What makes consumers buy from Internet? A longitudinal study ofonline shopping

The objective of this study is to investigate the factors affecting online shopping. A model explaining the impact of different factors on online shopping intentions and behavior is developed based on the theory of planned behavior. The model is then tested empirically in a longitudinal study with two surveys. Data collected from 705 consumers indicate that subjective norms, attitude, and beliefs concerning the consequences of online shopping have significant effects on consumers' intentions to buy online. Behavioral control and intentions significantly influenced online shopping behavior. The results also provide strong support for the positive effects of personal innovativeness on attitude and intentions to shop online. The implications of the findings for theory and practice are discussed     

“What do they snapchat about?” Patterns of use in time-limited instant messaging service

The use of Snapchat – a time-limited instant messaging service – has been rapidly rising amongst adolescents. However, the exact nature of Snapchat use remains difficult to examine due to the self-destructive nature of content sent and received via this service. We report an online survey conducted with the use of a memory sampling method to enquire about the specific details of the very last image or video each participant sent and received via Snapchat. We found that users mainly share ‘selfies’, typically embed text and ‘doodles’ with photos they share, use it mostly at home, and primarily for communication with close friends and family as an ‘easier and funnier’ alternative to other instant messaging services. We also found that high intensity of Snapchat use was more associated with bonding rather than bridging social capital. We discuss those findings in the context of existing studies on the use of instant messaging services and social networking sites.     

What are mobile developers asking about? A large scale study using stack overflow

The popularity of mobile devices has been steadily growing in recent years. These devices heavily depend on software from the underlying operating systems to the applications they run. Prior research showed that mobile software is different than traditional, large software systems. However, to date most of our research has been conducted on traditional software systems. Very little work has focused on the issues that mobile developers face. Therefore, in this paper, we use data from the popular online Q&A site, Stack Overflow, and analyze 13,232,821 posts to examine what mobile developers ask about. We employ Latent Dirichlet allocation-based topic models to help us summarize the mobile-related questions. Our findings show that developers are asking about app distribution, mobile APIs, data management, sensors and context, mobile tools, and user interface development. We also determine what popular mobile-related issues are the most difficult, explore platform specific issues, and investigate the types (e.g., what, how, or why) of questions mobile developers ask. Our findings help highlight the challenges facing mobile developers that require more attention from the software engineering research and development communities in the future and establish a novel approach for analyzing questions asked on Q&A forums.     

Is “Internet addiction” addressed in the classroom? A survey of psychology textbooks

Although not designated as an official diagnostic entity, problematic Internet use (or “Internet addiction”, IA) has received increasing attention in professional literature, both within psychology and in other fields. Given the Internet’s popularity and growing recognition of its misuse, it seems legitimate to question whether IA is being given similar attention in relevant academic courses. To address this question, the author surveyed current college-level introductory and abnormal psychology textbooks for references to the IA phenomenon. Of the 44 texts examined, only three specific references to IA (or similar terminology) were found. Recommendations are made regarding the coverage of this contemporary concern in updated text editions.     

What do faculty members know about universal design and digital accessibility? A qualitative study in computer science and engineering disciplines

Universal Access in the Information Society - Purpose Students in higher education are a diverse group comprising people with different backgrounds and abilities. Regulations require that digital...     

Supporting decision making process with “ideal” software agents - What do business executives want?

According to Simon’s (1977) decision making theory, intelligence is the first and most important phase in the decision making process. With the escalation of information resources available to business executives, it is becoming imperative to explore the potential and challenges of using agent-based systems to support the intelligence phase of decision-making. This research examines UK executives’ perceptions of using agent-based support systems and the criteria for design and development of their “ideal” intelligent software agents. The study adopted an inductive approach using focus groups to generate a preliminary set of design criteria of “ideal” agents. It then followed a deductive approach using semi-structured interviews to validate and enhance the criteria. This qualitative research has generated unique insights into executives’ perceptions of the design and use of agent-based support systems. The systematic content analysis of qualitative data led to the proposal and validation of design criteria at three levels. The findings revealed the most desirable criteria for agent based support systems from the end users’ point view. The design criteria can be used not only to guide intelligent agent system design but also system evaluation.     

Canadian university students in wireless classrooms: What do they do on their laptops and does it really matter?

Two studies were conducted to examine what undergraduate students do on their laptops during class time and the extent to which laptop usage behaviors are associated with academic success. In Study 1, a sample of 1129 students from a Canadian university completed a survey measuring prototypical behaviors emitted on laptops during class time. Results of factor analyses indicated that laptop behaviors can be regrouped in two dimensions: School related and school unrelated laptop utilization. School unrelated laptop behaviors were significantly associated with lower levels of self-reported academic achievement and satisfaction. School related laptop behaviors were positively associated with academic satisfaction. These results were invariant across different faculties on campus. In Study 2, another sample of 88 students was recruited to examine the longitudinal association between laptop behaviors and semester grade point average obtained at the end of the semester. Results of Study 2 showed that school unrelated laptop behaviors were prospectively associated with lower semester grade point average, even after controlling for a series of potentially confounding influences (i.e., self-regulation failure, motivational deficit, disorganized learning, internet addiction, and school disenchantment). Overall, these results provide theoretically important support to suggest that in-class laptop utilization is a unique and contemporary mode of learning that should not be treated as an epiphenomenon merely accountable and reducible to other sources of psychological influences.     

How do you frame ill-defined problems? A study on creative logics in action

Problem framing is pivotal to fostering knowledge and innovation, especially in the modern environment where problems are often ill defined. However, the managerial literature has thus far mainly addressed problem framing from an outcome perspective, overlooking the processes that lead to the outcomes. A common view is that the complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty of ill-defined problems call for a creative process. Therefore, through ethnographically observing six design thinking workshops, this study adopts a qualitative approach to explore the problem framing creative process. Specifically, we unpack three thinking modalities involved in the creative process (i.e. creative logics) of problem framing: analogical reasoning, associative thinking and abductive reasoning. We suggest that individuals enact these through seven creative operations. In addition, we link these creative operations to two types of problem framing outcomes: referenced frames and crafted frames. From a practitioner perspective, this study casts new light on the importance of problem framing for creativity and innovation, highlighting the ways in which individuals operationalize the creative logics to frame ill-defined problems as original problems worth solving.     

What makes them happy and curious online? An empirical study on high school students’ Internet use from a self-determination theory perspective

From a self-determination theory perspective, this study tries to investigate how perceived autonomy support, perceived relatedness and competence affect high school students’ intrinsic motivations (enjoyment and curiosity) to use the Internet, and the related outcomes of the motivation. Surveys are distributed to seven junior and ten senior high schools in a prefectural-level city in central China. Existing instruments from previous research are adapted to measure the following constructs: teacher support, parental support, peer influence, Internet self-efficacy, enjoyment, curiosity, flow state and online exploratory behavior. Finally, 3475 valid responses are collected.     

How do skilled and less‐skilled spellers write text messages? A longitudinal study

The link between students' spelling level and their text‐messaging practice gives rise to numerous questions from teachers, parents and the media. A corpus of 4524 text messages produced in daily‐life situations by students in sixth and seventh grade (n = 19, 11–12 years of age) was compiled. None of the participants had ever owned or used a mobile phone before the start of the study; their text messages were collected monthly over the course of a year. The comparison between the group with mobile phones and the control group without mobile phones (n = 30) showed no difference between the level of traditional writing at the beginning of the text‐message collection and during the collection. The results showed that the correlation between the level of traditional spelling and the density of textisms was dependent upon the type of textisms (consistent/breaking with traditional code), the type of spelling (usage‐based/rule‐based), the grades in French class and the duration of text‐messaging practice. On the whole, students who were skilled or less skilled in traditional writing at the beginning of the text‐message collection remained respectively skilled or less skilled throughout the year, despite their text‐messaging use (density and type of textisms). The discussion of this study's academic implications tends towards a complementarity between traditional writing and text messaging.     

What do luthiers look at? An eye tracking study on the identification of meaningful areas in historical violins

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Stylistic analysis of artworks is an important practice in the field of Cultural Heritage. Over time, significant stylistic characteristics have been identified...     

“How do you know that I don’t understand?” A look at the future of intelligent tutoring systems

Many software systems would significantly improve performance if they could adapt to the emotional state of the user, for example if Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs), ATM’s, ticketing machines could recognise when users were confused, frustrated or angry they could guide the user back to remedial help systems so improving the service. Many researchers now feel strongly that ITSs would be significantly enhanced if computers could adapt to the emotions of students. This idea has spawned the developing field of affective tutoring systems (ATSs): ATSs are ITSs that are able to adapt to the affective state of students. The term “affective tutoring system” can be traced back as far as Rosalind Picard’s book Affective Computing in 1997.This paper presents research leading to the development of Easy with Eve, an ATS for primary school mathematics. The system utilises a network of computer systems, mainly embedded devices to detect student emotion and other significant bio-signals. It will then adapt to students and displays emotion via a lifelike agent called Eve. Eve’s tutoring adaptations are guided by a case-based method for adapting to student states; this method uses data that was generated by an observational study of human tutors. This paper presents the observational study, the case-based method, the ATS itself and its implementation on a distributed computer systems for real-time performance, and finally the implications of the findings for Human Computer Interaction in general and e-learning in particular. Web-based applications of the technology developed in this research are discussed throughout the paper.     

What are the characteristics of popular APIs? A large-scale study on Java,Android, and 165 libraries

Software systems are commonly implemented with the support of libraries, which provide features via APIs. Ideally, APIs should have some characteristics, for example, they should be well documented and stable so that client systems can confidently rely on them. However, not all APIs are equal in number of clients: while some APIs are very popular and used worldwide, other may face much lower usage rates. In this context, one question appears: are there particular characteristics that differentiate popular APIs from ordinary APIs? Answering this question can uncover how worldwide APIs are actually implemented and maintained, revealing practices to better support both research and development on APIs. In this paper, we assess the characteristics of popular APIs, including their size, legibility, documentation, stability, and client adoption. We analyze 1491 APIs provided by Java, Android, and 165 libraries. We detect that popular APIs are distinct from ordinary ones, for example, often, popular APIs are larger, have more comments, and are more unstable than ordinary APIs. Finally, we provide a set of lessons learned from the popular APIs on factors that developers can control, such as the exposure of public methods and the API stability.

     

Why do people share their context information on Social Network Services? A qualitative study and an experimental study on users' behavior of balancing perceived benefit and risk

Despite the rapid growth of context-aware systems and ubiquitous computing, the factors influencing users' decision to share their context information in a social setting are poorly understood. This study aims to clarify why users share their context information in social network service (SNS), even while they are concerned with the potential risk at the same time. Drawing on the diverse theories of self-disclosure, we take an approach that the consideration of benefit encourages users to endure the existence of risk, and that users actively adjust the way they share their information to optimize the level of benefit and risk. In a qualitative study, we examined what kinds of risks and benefits exist in context information sharing situations and how users control them. An experiment was conducted using stimuli that simulate the actual use of SNS to investigate the effect of various context types and control types on users' expected benefit and risk and their intention to share. The results showed that both expected benefit and expected risk influenced users' intention to share. More interestingly, the effect of expected benefit was found to be stronger than that of expected risk. Moreover, different privacy control strategies were found to have induced different effects on the expected benefit and expected risk. Implications and limitations of this study were proposed at the end of this study.     

“What South Park Character Are You?”: Popular Culture, Literacy, and Online Performances of Identity

In this essay, I study MySpace and Facebook pages, as well as interviews with the university students who created them, in order to address how online literacy practices of contemporary convergence culture both use and are filtered through popular culture. Though their answers to questions of intent, audience, and rhetorical choices varied, students shared a common reliance on popular culture content and references appropriated from other sites to compose their identities and read the identities of others. They used popular culture icons, catch phrases, music, text, and film clips in postmodern, fragmented collages that seem simultaneously sentimental and ironic. The construction of these pages illustrates how popular culture practices that predate online technologies have been adopted and have flourished with new technologies that allow content to flow across media as well as increase the ease of audience participation. Online technological changes have changed what it means to be part of an “audience” by changing how individuals respond to and adapt popular culture texts to their own ends, such as the construction of identities on web pages. By creating potentially global audiences for any web page, these online technologies have changed the relationship of the popular culture audience members and their peers. The intertextual nature of popular culture texts creates opportunities for multiple readings of social networking web pages in ways that destabilize the identities students believe they have created.     

Is a schools’ performance related to technical change? – A study on the relationship between innovations and secondary school productivity

This paper examines the relation between innovations and productivity in Dutch secondary schools. Innovation clusters are directly included in the production model. In order to correct for differences between schools, we add school type, region and year controls. The results indicate that process innovations, teacher professionalization innovations and education chain innovations are positively related to productivity, whereas new courses innovations and pedagogic innovations are negatively related to productivity. The results also show that innovations are directly related to productivity, but also through student performance. The positive results of teacher professionalization, education chain and process innovations are similar to what is found elsewhere in the literature.     

“Who vs. Whom AND Where Should We Go Through?”: A reflection towards clarifying the effect of media and entertainment on children’s development for future research

Despite the massive body of research on the effect of media and entertainment on children’s development, especially through computer that clearly stands as the most interactive and appealing medium not only between children but also among people, the research, up to date, still lacks a true understanding of the powerful effect of the communication between children, generally all users, and the content of the entertainment. Thus, the present reflection paper was conducted towards clarifying the directions of the future research concerning the effect of media and entertainment on young children’s development based on the literature’s theoretical critiques. However, the present paper only paid attention to the most effective studies in the literature given the fact that many and many studies are just repeating what already available in the literature. The conclusion came up with two main directions of the future research on children’s development, (1) media as a quasi-human’s external regulator and (2) entertainment as a context of the learning process. Both directions yielded a new phase of learning (Self-Arousal Learning (SAL)) that the future research has to take it into account and consideration. The main topics of the SAL were stated as guidance for the main two directions of the future research.