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This chapter provides a comprehensive review of research and developments relating to the use of Web 2.0 technologies in education. As opposed to early educational uses of the Internet involving publication of static information on web pages, Web 2.0 tools offer a host of opportunities for educators to provide more interactive, collaborative, and creative online learning experiences for students. The chapter starts by defining Web 2.0 tools in terms of their ability to facilitate online creation, editing, and sharing of web content. A typology of Web 2.0 technologies is presented to illustrate the wide variety of tools at teachers’ disposal. Educational uses of Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs, and microblogging are explored, in order to showcase the variety of designs that can be utilized. Based on a review of the research literature the educational benefits of using Web 2.0 technologies are outlined, including their ability to facilitate communication, collaborative knowledge building, student-centered activity, and vicarious learning. Similarly, issues surrounding the use of Web 2.0 tools are distilled from the literature and discussed, such as the possibility of technical problems, collaboration difficulties, and plagiarism. Two case studies involving the use Web 2.0 tools to support personalized learning and small group collaboration are detailed to exemplify design possibilities in greater detail. Finally, design recommendations for learning and teaching using Web 2.0 are presented, again based on findings from the research literature.

The purpose of this study is to propose a research model based on expectation-confirmation model (ECM) to examine whether interactivity and course quality factors (i.e. course content quality, course design quality) as antecedents to student beliefs can influence students' satisfaction and continuance intention of the cloud-based electronic learning (e-learning) system within the educational institution.

Sample data were collected from students enrolled in a comprehensive university in Taiwan. A total of 600 questionnaires were distributed in the campus, and 515 (85.8%) useable questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Findings showed that students' perceptions of interactivity, course content quality and course design quality positively significantly contributed to their perceived usefulness, confirmation and satisfaction with the cloud-based e-learning system, which in turn directly or indirectly led to their continuance intention of the system. Thus, the results strongly supported the research model based on ECM via positioning key constructs as the drivers with all hypothesized links being significant.

This study identifies three factors (i.e. interactivity, course content quality, course design quality) as drivers from the learner perspective within the cloud-based e-learning environment, and links these factors to students' satisfaction and continuance intention of the cloud-based e-learning system based on ECM. It is particularly worth mentioning that the three drivers can serve as precursors for recognizing the determinants that are crucial to understand students' satisfaction and continuance intention of the cloud-based e-learning system. Hence, this study may provide new insights in nourishing the cloud-based e-learning continuance literature in the future.

Due to the increasing size and complexity of construction projects, construction engineering and management involves the coordination of many complex and dynamic processes and relies on the analysis of uncertain, imprecise and incomplete information, including subjective and linguistically expressed information. Various modelling and computing techniques have been used by construction researchers and applied to practical construction problems in order to overcome these challenges, including fuzzy hybrid techniques. Fuzzy hybrid techniques combine the human-like reasoning capabilities of fuzzy logic with the capabilities of other techniques, such as optimization, machine learning, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) and simulation, to capitalise on their strengths and overcome their limitations. Based on a review of construction literature, this chapter identifies the most common types of fuzzy hybrid techniques applied to construction problems and reviews selected papers in each category of fuzzy hybrid technique to illustrate their capabilities for addressing construction challenges. Finally, this chapter discusses areas for future development of fuzzy hybrid techniques that will increase their capabilities for solving construction-related problems. The contributions of this chapter are threefold: (1) the limitations of some standard techniques for solving construction problems are discussed, as are the ways that fuzzy methods have been hybridized with these techniques in order to address their limitations; (2) a review of existing applications of fuzzy hybrid techniques in construction is provided in order to illustrate the capabilities of these techniques for solving a variety of construction problems and (3) potential improvements in each category of fuzzy hybrid technique in construction are provided, as areas for future research.

As a means of data acquisition for the situation awareness, computer vision-based motion capture technologies have increased the potential to observe and assess manual activities for the prevention of accidents and injuries in construction. This study thus aims to present a computationally efficient and robust method of human motion data capture for the on-site motion sensing and analysis.

This study investigated a tracking approach to three-dimensional (3D) human skeleton extraction from stereo video streams. Instead of detecting body joints on each image, the proposed method tracks locations of the body joints over all the successive frames by learning from the initialized body posture. The corresponding body joints to the ones tracked are then identified and matched on the image sequences from the other lens and reconstructed in a 3D space through triangulation to build 3D skeleton models. For validation, a lab test is conducted to evaluate the accuracy and working ranges of the proposed method, respectively.

Results of the test reveal that the tracking approach produces accurate outcomes at a distance, with nearly real-time computational processing, and can be potentially used for site data collection. Thus, the proposed approach has a potential for various field analyses for construction workers’ safety and ergonomics.

Recently, motion capture technologies have rapidly been developed and studied in construction. However, existing sensing technologies are not yet readily applicable to construction environments. This study explores two smartphones as stereo cameras as a potentially suitable means of data collection in construction for the less operational constrains (e.g. no on-body sensor required, less sensitivity to sunlight, and flexible ranges of operations).

This research aims to examine the relationships between supply chain quality management (SCQM), organizational learning capability (OLC) and product innovation performance (PIP) among small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMMEs) in Malaysia.

This is a quantitative study in which 163 valid responses were empirically collected from SMMEs in Malaysia via self-administered structured questionnaires.

Performing a partial least squares–structural equation modelling analysis, the findings revealed that the relationships between SCQM, OLC and PIP are positive and significant. Moreover, OLC partially mediates the relationship between SCQM and product innovation. Serving as a practical guideline, the results of this study stress the fact that managers of SMMEs need to look into the role-specific context of the firm before determining which practices would be effective for their companies.

The value-added additional testing of the mediating effect of OLC is the highlight of this study. This research represents another leap towards redefining and advancing SCQM, especially for SMMEs in the Asian context.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the link between informal learning and employees’ in-role performance and whether the mechanism through informal learning mediates the relationships between self-efficacy, job characteristics, trust and in-role performance.

Based on data (n = 294) obtained from the firms with the Work–Learning Dual System in South Korea, a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was conducted.

The findings indicated that trust and job characteristics affected informal learning and informal learning mediates the relationships of trust and job characteristics with job performance.

The significant contributions of this study to the extant literature on informal learning are as follows: first, the present study investigates a mechanism and a mediating role of informal learning using SEM, while most previous studies in literature have employed qualitative research in informal learning. Second, this study explores the mediating role of informal learning between personal/job-related determinants of informal learning and in-role performance, which has not yet been examined in existing literature. Finally, this study provides practical implications regarding how organizations can facilitate more informal learning among employees to enhance their performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelationships among coffeehouse brand experiences, customer satisfaction and perceived value in generating patrons’ repeat purchase intention.

The survey sample consisted of 379 coffeehouse patrons who visited an international chain coffeehouse in a metropolitan city of South Korea.

The results of the structural equation modeling revealed that a coffeehouse brand experience exerted a significant influence on customer satisfaction and perceived value. The repurchase intention was found to be a significant and positive function of customer satisfaction and perceived value. Moreover, the result of the metric invariance test demonstrated a significant moderating impact on the relationships between coffeehouse brand experiences and customer satisfaction, coffeehouse brand experiences and perceived value, and customer satisfaction and repurchase intention.

An examination of the moderating role of switching costs demonstrated that the relationships between coffeehouse brand experiences and customer satisfaction, between coffeehouse brand experiences and perceived value and between customer satisfaction and repurchase intention differed across switching costs groups. More specifically, the relationship strength was greater for the high group of switching costs than for the low group.

The present study provides coffeehouse management with a better understanding of the underlying mechanism of patrons’ repurchase decision generation process.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.