Dr. Rima Shishakly is an associate professor in Management Information Systems at the College of Business Administration at Ajman University. With over 15 years of experience and several publications in journals and books, she is also head of the Management department at the college. After a degree in Mathematics (statistics) supplemented with a post-graduate diploma in teaching, she completed her MBA at the ULB in Brussels/Belgium and her Ph.D. at the University of Manchester in the UK, specializing in Management Information systems. Her interests lie in - Information Technology in Educational Management, E-learning, Management Information Systems, information systems strategy, e-business, and empirical research in educational innovation.
Electronic Books (E-books) have received swift acceptance amongst higher education institutions around the world. Universities, as well as Ajman University (AU) in the United Arab Emirates, has been using technology effectively in teaching methods and learning processes. Since 2013, Ajman University provided e-books to students in different colleges. The purpose of this study is to understand the students’ sentiments about the uses of textbooks, compared to e-books. The study discusses different factors that affect the acceptance or the resistance of students toward using e-books as part of their course materials. The study emphasized students’ negative attitudes towards e-book usage. Of those who did prefer e-book usage, low cost was the number one reason. Furthermore, it discusses the different factors that resulted in students’ attitudes towards e-book use as part of their course materials. The study showed that both the need to learn and technical skills, similarly affect their negative perceptions and reflect the loyalty of students to printed textbooks.
Nowadays, students of this generation, specifically seen within higher education, are progressively depending on the means of technology to navigate through their daily lives. A wide variety of smart mobile and tablets devices are used, as digital ...
English language proficiency is one of the primary requirements for admission to the College of Business Administration, a private university in the United Arab Emirates, with Arabic being its widely spoken language. This study focuses on the impact of English proficiency on the academic performance of a heterogeneous sample data of 760 students with diverse nationalities, ages, gender, study level, and programs, for a chosen semester. The researcher depends on the Export facto study, as the model of Neil J. Salkind(2010), the data extracted from the students' transcripts, which showed the CGPA (Cumulative Grade point average ), English language test score, and the number of credit hours ( Cr.) earned until the semester under study. The researcher keens to examine first, the correlation between the English Language test score obtained by the students and the student's performance. Second, to investigate the proportional forward of the CGPA on related to the number of earned hours accomplished. The researcher raised other concerns regarding the English language course that might be added to the study plan through a student's survey collected from around 349 students whose GPA was less than 2.5 points 47% of the same data under the study
Purpose: All educational institutions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were obliged to remain closed during the COVID-19 pandemic and use online learning instead. This transformation accelerated the usage of online learning and has placed more challenges on higher education institutions in terms of students’ academic performance. This paper empirically investigates the factors that were imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic on these online learning systems. E-assessment and social challenges are factors that need to be addressed as they had not been extensively studied before the pandemic. Methodology: This study was designed as a quantitative research study using the convenience sampling technique to select students. The data was collected using online surveys distributed amongst undergraduate students in different business colleges around the UAE. The research model was assessed based on an analysis of 202 undergraduate students. The data collected were analyzed using IBM SPSS statistics 26, and Smart PLS Structural Equation Modeling. Findings: The results indicate that teaching challenges negatively affect students' performance, while the factors influencing the greatest impact are the assessment, technical, social, and communication challenges on UAE Business students’ online learning and academic performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. A unique contribution to theory, practice, and policy: this study provides a valuable perspective for understanding and explaining the challenges of student online learning and academic performance, as it emphasizes and recommends a reviewing of the teaching methodologies and tools to align with present-day online teaching and learning. Training is essential in order to enhance the academic staff’s qualifications and technical skills during the COVID-19 ongoing situation.
Universities benefit from the merging of classroom lecturing and the use of technological resources to provide an innovative environment for their students. E-learning resources facilitate the process of teaching and learning. Although students use these resources widely, their usage behaviors and the factors the dominate the instructor-students learning resources usage still need to be investigated further due to the fast-growing technological changes and the advanced features of e-learning, which affect the dominant prioritization and the significances of these factors. In order to facilitate this research, a research model was derived from the modified Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in order to observe the factors that influence the instructors-students utilization of learning resources within universities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The research model was assessed based on an analysis of 520 students who participated in the study. Thus, it can be inferred that both peer influence and students’ capability to use technology have no relevant effect on perceived usefulness and students’ usage behavior. However, instructor contributions, course content, and design do indeed have a significant correlation with student usage behavior. The findings from this research advance the understanding of the factors that have a more dominant influence on instructor-students learning resources used in the context of UAE universities.
Artificial intelligence applications (AIA) increase innovative interaction, allowing for a more interactive environment in governmental institutions. Artificial intelligence is user-friendly and embraces an effective number of features among the different services it offers. This study aims to investigate users’ experiences with AIA for governmental purposes in the Gulf area. The conceptual model comprises the adoption properties (namely trialability, observability, compatibility, and complexity), relative advantage, ease of doing business, and technology export. The novelty of the paper lies in its conceptual model that correlates with both personal characteristics and technology-based features. The results show that the variables of diffusion theory have a positive impact on the two variables of ease of doing business and technology export. The practical implications of the current study are significant. We urge the concerned authorities in the governmental sector to understand the significance of each factor and encourage them to make plans, according to the order of significance of the factors. The managerial implications provide insights into the implementation of AIA in governmental systems to enhance the development of the services they offer and to facilitate their use by all users.
The growing use of the Internet of Things (IoT) around the world has encouraged re-searchers to investigate how and why the IoT is implemented in colleges and universities. Previous studies have focused on individual attitudes rather than the integration of attitudes from two different perspectives. Furthermore, other studies have investigated the use of the IoT in non-educational settings, ignoring the effect of the IoT related to the technology acceptance model (TAM) and technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) model. The present work aims to address this research gap by determining the main factors that influence acceptance of the IoT, leading to increased awareness in collaborative learning, where technology forms the core tool in enhancing the use of the IoT. A questionnaire was used to collect data from teachers and students from colleges and universities in Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The data were analyzed through the structural equation modeling (SEM) method. The findings indicated that there are two levels of positive effects on the intention to use IoT. The first level is technology features, which are represented by technology optimism and technology innovation; these factors are crucial to using the IoT. The second level is learning motivation, which has a close relationship with teachers’ knowledge, and content pedagogy, which has a significant effect on familiarity with IoT tools and applications. TAM constructs have a positive and direct impact on the intention to use IoT. The practical and managerial implications show that teachers, educators, and students can obtain bene-fits from these results to help IoT features to suit users’ needs
Despite numerous studies offering some evidence about the significance of quality measurements in enhancing the success of m-learning applications, there are still limited studies about the role of quality measurements in promoting the usability of mobile learning systems. Therefore, our study explores the role of quality measurements in promoting the usability of m-learning systems during COVID-19. The results revealed that the service quality, information quality and system quality are the most important factors affecting mobile learning usability among learners during COVID-19. Moreover, these findings are valuable for classifying the significance of these quality elements, which provide guidance on assigning quality aspects to improve this mobile learning usage during COVID-19 in higher education institutions
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most universities around the world started to employ distance-learning tools. To cope with these emergency conditions, some universities in Jordan have developed “mobile learning platforms” as a new tool for distance teaching and learning for students. This experience in Jordan is still new and needs to be evaluated in order to identify its advantages and challenges. Therefore, this study aims to investigate students’ perceptions about mobile learning platforms as well as to identify the crucial factors that influence students’ use of mobile learning platforms. An online quantitative survey technique using Twitter was employed to collect the data. A two-staged ANN-SEM modelling technique was adopted to analyze the causal relationships among constructs in the research model. The results of the study indicate that content quality and service quality significantly influenced perceived usefulness of mobile learning platforms. In addition, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness significantly influenced behavioral intention to use mobile learning platforms. The study findings provide useful suggestions for decision-makers, service providers, developers, and designers in the ministry of education as to how to assess and enhance mobile learning platform quality and understanding of multidimensional factors for effectively using mobile learning platforms.