoticons only created a positive effect in complex communication and for female employees in simplex communication, and (3) there is no significant difference between task-oriented messages with or without neutral emoticon. Furthermore, the intention of using emoticons was not statistically significant in terms of gender, but it has a higher tendency on female employees. The corresponding suggestions provided by this research may help increase our understanding on the effect of emoticon use in IM in the workplace.

Typology of college student perception on institutional e-learning issues - An extension study of a teacher's typology in Taiwan

Recently, e-learning in Taiwans higher education faces new challenges as the Ministry of Education begins to loosen its control over degree-awarding programs. Studies on stakeholder perceptions toward important e-learning issues become critical at this juncture for policy makers to make viable investment decisions toward e-learning programs. Although a typology of teacher perception with corresponding strategies in e-learning has been studied, the student perspective is missing in the teacher-student dynamics. To comprehend the teachers and students perceptions on institutional concerns toward e-learning issues, this study thus develops a student typology based on the methodology and questionnaire items used in a previous study on teachers. Two totally distinct groups of students, namely the skeptics and the optimists, are identified in the cluster analysis using four higher-level issue constructs emerging from a factor analysis of 30 variables. The findings on student typology and comparisons with teacher typology are then summarized along with strategies in the discussion and implications. This study should provide school policy makers a comprehensive insight on stakeholder perceptions for better e-learning decisions.

User-switching behavior in social network sites: A model perspective with drill-down analyses

Social network sites (SNSs) are considered the most representative and influential Web 2.0 applications. Users frequently switch between SNSs and user devices because of the intense SNS market competition and the increasing mobile-device user base. However, the switching behavior of SNS users is yet to be explored to gain new knowledge and practical suggestions. This study uses a higher level research model and lower level switching pattern drill-down analysis to understand the actual switching behavior of SNS users. Users of major SNSs filled out an online questionnaire, which yielded 343 valid samples. The partial least square (PLS) results of the proposed research model show that both service quality and switching cost indirectly influence the switching intention of users through the satisfaction and switching barriers, respectively. Convenience and peer pressure are the top reasons for switching SNS platforms, whereas mobile capabilities and real-time access are the top motivations for switching to mobile SNSs. Six managerial implications are derived from the research model and the switching pattern analysis. Two research limitations are also provided with the conclusions.

Learning from the past and present: measuring Internet banking service quality

The Internet has played a pivotal role in transforming banking services into e-services. While several studies have examined the effective measurement of e-banking service quality, their lack of a holistic view has hindered the accumulation of past knowledge. To address this issue, this study first reviews and summarizes the methodology, service quality dimensions, suggestions and limitations of seven e-banking service quality studies conducted in seven countries. An empirical study is then conducted to derive the first robust and comprehensive measure of e-banking service quality in Taiwanese context by compensating three shortcomings of a prior Taiwanese study. To improve our understanding of e-banking service quality, a comprehensive scheme is proposed that has managerial implications. The primary contribution of this study is to present a holistic view of e-service quality for e-banking with embedded cultural factors and to provide a rigorous measurement scale development procedure applicable to areas other than e-banking.

Information system professionals' knowledge and application gaps toward Web design guidelines

Web design guidelines are adopted by many usability evaluation methods as one of the criteria for success, while usability is proven to significantly impact Website performance. Since Web design guidelines cover a broad range of system and interface design solutions, knowledge of them can be considered as a prominent indicator of Web design skills for information systems (IS) professionals. This study empirically assessed how much IS professionals know and apply Web design guidelines via a survey to 500 randomly selected companies from Taiwans Fortune 2000 corporations. As expected, the knowledge-application gaps of IS professionals were statistically significant in all Web design guideline categories. Meanwhile, certain guideline categories were proven to be more difficult to acquire or apply than others. Finally, degree, gender, experience, training hours, and courses taken were also proven to be determining factors for Web design guideline skills. Implications for developing Web design guideline skills are also discussed.

A practical extension of web usage mining with intentional browsing data toward usage

Intentional browsing data is a new data component for improving Web usage mining that uses Web log files as the primary data source. Previously, the Web transaction mining algorithm was used in e-commerce applications to demonstrate how it could be enhanced by intentional browsing data on pages with item purchase and complemented by intentional browsing data on pages without item purchase. Although these two intention-based algorithms satisfactorily illustrated the benefits of intentional browsing data on the original Web transaction mining algorithm, three potential issues remain: Why is there a need to separate the source data into purchased-item and not-purchased-item segments to be processed by two intention-based algorithms? Moreover, can the algorithms contain more than one browsing data types? Finally, can the numeric intention-based data counts be more user friendly for decision-making practices? To address these three issues, we propose a unified intention-based Web transaction mining algorithm that can efficiently process the whole data set simultaneously with multiple intentional browsing data types as well as transform the intentional browsing data counts into easily understood linguistic items using the fuzzy set concept. Comparisons and implications for e-commerce are also discussed. Instead of addressing the technical innovation in this extension study, the revised intention-based Web usage mining algorithm should make its applications much easier and more useful in practice.

The design and the formative evaluation of a web-based course for simulation analysis experiences

Abstract Simulation output analysis has received little attention comparing to modeling and programming in real-world simulation applications. This is further evidenced by our observation that students and beginners acquire neither adequate details of knowledge nor relevant experience of simulation output analysis in traditional classroom learning. With the advances in the Internet learning environment, web-based computer-based training (CBT) can efficiently and effectively enhance the traditional classroom learning. This research addresses the issue of designing a web-based CBT course to assist the classroom instruction in helping students learn better simulation problem solving. The goal is to provide an effective way to learn the implicit experience of simulation output analysis via an efficient interactive environment. A prototype asynchronous web CBT system with simulation analysis guidelines was built to verify our design through a three-stage formative usability evaluation. The results showed that the simulation analysis guidelines organized by this research significantly improved the test scores and the interactive CBT system maintained students’ interests longer than the written format.

Effects of the heterogeneity of game complexity and user population in learning performance of business simulation games

Previous studies on business simulation games (BSGs) have concluded that improved performance may not be the primary benefit of using BSGs, due to mixed results between student performance and perceptions. Two relevant and insightful issues attract our attention, namely, the impacts of the heterogeneous student population and the different complexity levels of BSG software. To address these issues, the present study aims to understand the relationship between student profile/characteristics and performance in the classroom with BSG-facilitated learning. An in-depth case study is conducted on a general college course designed to teach three different complexities of BSGs to students enrolled in different majors. Four student profile factors are individually tested for differences in performance scores as evaluated by the teacher. Additionally, the influences of 11 student characteristics are assessed with regard their self-reported perceived learning performances. Regression analysis and ANOVA are used to investigate the impacts of heterogeneous users and game complexity on student performance. Based on the regression analyses of the data collected from 43 respondents who participated in the general course, the study concludes that knowledge and skill may influence the heterogeneous student population; moreover, student participation and tacit learning preference improve performance, and students with an auditory learning preference or high learning motivation may not perform well in classroom BSG learning. However, the low value of adjusted R square implies that more dimensions or variables are needed to increase the explaining power of the performance scores in the regression analyses. In contrast, heterogeneous BSG software with different complexity levels present different results. The current research contributes practical and incremental knowledge on the complexity of heterogeneous BSG software on performance scores and the perceived learning performance of heterogeneous student populations. With the research limitations acknowledged, a series of suggestions for teachers pertaining to appropriate applications of BSGs in classes is offered as well as recommendations to BSG providers. Nevertheless, in-depth analyses are required, preferably with larger student population samples, to further explore the insignificant relationship between student perceptions and attitude under nonlinear extended complexity.

Transforming the Personal Response System to a Cloud Voting Service

This paper describes a new business model for a cloud voting service, which shifts focus from selling specialized equipment and installation to providing Internet services through personal mobile devices. This incremental innovation only requires existing technologies, such as general Internet service facility and web/mobile system development. The new cloud voting service frees itself from the limitations of specialized equipment and physical location, and thus expands its applications from classrooms to conference rooms in business organizations, as well as to public events in any location with Wi-Fi/WiMax or 3G Internet access. The potential benefits and business model of this new Internet-enabled service are briefly discussed.