The aim of this activity is to identify and understand the perception of the students towards security, privacy, safety and usage of SWFG in the learning at University of Bahrain. The findings of this investigation, together with hypotheses testing, have enabled the researcher to succeed in this aim.
The overall finding of this activity is that there are no differences between groups A and B when using SWFG tools in terms of security, safety, trust and privacy. However there
are differences between groups A and B in terms of privacy when considering Skype usage. These results provide evidence that the participants (particularly group B) were not aware of the SSPT techniques, and their perceptions of SSPT with SWFG were the same as group A. Furthermore, the researcher has conducted a correlation test in order to identify whether there is a correlation between the usage and trust of SWFG tools and the use of settings for privacy, security, and safety. Based on the Table 5.14, the researcher has drawn the following conclusions, summarized as the following:
1- Secure Gmail has a significant negative relationship with Gmail usage. 2- Secure wikis has a significant negative relationship with wiki usage 3- Secure Gmail has a significant negative relationship with trusting Gmail 4- Secure Facebook has a significant negative relationship with trusting Facebook.
From the previous results, it is clear that secure Gmail, Wikis and Facebook have a negative correlation between their usage and trust. This result confirms the results of the hypotheses discussed above in relation to Gmail, Wikis and Facebook in that the participants were not aware of the security and it did not affect their usage of these tools. However, there is no correlation between any of other SWFG tools which are shown in Table 5.10 when they are secure, private, and safe.
On the other hand, it may be seen in Table 5.9 that most of the participants did not use Wikis and Skype pre-test and there was a significant increase in the percentage of participants using Facebook, Wikis, Gmail ,and Skype, at the post- experiment stage (31.8%, 7.5% , 75.6%, and 33.3% respectively). These results provide evidence that there was an improvement in SWFG tools usage at the post experiment stage. Moreover, Table 5.9 confirms the descriptive results which show that there are clear differences between group A (who use unsecure SWFG tools) and group B (who use secure SWFG
tools) regarding their motivation with respect to ‗satisfaction with performance‘ and ‗Aspiration‘. This means that students in group B have motivation to use SWFG regardless of the security. There is a conflict between this correlation and the descriptive results shown in Table 5.9 and Table 5.10. In addition to that, observations, log files, and interviews confirm the results, showing that the participants were active, inspired and motivated during the experiment. GB1 supported this by saying ―the usage of Skype and Facebook was valuable‖ and she ―enjoyed communicating with other students by the Skype‖
There have been several limitations during the experiment as follows:
- First of all, the research was only conducted at the University of Bahrain (UOB), whereas including other universities in Bahrain might provide a better representation of Bahraini students. This would have enabled the researcher to work towards more comprehensive findings, representative of students all over Bahrain;
- Furthermore, only first-year students aged (19-20 ) at UOB participated in this study. A wider study would comprise students of different stages of their studies; - A further limitation of the study may be the validity and reliability of the investigations conducted, and the lack of participants‘ credibility when they answer the questionnaire. However, the researcher has attempted to minimize the impact of this investigation by using multiple methods of data collection to complete this study. For example, interviews, log files and observations were widely used throughout to ensure that data was collected from different sources;
- Lack of the participants‘ awareness about SWFG and SSPT during the experiment.
therefore their usage were increased;
- Lack of the participants responding to questionnaires and interviews.
Thus, the researcher will focus and concentrate her study on the security and trust of Gmail only, because since June 5, 2012, email has a new security feature which was introduced to protect users from state-sponsored attacks. Additionally, emails have a large user base compared to other OCG tools. Therefore, email can be chosen as an investigation tool in my research.
The investigation of email usage and trust amongst the students in UOB and the UK, and their awareness of these techniques will be discussed in Chapters 6, 7 and 8.
5.10 Chapter summary
The main results of this experiment have been translated into actionable suggestions to be implemented. The study has demonstrated that implementing secure SWFG provides a suitable solution to the lack of collaborative group work in the classroom environment, and can help to motivate the students to trust OCG tools, increase trust in such tools, whilst assisting in the teaching of difficult technical knowledge in a more efficient and practical manner.
Based on the above results, the researcher will conduct an intervention in order to test the security, trust, and usage of emails. This will involve a further consideration of the security that affects the usage and trust of emails. Chapter 6 will evaluate the students‘ awareness of secure email usage.
Chapter Six: Evaluation of the secure email awareness
6.1 Introduction
Based on the results of the quasi-experiment discussed in Chapter 5 which indicated that students were not aware of SWFG tools and do not trust such tools the aim of this Chapter is to reveal the students‘ awareness of such tools when they access email with security settings enabled. In doing so, the researcher has conducted a survey with the students in Bahrain and in the UK to achieve the aim.