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This study seeks to explore technology use in a higher education classroom with the focus on tablet computers.

Study participants consisted of 36 undergraduate students from Rutgers University's Information Technology and Informatics major. Data were collected using an online survey, a classroom observation, and a group interview.

The study findings demonstrate unexpected technology uses that can be explained by the characteristics of the student group, the Net generation, namely, their impatient multi‐tasking and opportunistic behaviour. Students used tablet computers to take notes, conduct group activities and interact with the instructor. Students’ preference for typing was found to be a barrier in their adoption of tablet computers.

The findings can help technology developers and educators better understand and optimize their use of computing technology in higher education. Limitations of this study include only one class was studied, and classroom observation probed student behaviors only at selected points in time.

The unique value of the study included: the study was not limited to tablet technology and investigated students’ use of multiple technologies; the study captured student behaviors in an actual learning environment, and the study provides empirical evidence for students’ multi‐tasking in a classroom and for their use of tablet computers for hand writing.

The monograph analyses (a) the potential impact of information technology (IT) on organisational issues that directly concern the personnel function; (b) the nature of personnel’s involvement in the decision making and activities surrounding the choice and implementation of advanced technologies, and (c) their own use of IT in developing and carrying out their own range of specialist activities. The monograph attempts to explain why personnel’s involvement is often late, peripheral and reactive. Finally, an analysis is made of whether personnel specialists – or the Human Resource Management function more generally – will play a more proactive role in relation to such technologies in the future.

Examines the impact of the intensity level of computer‐based technologies (CBTs) on quality. The intensity level of CBTs is empirically‐based. The main thrust of the intensity level of CBTs is fourfold. First, the technology must, intuitively, exist. Second, it must be integrated with other available technologies. Third, it must be utilized to a certain extent. Finally, it must have been used long enough to produce synergistic results. Determines whether there are differences in quality among firms with different intensity levels of CBTs. The analysis was based on data collected from 165 manufacturing firms in three industry groups in the USA. These are industrial machinery equipment, electronic and electric machinery equipment, and transport equipment. Descriptive statistics show the following: (1) the level of technology integration is low; (2) the level of programmable automation is also low; (3) most of the CBTs are used as stand‐alone technologies; and (4) most of the CBTs are used in the early stages of designing the product. The results also suggested that differences in quality exist among groups with different intensity levels of CBTs. These findings have many implications for both practitioners and academicians. For practitioners, the intensity level of CBTs, as operationalized here, can be used by manufacturing firms as a vehicle to benchmark their performance against that of their competitors. For academicians, introduces a new measure for operationalizing the intensity level of CBTs. Also discusses other implications.

The purpose of the present paper is to review the impact of information technologies on users of libraries and to understand the problems encountered in their information technology (IT) usage by reference to the concept of “technostress”, the inability to cope with the new computer technologies in a healthy or positive manner.

A literature review was undertaken to further our understanding of the influence of IT based services on the users of libraries.

The paper provides a literature derived set of information about library users who initially find it difficult to cope with the new technology and experience anxiety (termed “IT anxiety”, “technostress” or alternatively “technophobia”). This is bound to affect their adoption of IT technologies negatively. They may eventually begin to avoid contact with computers. Since this avoidance strategy is highly impractical in the modern IT dependent world, the various causes of technostress must be analysed, so that users can be trained to overcome technophobia.

The conclusions in the present paper are based on articles from different sources and not on any field study.

Being a review article, it reflects the problems encountered by a range of users in different countries. The paper also pragmatically provides factors to be considered in designing a training module.

The paper organises information collected from different sources and presents a consolidated picture of the problems encountered by users in exploiting computers in libraries, while suggesting the means to overcome these problems.

This paper aims to critically reassess established approaches to the teaching and analysis of computer ethics, and to propose a revised methodology, drawing on the practical experience of teaching undergraduates in a culturally diverse, international learning environment.

Theoretical in scope, reviewing concepts and methods in the existing literature and developing an alternative inter-disciplinary and multi-dimensional framework.

Ethical analysis can benefit from broader, inter-disciplinary perspectives that take into account the social and economic context in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are designed, deployed and used, and the complex forces that drive their development. A richer analysis of this context enables a better understanding of the specific properties and applications of ICTs which, in turn, foreground particular ethical issues. This can result in a more self-reflexive and rounded appreciation of the ethical, legal and professional issues invoked by ICTs.

The paper develops a revised, flexible methodology for doing ethics which can be applied to any case study or domain of application. It outlines some of the key questions and major ethical principles that are generated by ICTs. The paper has pedagogical value for both teachers and students of computer ethics, but has relevance also for information technology professionals and practitioners.

The purpose of this study is to explore the current usage and acceptance of classroom technologies by secondary math/science education teachers in one community.

Forty‐seven secondary education math and science teachers in one American city responded to a survey about their use and perceptions of technology in their lives and classrooms.

Results indicate teachers use technology more for personal instructional reasons, such as class preparation, than for interactions with their students whether inside the classroom or outside the classroom. Primary factors inhibiting the use of technology relate to time, training, and preparation. Teachers can see the benefit of using technology to promote students’ learning experience. However, teachers are neutral about technology being advantageous for improving in‐class activities.

A significant connection between teachers’ technology acceptance and usage is presented.

Information science has been conceptualized as a partly unreflexive response to developments in information and computer technology, and, most powerfully, as part of the gestalt of the computer. The computer was viewed as an historical accident in the original formulation of the gestalt. An alternative, and timely, approach to understanding, and then dissolving, the gestalt would be to address the motivating technology directly, fully recognizing it as a radical human construction. This paper aims to address the issues.

The paper adopts a social epistemological perspective and is concerned with collective, rather than primarily individual, ways of knowing.

Information technology tends to be received as objectively given, autonomously developing, and causing but not itself caused, by the language of discussions in information science. It has also been characterized as artificial, in the sense of unnatural, and sometimes as threatening. Attitudes to technology are implied, rather than explicit, and can appear weak when articulated, corresponding to collective repression.

Receiving technology as objectively given has an analogy with the Platonist view of mathematical propositions as discovered, in its exclusion of human activity, opening up the possibility of a comparable critique which insists on human agency.

Apprehensions of information technology have been raised to consciousness, exposing their limitations.

Information science has been convincingly characterised as a response to developments in information and communications technologies and as part of the gestalt of the computer. Despite this, it has had a limited understanding of information technology and has repressed or disguised its origins. Its understanding of itself and its potential for contribution to other discourses has thereby been restricted. The paper develops an understanding of information technology. The idea that the computer as a machine is concerned with the transformation of information, not material or energy, is extended to other information technologies. Technology is regarded as a radical human construction, in a position derived from Marx and mediated by economics. On these bases, an understanding of information technology as a form of knowledge concerned with the transformation of signals from one form or medium into another is proposed. Invention, innovation, and diffusion are distinguished as stages in the development of technologies. For modern information technologies, the history of copyright can provide indicators for innovation and diffusion. The mid‐ to late 19th century, in the United States and between the United States and Europe, is identified as the critical period for diffusion. An explanation for this is proposed in terms of the dynamism of the period, its hospitality to innovation, and in the United States continental expansion and developing links with Europe.

Reports on a study conducted in 1998 at the Louisiana State University College of Agriculture on using technology in the classroom environment. Results indicate that students are generally computer literate with 80 per cent either owning or planning to purchase a personal computer in the next year. Eighty‐five per cent prefer computer‐supported teaching that includes the Internet and multimedia classroom technologies. Sixty‐five per cent of students believe that computer‐based technology in the classroom is very important regarding future competitiveness in the job market. Finally, significant gaps were found between student proficiency and desire to learn more about many technologies including databases, presentation graphics, video presentations and Web page design.

A study of all faculty in the Louisiana State University College of Agriculture was undertaken in Fall 1999 to better understand their perceptions and use of technology in the classroom environment resulting in a 55 percent response rate. The study was a follow‐up to a 1998 study of students enrolled in all classes in the College. Like students, faculty were surveyed to discern awareness, expectations, and capabilities in using technology in the classroom. Faculty results and faculty/student comparisons were analyzed using frequency tabulations and paired t‐tests. The study was designed to collect baseline information that could be used for planning and funding allocations for equipment and development activities for faculty in the context of increasing technology capabilities and teaching effectiveness. Results indicated that faculty, like students, are generally computer literate with almost all owning a personal computer; strongly prefer a combination of traditional and computer‐supported teaching methods; and believe that computer‐based technology in the classroom is very important to students’ future competitiveness in the job market. However, faculty’s perceptions of their proficiency in using technologies were significantly higher than the students’ perceptions of these skills.