USER ACCEPTANCE OF THIN CLIENT TECHNOLOGIES

User Acceptance of Thin Client Technologies

Chapter III: Methodology

Research Methods

As the US army is expanding heavily in Thin Client Technology this survey was taken as implementing Blackboard which is thin client technology software for comfort of US army students,

Survey data was used to insight into trends that were subsequently verified by data discovered in the interviews. Because of the sample size, however, analysis of the survey data was limited to the reporting of descriptive statistics. A larger sample size would have allowed for statistically significant regression and correlation analysis to be performed(Bandura 1986)

The Research Model the UTAUT Model

A number of theoretical models have been proposed to facilitate the understanding of factors impacting the acceptance of information technologies (e.g., Davis, 1989; Chau, 1996; Venkatesh & Davis, 2000). Among these studies, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is one of the most influential and robust in explaining IT/IS adoption behavior. The key purpose of TAM was to provide a basis for discovering the impact of external variables on internal beliefs, attitudes, and intentions. TAM assumes that beliefs about usefulness and ease of use are always the primary determinants of information technologies adoption in organizations.

According to TAM, these two determinants serve as the basis for attitudes toward using a particular system, which in turn determines the intention to use, and then generates the actual usage behavior. Perceived usefulness is defined as the extent to which a person believes that using a system would enhance his or her job performance (Azjen & Fishbein 1980). Perceived ease of use refers to the extent to which a person believes that using a system would be free of mental efforts (Davis, 1989). However, the original TAM model was created to examine IT/IS adoption in business organizations. The model's suitability for predicting general individual acceptance, especially in higher education, needs to be explored. Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, and Davis (2003) developed the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model to consolidate previous TAM related studies (see Figure 1). In the UTAUT model, performance expectance and effort expectancy were used to incorporate the constructs of perceived usefulness and ease of use in the original TAM study. Although the UTAUT model posits that the Effort Expectancy construct can be significant in determining user acceptance of information technology, concerns for ease of use may become non-significant over extended and sustained usage. Therefore, perceived ease of use can be expected to be more salient only in the early stages of using a new technology and it can have a positive effect on perceived usefulness of the technology.

Cognition Associated With Tools Used

The interviews identified two methods through which participants learned how to use online tools. The first method involved formal in-class sessions (provided by Page 153 tax preparation organizations) and online modules (offered by the developers of existing applications). The second method involved on-the-job learning that emerged through trial and error using online tools (Azjen & Fishbein ...