sharing experiences on using ict for development

ISSUES AND CHALLENGES OF NEW INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY: SHARING EXPERIENCES ON USING ICT FOR DEVELOPMENT Abbas Ghanbari

BOOK CHAPTER

Evaluation of the Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) Website from International Students' Perception Somayeh Mortazavi Ganji Ketab1 & Zahra Ajri2

1- Faculty of Modern Language and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Selangor, 43400, Malaysia Email: [email protected] Tel: +6017-3338906

2- Faculty of Human Ecology, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Selangor, 43400, Malaysia Email: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

The current research measured the level of ease of use and usefulness of the Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) website in order to determine the foreign students’ satisfaction with it. Any international university can communicate better with foreign users via an easy and useful website, the content of which responds to all students’ information needs. However, a lack of sufficient information for international students may happen in such bilingual websites in which all information has not been translated equally in both languages and the national language is dominant.

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This study employed survey design as the instrument for data collection and a total of 328 international students participated. The results revealed that the level of ease of use and usefulness of the UPM website was high among international students. Although the UPM website had English language problems for users, they were still satisfied with it and could communicate with the website.

Keywords: Ease of use, International Students, Technology Acceptance Model, University Website, Usefulness, Satisfaction.

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INTRODUCTION

In the world of information and communication, the best thing that human being needs is to gain the right and useful information in order to make decision. Due to this, it is important to study about human demands in the age of new information and communication technologies (ICT). These technologies created for people not only to communicate to each other but also help them to get useful and practical information for decision making in different situations.

One of these technologies is the Internet which is a useful source in getting information. More than 10 years since the coding language for the World Wide Web (WWW) was developed, educational institutions, research centers, libraries, government agencies, commercial enterprises, advocacy groups, and a multitude of individuals have rushed to connect to the Internet (Phipps and Merisotis, 2000).

The appearance of the Internet and the WWW has changed many things especially scholarly communication for publishing scientific material and offering information about institutions on the net (Onyancha and Ocholla, 2006). One of the most common services of the Internet is the World Wide Web. The WWW has become one of the major sources of information on academic and research activities. The Internet has potential in a number of areas which has been realized as:  A facility for communication between individuals and groups: the original academic purpose of the Internet.  Providing online access to useful information such as databases and directories: appearance of the Internet makes these facilities more available.  An important tool for representing or promoting the provider for marketing in organizations (Middleton, McConnell and Davidson, 1999). Nowadays the web has proven to be much more than a service, instead it has become a suitable way of offering services in different areas, such as entertainment, communication, education, and so forth.

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Universities and their departments are using website to establish communication processes between educational institutions and their audiences. According to Middleton, McConnell and Davidson (1999), a university website can be practical for staff and students in order to do research, teach and communicate, and it can be a useful tool to advertise the institution. In fact the website changes the traditional form of distributing the information by enhancing speed, convenience and accessibility.

The most important factor which is needed to mention here about the university website or even the other academic website is that, "Who are the audiences?" or "Who is going to obtain the information from the site?" and "What kind information are they looking for?" As a matter of fact the audiences for an academic website are vast. The site developers should take these kinds of information seekers into consideration in designing their home pages.

University sites have numerous potential audiences who are current students, future (or prospective) students, faculty & staff, parents, alumni & friends, visitors, local community (Schwandt, 2005). So the website developers should know what the users are exactly looking for and how they can get it in the easiest way. Of course the users do not want to have encumbrance in seeking the information on the website and that is the main point which is necessary to consider in designing the content of the university website.

Due to the vast of audiences of the university website, it is to reflect users' needs easily and satisfy the audiences, not confusing them in a store of different information. For this reason the website should contain different parts relevant to "internal" and "external" users. It means a website should be able to conduct the users via the "front door", and then the users can find out about the institution, while the internal pages concentrate on keeping staff and students informed of necessary information (Middleton, McConnell and Davidson, 1999).

One group of users who are seeking the information on the university website is current students. It contains two groups such as local and foreign students in international 4

universities. This research focuses on a problem that may happen to those international students who are studying in non-English-speaking countries. The countries which their mother tongue is not English, but they use English as a second language.

The content of these universities' website is mixture of English and the main speaking language of that country. According to some studies on university websites, for example in Lund University (2007), it has seen that some web pages are mixture of Swedish and English, or the English pages contained less information than the equivalent Swedish pages for current international students, so the lack of information were criticized by them (Wedderburn, 2007).

This research concentrates on Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) as an international university which its website is bilingual and designed for local and international students. Malaysia is one of the non-English-speaking countries which tries to attract foreign students in its universities. So when it comes to bilingual websites, web masters should pay more attention to categorizing and publishing web content based on different users' needs.

Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) is one of the theories that studied about the characteristics of an information system on users’ acceptance. So UPM website can be considered as an information system and its function can be studied through this research and based on TAM factors. Davis (1989) said perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) cause people to accept or reject an information technology.

As mentioned before Technology Acceptance Model is considered as the main guideline in this study to determine the level of ease of use of the Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) website from the international students' perception. In addition based on the other factor of TAM this research aims to know the level of usefulness of the content of the Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) website from the international students' perception as well. The last objective of this research is to determine the international students' satisfaction with the content of the Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) website. 5

LITERATURE REVIEW The World Wide Web creates an ever-increasing global information database over the Internet. Thus its importance cannot be over-emphasized ("Importance of the World Wide Web ", 2009). Importance of the World Wide Web  To deliver information in any format, to/from a wide range of computing platforms: Information can be accessed from different sources on the web such as competitors, technology providers, customers, international universities, financial institutions, and many other places. This information is on many diverse computing platforms to present the information for users. In addition to information from external sources, web could also be used as a mechanism in order to share information within an enterprise. Many large companies have several internal servers, and the number is growing very fast ("Importance of the World Wide Web ", 2009).  To provide a client-server environment: Web browsers provide a tested client upon which more organizations are building (or converting) client-server applications. Testing time is greatly reduced, and the application will be available on many platforms with no extra effort ("Importance of the World Wide Web ", 2009).  To simplify access to the Internet: The Internet is rich with information resources and provides access to mail, interactive conferences, network news, but using the Internet gets easier by the World Wide Web as it provides a graphical interface on many platforms with sound and video. The web also uses the same tools as the Internet, but hides the ugly details ("Importance of the World Wide Web ", 2009).  To provide access to the wide and rapidly growing amount of information available: The amount of information available on the web is huge and growing rapidly. A lot of companies, universities and research organizations are on the web today, with many others joining daily ("Importance of the World Wide Web ", 2009).

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UNIVERSITY AND WEBSITE

As mentioned earlier the website has a lot of advantages for all organizations and companies and it prepares a site for them to introduce their services and facilities and also give information to viewers and users. This study focuses on the usage of the website by university as an organization.

Universities and colleges use the Internet for two reasons. First, by Internet a university can follow its mission in gathering information and dispensing institutions. Second the Internet can be a vital tool for academic institutions to offer new educational programs like distance learning and the other services including online applications and registration (Mechitov et al., 2001). William Rice, President of the web Marketing Association said “University web development sits in between a generally conservative fiscally-minded administration and an extremely web-savvy student body. The best university website is able to overcome this gap and provide a wide range of information and tools, such as online registration, to their students and perhaps even more importantly their perspective students” (Hartzer, 2006). There are seven main criteria for the university website to increase the quality of it. They are:

 Visibility of information: The purpose of this criterion is to determine the visibility of the website which dedicates to diverse information of each university, that is to say, to figure out whether it is easily visible from the main page or the home page of the university website. The practical and valuable information must therefore be readily available and who wishing to search for it must be able to find it without any problem. This factor can be measured by being a table of contents or having a search engine on the university home page (Pinto et al., 2007).

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The main or home page indicates everything which located on the website. When the users check it they figure out how this website could answer to their needs. The visibility of information makes the websites easier to use.

 Authority: This criterion says that no matter what is the nature of a work, but a user should know the authority of data and it must be easily identifiable. The presence of this kind of information on a website is vital because authority is a factor to measure the quality and credibility of a resource, both on traditional and digital media. The lack of this information can be considered as a weak point of a resource due to the fact that user do not know who is responsible for its content and it endamages the validity of a work (Pinto et al., 2007).

 Updatedness: One of the web advantages is that they can be modified easily and can therefore be kept up to date. In a world of communication, finding information is easy but users are looking for up-to-date one which is worth for them and it is obvious that an obsolete resource that is not regularly updated is worthless. In the case of the websites, it is vital to keep the web pages updated due to the hypertext which they are based on. If the links are not updated they can become broken or stop working, then the resource turns into something that is of no use to anyone (Pinto et al., 2007).

Updating the web pages indicates that the website is dynamic and providing timely information confirms its existence. When the content of a website is up-to-date then visitors are more eager to visit and check it frequently, because they believe it is the best source for getting the latest information from.

 Correctness and completeness: The coverage of a website, its reliability and whether it offers the most complete and thorough information possible are all factors that must be taken into consideration. The analysis and evaluation of these aspects need to be known what kind of information a resource should offer but fails to do so (Pinto et al., 2007).

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 Accessibility: This criterion discus about how a website is easy to use for its users in order to consult it, regardless of the browser they are using, their physical condition or their language, as well as examining the degree of accessibility for users with some disability. It means that everybody can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with a website even they are disable (Pinto et al., 2007).

This dimension emphasizes that making a website usable for all types of users with all abilities and disabilities. Users can have equal access to information when a website designed and developed well for everybody. In addition to the design of a website which is very important to make it easy to use, the suitable language version should be accessible for users as well.

 Quality assessment: This criterion discussed about quality, which applies to information on the Internet. It means that the content of a website should cover the users' need. It is a factor that involves a continuous process of planning, analysis, design, implementation, promotion and innovation in order to display that the information on the internet can be sufficient for users' demands (Pinto et al., 2007).

 Navigability: The navigation systems and the way interactions are when a site is userfriendly and easy to their users. According to this factor the presence of sitemaps, adequate navigation systems, speed and reliability the site should be taken into account in evaluating the website. Thus when users move around a website should know “where they are”, then they can get the information which are looking for, at all the times (Pinto et al., 2007).

The usability of a website depends to how a website is navigability which visitors find desired information as they move through a site. It means when visitors check a website, it should be easy to use for them even at the first time. Users must easily find their way around a web site from every page and be able to find the information they are looking for as quickly as possible.

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TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL (TAM)

In 1986 Fred D. Davis introduced Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in his dissertation which is based on Fishbein and Ajzen’s Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) in 1975. The dissertation was titled “A Technology Acceptance Model for Empirically Testing New End-User Information Systems: Theory and Results”. He then published “Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology” in MIS Quarterly in 1989. Moreover Davis with Bagozzi and Warshaw published “User Acceptance of Computer Technology: A Comparison of Two Theoretical Models” in Management Science in 1989. Now Davis as a professor at Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas is the most famous researcher in the area of Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 2006).

Technology Acceptance Model" or "TAM" focuses on two characteristics of a system which are perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU). Perceived usefulness is defined as "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance" and perceived ease of use refers to "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of effort" (Davis, 1989). This research is considered this model as a guideline to evaluate international students’ perception towards the UPM website content. A university website as an information technology needs some criteria based on Fred Davis (1986) in order to be accepted by its users.

METHODOLOGY

This study used survey research as methodology and a questionnaire was employed as the instrument for data collection in this study. The questionnaire in this study, guided by the research objectives of the study, was divided into four parts, that is, from A –D.

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Part A contains questions designed to capture the demographic profile such as gender, nationality, studying programme, the semester and the visitation of the university website by the respondents. All this information will give opportunity to know more about usage of university website by respondents in terms of their demographic characteristics.

Part B contains twelve items asking the extent to which the university website meets ease of use characteristics. Ratings on a 1–5 scale with end points of "strongly agree" and "strongly disagree" allowed the respondent to indicate the extent. These questions came from Davis (1989), Pitkow (1996), Levi (1996) and Boling (1997). The items asked about the ease of finding and getting the information from the site, reading, navigating, using the university website and the like.

The questions in Part C were structured to investigate the perceived usefulness of the university website. Ten items asking the extent to which the website meets usefulness characteristics. These items also used the same 1–5 scale. These items came from Griffin (1990) as cited in Lederer et al. (2000), and Claridge and Kirakowski (2005). These questions asked the accuracy and relevancy of the information which has been offered in the website. The rest asked about the factors which can show the perceived usefulness of the university website more.

Part D or the last part of the questions was targeted for users' satisfaction from the university website. These questions asked about the visibility of sufficient information, the language option, the complexity and the helpfulness of the university website and the overall satisfaction.

University Putra Malaysia (UPM) had 1713 foreign students from 43 countries, and then the sample size was calculated by using Israel (1992) formula. The total sample size in UPM was 324 international students. The researcher piloted the questionnaire with 32 international students in University Putra Malaysia (UPM) through their e-mails in order to determine the validity and reliability of the instrument. The results of the test met the requirement of 0.70 Cronbach‘s Alpha value for reliability test in social science studies. 11

Simple random sampling method was employed for data gathering in this research. Those students who were international and were doing their PhD and master in UPM were participated in sampling. The researcher asked the nationality of the foreign students in order to have different foreign respondents in the study. Consequently, in enhancing reliability and validity, so that the findings could be generalized from the sample to the population under investigation, the sample size in this study consisted of 356 respondents – an increase of 10 percent to the sample size determined by method of calculation.

The questionnaires were delivered face-to-face by the researcher and drop-off and pickup method was employed to gather the data among the international students. Out of the 356 questionnaires distributed, a total of 328 questionnaires were returned and appropriate for analyzing.

DATA ANALYSIS

The data were analyzed by using the SPSS, a statistical computer programme. Frequency distribution and measure of central tendency were used in data analysis. From here the descriptive analysis statistics such as mean, standard deviation and percentage were tabulated.

The range categories used in the present study to investigate the level of usefulness and ease of use of the UPM university website. The lowest and highest scores were determined according to the number of items used in the measurement. Responses to the items were made on five point Likert scale ranging from 5 as strongly agree/agree/neutral/disagree and 1 as strongly disagree indicating their level of agreement for the items tested.

The score for each item was then summed up to determine the lowest and highest value. The minimum value was subtracted from the maximum value and divided by three. The resulting figure formed the range value between the three categories; low, medium, and high. 12

SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS

Demographic Characteristics of the Respondents From the total of 328 respondents who participated in this study, more than half were male while the rest were female. They were doing their master and PhD from first to eighth semester. Out of 328 respondents, 89 percent were from Middle East (Iran, Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Libyan). Southeast Asia students (Indonesia, Philippine, Vietnam, and Myanmar) were 4 percent of the total respondents. The next group was African students (Ethiopia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Namibia) who were 4 percent of all the respondents and there was 3 percent from South Asia (Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan).

The findings indicated that all the respondents visited the UPM website and more than half of the international students have visited the website at least once a week. The other respondents have visited the website at least once a day, once a month and once a semester respectively.

Level of Perceived Ease of Use of the UPM Website The total number of items used to measure perceived ease of use of the website was 12 with the lowest score of 12 and the maximum score of 60. The minimum value was subtracted from the maximum value and divided by three. Scores of the perceived ease of use items were summed to obtain a composite score with the higher scores (45 - 60), moderate scores (29 - 44) and low scores (12 - 28) representing high, moderate and low level of perceived ease of use respectively (Table 1).

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Table 1: Level of Perceived Ease of Use of the UPM Website Based on the International Students' Perception (n: 328) Level of Perceived Ease of Use Low (12 - 28) Moderate (29 - 44) High (45 - 60) Mean = 42.51

SD = 6.60

Frequency

Percentage

46

14.1

93

28.3

189

57.6

Min = 12

Max = 60

Table 1 presented that the level of perceived ease of use of the UPM website among the international students was high based on the score categories.

As the results indicated the high level of perceived ease of use, but it was found that the international students had troubles using the UPM website for the first time and they found it hard to use at the beginning. Some of the respondents complained about loading of the UPM website, especially when they were out of campus or Malaysia. They said during the registration time, student's profile was hard to open and they had problem with it.

In this part, most of the international students mentioned that they need more detailed information from the UPM website. This study indicated that students expect a lot from their university's website and they are looking for all the information which require.

This research indicated that understandable and appropriate graphics, terms and keywords which can navigate the users to their goals make a website easy to use. The color and fonts of web pages are necessary factors within the website which make the pages easy to read. With elaboration to TAM it seemed that on the first step the users perceived the UPM website easy to use and they had no specific problem in system usage.

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Level of Perceived Usefulness of the UPM Website To determining the level of perceived usefulness of the website, the minimum and maximum scores were determined by summing up the responses of items for each variable on five-point Likert scale. Then the minimum score was subtracted from the maximum score and divided by the number of category to low (10 – 23), moderate (24 – 36), and high (37 – 50). As shown in Table 2, the observed mean score for perceived usefulness was 34.95, with a standard deviation of 5.60.

Table 2: Level of Perceived Usefulness of UPM Website based on the International Students' Perception (n: 328) Level of Perceived Frequency Percentage Usefulness Low 45 13.7 (10 - 23) Moderate 102 31.2 (24 - 36) High 181 55.1 (37 - 50) Mean = 34.95 SD = 5.60 Min = 10 Max = 50 When the scores were classified into the three categories the finding seems to suggest that the level of perceived usefulness of the UPM website to be high based on the scores categories.

Based on the findings, international students believed that the information which is located within the UPM website is accurate and relevant. Meaning that the information which they find on the website helps them to know about what they are looking for. It shows that they agreed that all the information within the website is useful for students and there is no useless content.

In addition, the respondents mentioned that the links on the UPM website guided them to the useful information and information was relevant to their needs. Foreign students expected to know about latest news and happenings in the campus through the UPM website. The respondents believed that an academic website should be the first place to

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notice about events which relates to the university, as it is the most accessible and available source for the students wherever they are.

Some of the respondents mentioned that they liked to know more about academic staffs and lecturers and contact them via the UPM website, but it did not serve them well in these matters. They needed to have online access to the lecturers' notes and assignments through the website. This research indicated that accurate and relevant information makes a website usable. Any keys, buttons and links in an academic website should have something value to say for users. With elaboration to TAM it seemed that on the other step the users perceived the content of the UPM website useful.

Level of International Students' Satisfaction To determining the level of the international satisfaction, the minimum and maximum scores were determined by summing up the responses of items for each variable on fivepoint Likert scale. Then the minimum score was subtracted from the maximum score and divided by the number of category to low (10 – 23), moderate (24 – 36), and high (37 – 50). As shown in Table 3, the observed mean score for perceived usefulness was 35.11, with a standard deviation of 4.96.

Table 3: Level of Satisfaction of International Students (N = 328) Level of satisfaction Low (10 - 23) Moderate (24 - 36) High (37 - 50) Mean = 35.11

SD = 4.96

Frequency

Percentage

49

15.0

89

27.0

190

58.0

Min = 10

Max = 50

When the scores were classified into the three categories the finding seemed to suggest that the level of satisfaction towards the UPM website among the international students to be high.

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One of the major problems of the UPM website was English problem for foreign users. UPM website had so many web pages which did not have English option to convert from Malay to English, or if they had they would not convert. The results indicated that international students have encountered with this problem during the web using.

On the other side, the findings showed that UPM website had understandable language for users and the written language was simple for students. The mean value indicated that International students were satisfied with the UPM website, as they have visited the UPM website frequently during the semester and that information which they have gotten from the website had been clear enough but this website needed to be improved more.

Conclusion, Implications and Recommendations

This study confirmed that websites usage has depended on the usefulness and ease of use of the site. The findings of this study provided some useful information about these two criteria. The most important factor for the users is to have access to useful content and receive practical information through an academic website. Website managers should pay more attention to users' inquiries and try to provide acceptable information to the users. Based on this research useful content had much more effects on students compared with ease of use. But an easy website is important too.

Using animated graphics and flash for the website make it live and attractive, but it affects on the speed of loading of web pages, especially in areas with low speed Internet connection. University website should be more accessible and informative and web designers should consider different users in diverse regions. A good university website is available for everybody, even those who do not have access to high-speed Internet connection.

The results of the study showed that the students expected to get detailed information from an academic web. Web masters should manage the content based on the users' inquiries and try to follow their expectation from a university website. 17

Bilingual university websites should consider the diversity aspect of their users. The language of the website should be able to satisfy all users, and translation of entire information should be equal on website and one language should not be dominant. The current study suggests that academic websites design a web with more than two languages in order to satisfy their users better.

There are some factors which can help the web designers to develop an easier academic website. For instance the information should be available easily, not to push the users to ask the other to find it for them or search it from different sources instead the website. It means that all options and keywords should be visible in a website for recognition and make the usage as easy as possible. The results indicated that the accessibility of the information encourage users to know more about the university.

It is recommended for web designers to consider that web visitors are not able to classify their information requirements into restrictive groupings evident at so many university sites. So designers should not narrowly categorize users, because of the modern and vast environment of higher education, great diversity among current and future students.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

1. The subject of the study can be extended to other universities and organizations in Malaysia or even in the other non-English language countries which their websites have foreign visitors. 2. Future researches could include academic staffs and lectures to evaluate the content of an academic website from their views. 3. The respondents in this study were highly educated and experienced at using the Internet. Investigating ease of use and usefulness measures with less educated and more inexperienced web users may provide additional validation of TAM and interesting insights about ease of use and usefulness.

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