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Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches

Social identity theory and the organization

(1991). Soft Systems Methodology in Action. European Journal of Information Systems: Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 215-216.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fejis.1991.37.pdf

Soft Systems Methodology in Action

Brian Thompson is a Senior Nutrition Officer at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). FAO is an intergovernmental organization, it has 191 Member Nations, two associate members and one member organization, the European Union. As a knowledge organization, FAO creates and shares critical information about food, agriculture and natural resources in the form of global public goods. FAO plays a connector role, through identifying and working with different partners with established expertise, and facilitating a dialogue between those who have the knowledge and those who need it. By turning knowledge into action, FAO links the field to national, regional and global initiatives in a mutually reinforcing cycle. Its mandate is to raise levels of nutrition and standards of living. What is the size of the malnutrition problem and what regions are most affected? There are persistently high levels of undernutrition. Nearly 870 million people in the world go to bed hungry (1 in 8 people) according to the recently released report of The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 (SOFI) and 2 billion have some form of micronutrient malnutrition – this constitutes a crime against humanity and is a responsibility for all of us. Prevalence of undernourishment in developing countries has declined over the past two decades, from 23 to 15 percent. In terms of total numbers in 1990– 92, around 980 million individuals were estimated to be undernourished. The number dropped to 901 million in 1999– 2001, to 885 million in 2006–06 and to 852 million in 2007–09. The financial crisis, economic downturn, persistent food price volatility, drought and other repercussions of climate change since 2006–08 may have prevented any further significant improvements in the number of people who are undernourished in developing countries since then. Africa has by far the highest prevalence, at around 23 percent in 2010–12 but though it is down from what it was in 1990–92 (27 percent) the numbers have risen from 175 million to 239 million with nearly 20 million added in the past four years. In subSaharan Africa, the modest progress achieved in recent years up to 2007 was reversed, with hunger rising 2 percent per year since then. In Asia, both prevalence and numbers dropped over the same period from 24 percent (739 million) to 14 percent (563 million). Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) boasts the lowest rate of undernourishment (8 percent) among developing country regions but the rate of progress has slowed recently. Countries considered as leastdeveloped countries and lowincome economies have the highest prevalence rates of all around 30 percent but down from the 40 percent levels of twenty years ago.

Interview ラン・ラン

Using a teaching model framework, we systematically review empirical evidence on the impact of entrepreneurship education (EE) in higher education on a range of learning outcomes, analysing 159 published articles from 2004-2016. The teaching model framework allows us for the first time to start rigorously examining relationships between pedagogical methods and specific outcomes. Re-confirming past reviews and meta-analyses, we find that EE impact research still predominantly focuses on short-term and subjective outcome measures and tends to severely under-describe the actual pedagogies being tested. Moreover, we use our review to provide an up-to-date and empirically rooted call for less obvious, yet greatly promising, new or underemphasised directions for future research on the impact of university-based entrepreneurship education. This includes, for example, the use of novel impact indicators related to emotion and mindset, focus on the impact indicators related to the intention-to-behaviour transition, and explore the reasons for some of the contradictory findings in impact studies including person-, context- and pedagogical model-specific moderators.

The impact of entrepreneurship education in higher education: A systematic review and research agenda

Although learning management systems (LMS) have been widely adopted by higher educational institutions in many countries, they are considered an emerging technology in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, research has demonstrated that the students’ use of them is not always satisfactory. This quantitative study investigated the factors that affect the students use of LMS in higher education by extending the technology acceptance model (TAM) and adapting eight external variables. Based on the probability multi-stage cluster sampling technique, online surveys were sent by email to 2000 students registered in three public universities in Saudi Arabia. 851 responses were submitted by participants, and 833 responses were used for data analysis. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equations Modeling (PLS-SEM), the results revealed that perceived ease of use is affected by six factors (content quality, system navigation, ease of access, system interactivity, instructional assessment and system learnability). The findings confirmed that perceived usefulness has five determinants (content quality, learning support, system interactivity, instructional assessment and perceived ease of use). This research is relevant to researchers, decision makers and e-learning systems designers working to enhance students’ use of e-learning systems in higher education, in particular where there is not yet widespread adoption.

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Extending the Technology Acceptance Model to Understand Students’ Use of Learning Management Systems in Saudi Higher Education

The rapid growth of e-learning around the globe is inspiring various academic institutions to adopt it. Uptake is motivated by convincing benefits such as flexibility, accessibility and the management of course delivery. In fact, academic institutions place great emphasis on e-learning and are investing significantly in information technology infrastructures. However, in spite of this effort and investment, it seems that instructors and students do not always fully benefit from the learning technology and more often learning management systems (LMSs) remain underutilized. Thus, this study adopts the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to study how people accept and use the Blackboard system. The data were analysed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) techniques to test the hypothesized research model. The empirical results found that technical support is fundamental in determining the acceptance and use of e-learning systems. The findings of the study may help to provide insights into a better approach to promote e-learning acceptance.

An Implementation of the UTAUT Model for Understanding Students' Perceptions of Learning Management Systems: A Study within Tertiary Institutions in Saudi Arabia.

Research in pervasive computing and ambience intelligence aims to enable users to interact with the environment in a context-aware way. To achieve this, a complex set of features describing different aspects of the environment has to be captured and processed; in other words situation-awareness is needed. This article notes uniquely three points when modelling situations. Firstly, unlike most existing approaches, context information history should be considered when modelling the situations. We argue here that the current state cannot be understood in isolation from the previous states. Secondly, in order to track user’s behaviour there is a need to consider the context information available in the different domains the user visits. Thirdly, to identify situations it can be problematic to define situation patterns and looking for an exact match as most of the approaches does. We found that the combination of the flexibility of the user behaviour and automated capture of context events provide a very effective solution for contextual situation recognition. In this article we first provide a formalization of the situation recognition problem and then we focus on the potential use of process mining techniques for measuring situation alignment, i.e., comparing the real situations of users with the expected situations. To this end, we propose two ways to create and/or maintain the fit between them: linear temporal logic (LTL) analysis and conformance testing. We evaluate the effectiveness of the framework using a third party published smart home dataset. Our experiments prove the effectiveness of applying the proposed approach to recognizing situations in the flow of context information.

Recognize contextual situation in pervasive environments using process mining techniques

/pdf/assessing-the-relative-importance-of-an-e-learning-system-s-2btdxnvu2l.pdf

Assessing the Relative Importance of an E-Learning System's Usability Design Characteristics Based on Students' Preferences.

Technology acceptance model (TAM) has been a standout amongst the most well-known models in understanding the users’ acceptance of technologies. This study develops a model to predict the factors that influence the use of learning management systems (LMS) among higher educational students in Saudi Arabia by applying the TAM model and two psychological determinants: computer self-efficacy and subjective norms. The Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was employed to examine the proposed model. The findings confirm the TAM model within the context of Saudi Arabia. Further, the students’ perceived ease of use is positively influenced by computer self-efficacy, while the students’ perceived usefulness is positively affected by subjective norm. As scholars have overlooked using TAM to assess LMS in the context of Saudi Arabia, the study may give a guide to future work to adopt additional factors that impact the students' utilization of LMS.

/pdf/the-influence-of-computer-self-efficacy-and-subjective-norms-2d78zgflzw.pdf

Sally Smith

Papers

Extending the Technology Acceptance Model to Understand Students’ Use of Learning Management Systems in Saudi Higher Education

An Implementation of the UTAUT Model for Understanding Students' Perceptions of Learning Management Systems: A Study within Tertiary Institutions in Saudi Arabia.

Recognize contextual situation in pervasive environments using process mining techniques

Assessing the Relative Importance of an E-Learning System's Usability Design Characteristics Based on Students' Preferences.

The Influence of Computer Self-efficacy and Subjective Norms on the Students’ Use of Learning Management Systems at King Abdulaziz University