The number of the massive open online courses (MOOCs) around the globe is on the rise. Despite the popularity of MOOCs, they have received less attention from faculty members around the globe compared to other less-traditional and digital education models. MOOCs can be challenging for teachers to use. As such, understanding how to facilitate teachers' adoption of MOOCs is very important to better promote their use. The aim of this research paper is to investigate the drivers of teachers' acceptance and use of MOOCs from the perspective of the extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2). An online survey was used to collect responses from university faculty in Taiwan. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was utilized for data analysis. The findings reveal that performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, and price value facilitated teachers' behavioral intention to adopt MOOCs. Furthermore, facilitating conditions and behavioral intention determined teachers' adoption of MOOCs. However, effort expectancy and hedonic motivation failed to drive teachers' adoption of MOOCs. Based on the findings, several important theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Purpose
– Based on the literature on technology readiness, online learning readiness, and mobile computer anxiety, the purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a mobile learning readiness (MLR) scale which can be used to assess individuals’ readiness to embrace m-learning systems.
Design/methodology/approach
– Based on previous literature, this study conceptualizes the construct of MLR and generates an initial 55-item MLR scale. A total of 319 responses are collected from a three-month internet-based survey. Based on the sample data, this study provides an empirical validation of the MLR construct and its underlying dimensionality, and develops a generic MLR scale with desirable psychometric properties, including reliability, content validity, criterion-related validity, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and nomological validity.
Findings
– This study develops and validates a 19-item MLR scale with three dimensions (i.e. m-learning self-efficacy, optimism, and self-directed learning). A tentative norm of the MLR scale is presented, and the scale’s theoretical and practical applications are also discussed.
Originality/value
– This study is a pioneering effort to develop and validate a MLR scale. The results of this study are helpful to researchers in building m-learning theories and to educators in assessing and promoting individuals’ acceptance of m-learning systems.
Most information systems share a common assumption: information seeking is discrete. Such an assumption neither reflects real-life information seeking processes nor conforms to the perspective of phenomenology, "life is a journey constituted by continuous acquisition of knowledge." Thus, this study develops and validates a theoretical model that explains successive search experience for essentially the same information problem. The proposed model is called Multiple Information Seeking Episodes (MISE), which consists of four dimensions: problematic situation, information problem, information seeking process, episodes. Eight modes of multiple information seeking episodes are identified and specified with properties of the four dimensions of MISE. The results partially validate MISE by finding that the original MISE model is highly accurate, but less sufficient in characterizing successive searches; all factors in the MISE model are empirically confirmed, but new factors are identified as well. The revised MISE model is shifted from the user-centered to the interaction-centered perspective, taking into account factors of searcher, system, search activity, search context, information attainment, and information use activities.
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