The user acceptance survey is based on a technology acceptance model, which we have created, that combines elements from both TAM and UTAUT. The research model was created to better adapt to It’s Learning. The reason for creating a new model, instead of using one of the existing models which were presented in Chapter 3, was based on the experience from the It’s Learning survey in the specialization project (Grønland, 2009). As mentioned in the introduction of the report we used TAM and the TAM 2 framework as a basis for creating the survey in the special-
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Figure 7.1: The research model
ization project. When evaluating the use of TAM in the specialization project we found that it could be convenient to use a simpler model with fewer determinants for explainingperceived usefulness. Some of the determinants also turned out to not be that relevant for It’s Learning. Especiallyimage did not fit well with the evaluation of It’s Learning, but also theoutput quality and result demonstrability of It’s Learn- ing was hard for the students to evaluate. In addition to this, we learned that it was important to focus on more areas than just usefulness and user-friendliness when evaluating a complex multi-user system like It’s Learning. Other factors, like the integration of the system at NTNU, and possible support services, had to be taken into account. This meant that UTAUT would be a more appropriate framework model for this survey, as the model distinguishes between four main determinants (See Section 3.2), instead of two as in TAM (See Section 3.1).
Based on this evaluation and the general experience from performing the survey in the specialization project, we have created a new model (See Figure 7.1). The model’s construct and appearance is similar to UTAUT (See Figure 3.4), but there have been extensive changes when it comes to the questions and statements for measuring the determinants. We will base our discussion and evaluation of the results from the survey on the UTAUT constructs as they are presented in Section 3.2. We must, however, consider that we use different questions from the ones originally presented for UTAUT in (Venkatesh et al., 2003). There have been some small changes to the appearance of the research model to distinguish it a little from the original UTAUT. The namesperformance expectancyandeffort expectancy (known from UTAUT) is changed tousefulness andease of use (known from TAM). The names have been changed because we use questions from TAM to measure usefulness and user-friendliness in this survey. Thus, we found it more suitable to
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use the terms from TAM. We also use the termsintention to useandusage behavior as they were used in relation to TAM throughout the specialization project report. In addition to this, we have changed the shape of the moderators in Figure 7.1 to distinguish the moderators from the determinants in the model.
All the statements that we have included in the research model can be found in Appendix A. The determinantusefulnessis measured based on ten statements about the usefulness of It’s Learning, taken from TAM (Davis, 1989). In (Davis, 1989) it was originally 14 statements, but we have chosen to include only ten of them. The reason for leaving out four of the statements was that we felt that some of them were too similar to each other. The statements "It’s Learning addresses my school work related needs" and "It’s Learning supports critical aspects of my school work" was combined into one question as they focus on the same topic. In this case we decided to use the text from the first statement as this fitted best with It’s Learning. It could be hard for the students to define what the critical aspects of their school work are. We also removed the statements "Using It’s Learning improves my job performance" and "It’s Learning enables me to accomplish tasks more quickly". These statements were removed because we wanted to reduce the number of statements concerning the job performance and effectiveness in relation to It’s Learning. These topics were already represented by the statements "It’s Learning enhances my effectiveness in my school work" and "It’s Learning increases the productivity in my school work". In addition to this, we removed the statement "Using It’s Learning saves me time" as the statement "It’s Learning reduces the time I spend on unproductive activities" represented much of the same topic.
The determinantease of useis measured from 14 statements about the user-friendliness of It’s Learning, taken from TAM (Davis, 1989). As opposed tousefulness, we have included all the 14 original statements from (Davis, 1989) in the model. The deter- minantsocial influenceis measured from three statements about how social influence affects the students’ use of It’s Learning. These three statements are the same as we used for subjective norm in the specialization project and they are taken from TAM (Venkatesh and Davis, 2000). The determinantfacilitating conditions is mea- sured from six statements to discover if important infrastructures and services exist to support the students’ use of It’s Learning. For facilitating conditions we have used four statements from UTAUT (Venkatesh et al., 2003) and added two more statements from the specialization project (Grønland, 2009). The two extra ques- tions were important for the survey in the specialization project and focus on the integration of It’s Learning at the university/university college.
The moderatorsage, gender andexperience will be measured through some general questions about the students’ age, gender and how long they have used It’s Learning. The moderator voluntariness is measured by three statements to discover if the students are using It’s Learning voluntary, and is closely related to the determinant social influence. The statements are taken from TAM (Venkatesh and Davis, 2000) and are the same statements that we used for the survey in the specialization project.
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