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We conducted both a field study and an experiment to examine why college students use laptops for note-taking, and how it impacts their performance in a managerial accounting course. Our study is unique because it takes place in an accounting setting, it incorporates the use of an interactive note packet, and it compares the effect of computer use among students in the lower half versus upper half of academic performance. We found that students chose to use a laptop to complete the notes primarily because of its ease, while those taking longhand notes did so because they felt it enhanced their learning. There was no significant difference in average test scores and course grades between the two groups overall or among students in the upper half of academic performance. However, the use of a laptop had a strong negative effect on students in the lower half of academic performance.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the differences in consumers’ willingness to pay for different types of design attributes due to different levels of specific anticipatory emotions evoked by them. The research aims to show how firms can benefit by leveraging the findings that different types of design attributes – that is, functionality, aesthetics, and environmental sustainability – affect profit margin per unit differently. Further, the chapter claims that design is a core competency that can pay dividends in terms of profit margins for firms. It is important for firms to develop expertise in understanding and leveraging relationships between the types of design attributes, specific emotions, and consumers’ willingness to pay.

The chapter uses the product categories of cell phones and laptop computers in the three experiments to test the hypothesized relationships between design attributes (functionality, aesthetics, and environmental sustainability), specific emotions, and willingness to pay.

The research finds that different attributes of design – functionality, aesthetics, and sustainability – evoke different types of emotions and different levels of willingness to pay.

The data were primarily collected via experiments in a behavioral laboratory.

Firms can leverage different attributes of design to position and price products according to emotional requirements of the target customer segment to match their willingness to pay and maximize profit margin per unit.

The research specifically measures willingness to pay in joint presentation – independent evaluation scenarios to assess differences in how functionality, aesthetics, and sustainability impact willingness to pay.

Information and communication technology (ICT) usage is pervasive among present day youth, with about 95% of youth ages 12–17 years reporting use of the Internet. Due to the proliferation of ICT use among this generation, it is important to understand the impacts of ICT usage on well-being. The goal of this study was to determine the impact of ICT usage on psychological well-being among a sample of urban, predominately African American youth.

Paper and pencil surveys were administered to fourth and fifth grade students enrolled in 27 elementary schools in the southeastern United States. Relationships between hours using various types of ICTs and the frequency of Internet activities on depression, hopelessness, self-esteem, and belonging were examined using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression.

Results indicate that ICT usage has both positive and negative implications for psychological well-being, depending upon the type of ICT use and outcome being examined.

The proliferation of ICT usage among present day youth may actually lessen its impact on psychological well-being. Since the amount of ICT usage does not seem to influence psychological well-being, future research should examine the impact of ICT content on psychological well-being.

This chapter presents a thorough review on the mobile learning concept. It also explores how businesses are using mobile learning (m-learning) technologies for the training and development of their human resources. The research involved semi-structured interviews and an online survey. The research participants were expected to share their opinions about the costs and benefits of using m-learning applications (apps). The findings reported that the younger course participants were more likely to embrace the m-learning technologies than their older counterparts. They were using different mobile devices, including laptops, hybrids as well as smartphones and tablets to engage with m-learning applications at work, at home and when they are out and about. This contribution has identified the contextual factors like the usefulness and the ease of use of m-learning applications (apps), individual learning styles and their motivations, time, spatial issues, integration with other learning approaches as well as the cost and accessibility of the m-learning technology. In conclusion, this contribution identifies future research avenues relating to the use of m-learning technologies among businesses and training organizations.

University spaces are being created without a clear understanding of what students want and how they use informal learning spaces. This research study was designed to examine the students’ study environments to determine what aspects of those spaces are important to students. It also discovered aspects that the students did not notice but were important if they were missing. This study’s design was a visual ethnography using participant-generated photographs and text. The theoretical framework for this study was Gibson’s Theory of Affordances, which assisted in identifying the perceived and ignored affordances of the space and environment.

Since quality cannot be manufactured or tested into a product but must be designed in, effective product design is a prerequisite for effective manufacturing. However, the concept of effective product design involves a number of complexities. First, product design often overlaps with such design types as engineering design, industrial design and assembly design. Second, while costs are key variables in product design, costing issues often arise that add more complexities to this concept.

The management accounting literature provides activity-based costing (ABC) and target costing techniques to assist product design teams. However, when applied to product design these techniques are often flawed. First, the product “user” and “consumer” are not identical as often assumed in target costing projects, and instead of activities driving up the costs, managers may use budgeted costs to create activities to augment their managerial power by bigger budgets and to protect their subordinates from being laid off. Second, each of the two techniques has a limited costing focus, activity-based costing (ABC) focusing on indirect costs and target costing on unit-level costs. Third, neither technique accounts for resource interactions and cost associations.

This paper applies the new method of associative costing (Bayou & Reinstein, 2000) that does not contain these limitations. To simplify the intricate procedures of this method, the paper outlines and illustrates nine steps and applies them to a hypothetical scenario, a design of a laptop computer intended for the college-student market. This method uses the well-known statistical techniques of clustering, Full Factorial design and analysis-of-variance. It concludes that in product design programs, the design team may need to make tradeoff decisions on a continuum beginning with the design-to-cost point and ending at the cost-to-design extreme, as when the best perceived design and the acceptable cost level of this design are incongruent.

Purpose – The chapter provides the reader with an overview of the impact technology has on literacy education and makes a case for utilizing the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) framework for incorporating instructional technology in the reading clinic. The focus then shifts to how instructional technologies can be utilized to enhance literacy learning during a one-on-one tutoring program.

Methodology/approach – The author describes the changing nature of literacy instruction and the need for 21st century skills for teacher candidates and the students they serve. Pedagogical possibilities and instructional expectations are shared through discussion of the technology activities used by teaching candidates participating in school-based reading clinics.

Practical implications – In addition to descriptions of how teacher candidates utilized technology within their reading clinic instruction, the author notes affordances and challenges of integrating technology in one-on-one instructional settings. Instructional uses of eReaders, laptops, and iPads for literacy learning are noted in the chapter for possible replication in other reading clinic programs. Future directions for additional research are included.

Social implications – The chapter suggests how the university reading clinic can provide opportunities for teacher candidates to work collaboratively with students to incorporate technology into literacy learning activities. Working with technology in a tutoring environment serves as a foundation for incorporating digital literacy instruction in teacher candidates’ future classrooms and ensuring that students have the 21st century skills necessary for college and employment.

To identify research work on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the context of young girls’ affective responses to access and use of ICT in developing countries.

A literature search covering the period from early 1990s to date in fields of information science, human–computer interaction, ICT, and educational technologies was performed using relevant databases and Google Scholar. Related literature in the context of specific theoretical frameworks was retrieved and analyzed.

Abundant research exists on ICT in developing countries. However, little empirical work was found on young girls’ affective responses to access and use of ICT. The gendered digital divide in relation to ICT showed differing perspectives on this issue. Generally, affective information behavior is much less observed in empirical research than the cognitive behavior, regardless of age, gender, or culture.

Young girls’ affective responses to access and use of ICT in these countries warrant additional research in this area of study. Findings from research on youth information behavior in Western countries may have little or no bearings on youth in developing countries. The study of young girls’ access and use of ICT in developing countries should account for cultural, socioeconomic, and institutional differences among countries and between societies or communities in a given developing country.

Minimal research exists on young girls’ affective responses to accessing and using ICT in developing countries. The literature review covered in this chapter is grounded in theoretical frameworks derived from varied disciplines, including the field of library and information science.

This chapter presents theoretical and empirical studies that investigate the influence of digital culture on the educational process of university students where mobile devices and the internet have become increasingly present as resources in everyday school life. The researchers investigate how such devices and the internet interact with university environments in ways that change the more traditional academic practices, such as reading, writing, and studying. Moreover, in the context of what has been widely labeled as humanities studies, interest has grown in understanding how “culture” may be studied via varied strands of interpretative lines of inquiry, each configured by different methods and ways of reflection. At master education levels, digital technology becomes even more present as a means of academic activity and, as a result, amplifies the impacts of digital culture on contemporary university culture. The purpose of this work is to study the concept of culture, digital culture, and scholarly culture, and, on a second approach, to review aspects of the development of communication methods and their impacts on university educational environments. As a methodological theoretical procedure, this research builds on authors who have raised practical and scholarly cultural questions, such as Pierre Bourdieu, Pierre Levy, Raymond Williams, Roger Chartier, Anne Marie Chartier, and Bernard Lahire, among others. This study engages in empirical research with students in an Advertising and Marketing course in a private higher educational institution in the city of Araraquara, which is located in the “interior” of the state of São Paulo in Brazil.