Search results

This pilot study aims to understand how mathematics postgraduate students use mobile e-books for learning activities.

The research uses qualitative methodology. It uses interview and document review methods to collect data relevant to the study.

The mathematics postgraduate students use mobile e-books mostly to find information for their research activities. Both the participants have different reading patterns. However, they use the mobile e-book to obtain the same benefit.

The results of the study could not be generalized, as it used qualitative methodology.

This pilot study explains how mathematics postgraduate students use mobile e-books for their learning activities. This is a qualitative study. Hence, it is able to add value to the mobile e-book studies that are lacking qualitative viewpoints.

In this study the technology acceptance model (TAM) is used to investigate non‐users' acceptance of e‐books. This study evaluates the relationships between perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, perceived usefulness and intention, and attitude and behavioral intention towards using e‐books.

This study utilized a quantitative approach where questionnaires were used to collect data from 119 undergraduates from the mathematics department of University Putra Malaysia (UPM), Malaysia.

The result shows that perceived ease of use is positively related to attitude. Perceived usefulness has a significant effect on attitude towards using e‐book. Perceived ease of use also has a significant effect on perceived usefulness. However, perceived usefulness has no significant effect on intention to use.

This study has provided some useful factors based on TAM model on non‐users' intention of using e‐book.

The purpose of this preliminary study is to identify the e‐book utilization habit of postgraduate and undergraduate students from the Mathematics Department of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), and to determine the reasons why students are feeling comfortable or uncomfortable with the e‐book services offered by the library and the role the librarians can play in solving the identified obstacles.

A qualitative approach which employs a face‐to‐face interview session was used to collect information on e‐book utilization habit and to capture perception of the e‐book services offered by UPM library.

This research found that most of the participants use one common e‐book reading habit. Factors such as easy access reduce physical visits to the library and user‐friendly features offer a comfortable platform for the participant to use the mathematics e‐books. However, unreliable service, eye fatigue, lack of manipulability of online features and flaws in the physical design and insufficient e‐book collection cause the participants to feel uncomfortable with the service. Moreover, the role of librarians, publishers and interface designers is perceived to be an important remedy for all the inconvenience incurred.

Only 70 participants participated in this preliminary study. Furthermore, e‐books from a single publisher (SIAM) were used to collect data from the participants. Hence, the size of the population surveyed and usage of a single mathematics e‐book publisher placed certain limitations on the level of detail in which the data collected could be analysed and summarised.

The study is important in terms of obtaining a better understanding of e‐book reading habits among mathematics students and the factors that cause them to feel comfortable and frustrated with the e‐book service offered by the library.

This is believed to be the first published study of mathematics students' reading habits and their perception using e‐book in UPM.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the intention of using e‐books as learning material among undergraduates from an engineering department by using the technology acceptance model (TAM) and gender as its external variable.

A survey through questionnaire was conducted to collect data from the respondents. Data from 169 respondents who had experience in using e‐book were analyzed in terms of factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

The analysis shows that perceived ease of use is positively related to perceived usefulness. Perceived usefulness has significant effect on attitude and intention to use e‐books. Meanwhile, attitude has significant effect on intention to use. However, perceived ease of use has no significant effect on attitude towards using e‐books. In addition, gender appeared to have no significant effects either on perceived ease of use or perceived usefulness.

The study did not utilize the entire TAM where actual technology use is not included in this study.

The study is important in terms of obtaining better understanding of e‐book reading intention among engineering undergraduates who are the real users of e‐books. By obtaining the respondents' perception on their intentions, action can be taken on how to motivate the non‐users of e‐books to form the intention to use e‐books.

This is believed to be the first published study of engineering undergraduates' intention on using e‐books in Universiti Putra Malaysia.