blog post no. 3
MLA Citation:
Bringula, Rex P., and Roselle S. Basa. “Factors affecting faculty web portal usability.” Educational Technology & Society 14.4 (2011): 253+. Academic OneFile. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.
According to its website, Educational Technology & Society is a quarterly, peer-reviewed academic journal. Ultimately, it “seeks academic articles on the issues affecting the developers of educational systems and educators who implement and manage such systems.”
Research Question:
This study seeks to answer a lot of questions. In the introduction portion, it lists the following questions as what it was designed to answer:
(1) What are the faculty-related factors in terms of age, highest educational attainment, level of computer applications and Internet skills, commitment of use of faculty web portal, and presence of internet access at home?
(2) How evident are the web portal design-related factors, such as ease of navigation, information content, availability, speed, and aesthetics, in the existing faculty web portal?
(3) What is the level of usability of the web portal elements (academic transactions and online research) as to frequency of use? and
(4) Do the faculty-related factors and web-portal design-related factors, singly or in combination, affect the faculty web portal usability? (254-255)
I think a less nuanced, consolidated version of the above questions is something along the lines of:
What factors affect educational web portal usability for students and faculty?
Methodology:
The study modeled its methodology after the research paradigm below:
The researchers conducted questionnaires on faculty at East-Manila University. Researchers took note of factors such as age, education, availability of internet access at home, understanding of computer applications, Internet skills and overall use of the faculty web portal. They also used a “multiple regression analysis at 1% level of probability and 99% reliability was used to determine which of the faculty- and web portal design-related factors would significantly affect the usability of faculty web portal” (259). Ultimately, there was quite a bit of statistical number-crunching to show a correlation.
Extent to which this article takes a social informatics approach to the research study:
This study takes a social informatics approach in that it really emphasizes the role of the user base in design and execution; it takes into account cultural and institutional quirks, focusing in on university itself and even the Philippines. It literally gauges the way people interact with this specific ICT, and notes that “web portal programmers should develop a web portal based on the needs of the users” (261). Lastly, it draws to a close with a series of recommendations for developers, such as advocating portal use training. In other words, the study not only identifies the needs of the faculty, but takes it a step further and puts it into simplified language for developers to better execute.
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