Contributions

The outcomes of the research described in this thesis present some important contributions to theory and practice, as follows.

1. This study is one of the few to have investigated the acceptance of social personalisation e- learning versus traditional learning in Saudi Arabian universities (classroom learning or traditional e-learning). Moreover, it has investigated Saudi students’ acceptance of the traditional collaborative learning system (Jusur system) for group project work (Chapter 4). Saudi universities have purchased e-learning systems from commercial companies, such as Jusur, with their learning management system (LMS). However, this form of e-learning is not meant to offer personalised learning that helps the individual student and does not offer supporting functionalities for virtual teams. It is directly converted from English into Arabic, regardless of the student’s interests, preferences, background (cultural), or knowledge [20]. The study’s results indicate that Saudi students do not perceive usefulness, ease of use, and intention for further use for the traditional collaborative learning system (Jusur system) for group project work. Social personalisation seems to be needed, for the implementation of e- learning in Saudi Arabia.

2. The research gives e-learning facilitators in Saudi Arabia the main principles with which to guide their introduction of e-learning, at the university level. The results indicate the

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following points to keep in mind, when developing e-learning group projects for Saudi Arabian students.

 Saudi Arabian culture has a high power distance dimension. Thus, students need more support and guidance from the e-learning system.

 Saudi Arabian culture is a collectivist culture. An e-learning system should support social interaction and teamwork within coursework, such as with discussion forums, chat, message and email. This is because Saudi Arabian students prefer to learn collaboratively in a group, rather than studying individually.

 Saudi Arabian culture is a masculine society. An e-learning system should support separation of the genders, when creating group projects, or in social interaction, such as in discussion forums or chat.

 Saudi Arabian culture shows high uncertainty avoidance. An e-learning system should provide guidance with help in the lessons, simple designs with clear descriptions, and a limited amount of data, so as to decrease ambiguity and uncertainty for students.

Additionally, the outcomes give some indications about which parameters can be considered for the recommendation of project topic, group members, communication tools and project task.

a) Recommendations of the project topic could be made according to the student’s knowledge level; skills, interests and personality (see Chapter 5 section 5.5.2).

b) Recommendations of group members could be made according to a student’s knowledge level, skills, collaborative behaviour, and gender (see Chapter 5 section 5.5.2).

c) Recommendations of communication tools could be made according to a student’s personality and collaborative behaviour (see Chapter 5 section 5.5.2).

d) The recommendations of project tasks could be made according to a student’s personality, skills and project progress (see Chapter 5 section 5.5.2).

e) Students prefer self-defined virtual project group allocation, based on system recommendations based on learners’ profiles (e.g., skills, interests, knowledge and

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gender) compared to system-organised virtual project group member allocation (see Chapter 5 section 5.5.2).

f) The results also show that Facebook and Twitter can be used to build the user model and profile (see Chapter 5 section 5.5.2).

3. A main contribution of the research is the design and implementation of a new personalised virtual team project system for e-learning (Topolor 3). A comprehensive literature review summarised current development trends and the existing limitations of adaptive systems for collaborative learning support (ACLS) systems, especially for virtual team project and formation methods. The existing adaptive systems for collaborative learning support (ACLS) systems have only marginally investigated the merging of virtual team project features and adaptation techniques. Therefore, this thesis presents a new personalised virtual team project system for e-learning, the Topolor 3 system. Topolor 3 was created to address the limitations of the existing adaptive collaborative learning support systems. This was achieved by using the benefits of ‘traditional’ adaptation, based on user modelling, enhanced with features based on collaborative e-learning systems and virtual team project systems. The personalised virtual team project features presented in this thesis are defined, along with their implementation and evaluation, via two case studies (see Chapter 5). The research provides an approach for using a student-centred method in project-based e-learning, to support the student’s decisions regarding the following, by providing adaptive recommendations: project definition, based on the students’ knowledge and skills; group membership, based on student profile characteristics; project task, based on students’ personalities; and communication tools. The aim of these recommendations is to offer performance monitoring and dynamic support to the user, so as to increase the acceptance of the virtual group project. Current research has failed to propose such an approach in collaborative project-based e-learning environments. As shown in Chapter 2, there exist techniques and software for creating groups, such as [167], [87], [168]. The limitation with these techniques lie in the fact that they use either automatically formed groups or a difficult process to form groups. In addition, they were not

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initially designed for use in virtual team project learning environments, and can be very time consuming.

4. A comparison between the new personalised virtual team project system for e-learning (Topolor 3) and the traditional team project system was done in this thesis. The results show that:

 Saudi students’ perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and intention of further use of the recommendation of a project within social personalised e-learning was higher than for choosing project methods on their own in social personalised e-learning.

 Furthermore, Saudi students’ perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and intention of further use of self-defined virtual project team formation based on learners’ profiles in social personalised e-learning is higher than that for current/traditional methods of e-learning.  Moreover, Saudi students’ perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and intention of

further use of adaptive tasks within a project-based learning system is higher than that for non-recommended tasks in current/social personalised e-learning.

 Finally, Saudi students’ perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and intention of further use of adaptive communication mechanisms within a project-based learning system is also higher than that for the communication mechanisms in social personalised e-learning.

5. The research has contributed to the methodology for performing research in this area. The study adopted the Technology Acceptance Model and Hofstede’s cultural value dimensions to explain Saudi Arabian universities students’ acceptance of different approaches to education. The study indicates that TAM and Hofstede’s cultural value dimensions are valid models for this purpose, adding to the empirical proof of the power of TAM and Hofstede's cultural value dimensions for explaining acceptance of technology.