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"This book advances the understanding and perception of ICT as a potent tool for socio-economic development, particularly in the context of the developing nations. It provides a compendium of empirical studies, visionary concepts, and research reports on potent ICT initiatives for socio-economic development"--

Studies revealed that the level of success and diffusion of e-democracy is low in the developing nation as opposed to the developed nations where it has reached active participation stage. To investigate users' acceptance of e-democracy from developing nation's perspective, this study employed an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) which integrates trust, perceived risk and task-technology fit. The results supported the hypothesized positive relationship between perceived usefulness and intention to use e-democracy. However, contrary to TAM perceived ease of use shows no significant effect on intention to use e-democracy. Finding also revealed that lack of trust in government and in the democratic process is a limiting factor to citizens' e-democracy acceptance. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s1p477

ABSTRACTWith the changing demographics of the American workforce, the National Science Foundation, along with the U.S. Department of Commerce, has highlighted the shortage of minorities in information technology (IT) careers (http://www.ta.doc.gov/Reports/itsw/itsw.pdf). Using data from a 6‐year period and the psychology Involvement‐Regimen‐Self Management‐Social (IRSS) network theory as defined byBoice (1992), we discuss lessons learned from mentoring a group of Information Systems doctoral students who are members of a pipeline that can potentially increase the number of underrepresented faculty in business schools and who made conscious decisions to renounce the IT corporate domain. While our lessons speak to the need for more diversity awareness, we conclude that effective mentoring for underrepresented groups can and should include faculty of color (though limited in numbers) as well as majority faculty who are receptive to the needs and cultural differences of these student groups. Lastly, we draw on the work ofEthnic Americato provide additional insight into our findings that are not offered by IRSS network theory.

ABSTRACTStudies have shown that it is difficult for people to deal with multicriteria decision‐making situations. Information technology tools such as decision‐support systems and expert systems have been developed in order to help them in such situations. Another tool that has been identified as helping managers understand complex engineering decision‐making situations is multimedia instructional materials. This research investigates the perceptions of business versus engineering students on improvement of their higher‐level cognitive skills when they participated in a multimedia‐based case study that used an expert system to model a complex engineering and technical problem. Two groups of students, business and engineering, participated in an experiment, where they analyzed the case study and made their recommendations. Two questionnaires measured their perceptions on the improvements achieved on different constructs. A structural equations model was developed in order to test the research hypotheses with business students being the experimental group and the engineering students as a control group. The major findings are no significant relationship between student major and higher‐order cognitive skills improvement, business students perceived more higher‐order skills improvement compared to engineering students, both groups perceived an improvement in learning‐driven factor, and business students valued learning‐driven factors more compared to engineering students. These results show that multimedia instructional materials were perceived to be very useful in making multicriteria engineering and technical decisions.

ABSTRACTA significant body of literature focuses on learning mediated by technology (eLearning). We conceptually develop and empirically test a model of trust antecedents with online undergraduate students. Contributing to the student eLearning success literature, we posit that eLearning students require the support of technologies and trust in those technologies to feel satisfied with their learning and perceive that they will have a positive learning outcome. This study considers the effect of culture by comparing the trust and satisfaction of American and Latin American students in eLearning technologies. By conducting this study in two countries that differ in terms of national culture power distance and individualism, we learned that culture directly and significantly impacts trust in learning technologies. Culture also significantly changes the strength of the relation between trust and satisfaction. Future research directions and implications for researchers and higher education instructors are discussed.

ABSTRACTColleges of Business (COBs) have experienced high growth rates in the past decade and many colleges are imposing minimum grade point average (GPA) requirements for students to enter or remain in the college. A primary reason for this requirement may be the belief that students with high GPAs are more inclined to demonstrate higher‐order cognitive skills (HOCS) than students with low GPAs. It is not clear whether the link is valid. This study hypothesizes that students with high GPAs who are taught in the same way as students with lower GPAs will have higher perceptions of improved HOCS. We conducted an experiment in which students, with varying GPAs, at three large universities primarily used multimedia instructional materials. We obtained the students' perceptions of their improved HOCS from their responses to a survey. A regression analysis of the data reveals that the relationship between GPAs and students' perceived improvement in HOCS is significant (p < .001). We conclude the study by recommending that (a) it is critical to use research methodologies to evaluate perceived and actual learning improvements, (b) COB policies to implement GPA restrictions on admission are worthwhile, and (c) case studies need to be used much more frequently in undergraduate COB classes.

This article theorizes the functional relationship between the human components (i.e., scholars) and non-human components (i.e., structural configurations) of academic domains. It is organized around the following question: in what ways have scholars formed and been formed by the structural configurations of their academic domain? The article uses as a case study the academic domain of education and technology to examine this question. Its authorship approach is innovative, with a worldwide collection of academics (99 authors) collaborating to address the proposed question based on their reflections on daily social and academic practices. This collaboration followed a three-round process of contributions via email. Analysis of these scholars' reflective accounts was carried out, and a theoretical proposition was established from this analysis. The proposition is of a mutual (yet not necessarily balanced) power (and therefore political) relationship between the human and non-human constituents of an academic realm, with the two shaping one another. One implication of this proposition is that these non-human elements exist as political actors', just like their human counterparts, having agency' - which they exercise over humans. This turns academic domains into political (functional or dysfunctional) battlefields' wherein both humans and non-humans engage in political activities and actions that form the identity of the academic domain. For more information about the authorship approach, please see Al Lily AEA (2015) A crowd-authoring project on the scholarship of educational technology. Information Development. doi:10.1177/0266666915622044.