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Perceptions of Business Students' Feature Requirements in Educational Web Sites
Author(s) -
Hazari Sunil,
Johnson Barbara
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
decision sciences journal of innovative education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.52
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1540-4609
pISSN - 1540-4595
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4609.2007.00145.x
Subject(s) - computer science , perception , world wide web , web analytics , set (abstract data type) , feature (linguistics) , knowledge management , web modeling , the internet , web intelligence , psychology , linguistics , philosophy , neuroscience , programming language
There is paucity of original research that explains phenomena related to content organization and site design of educational Web sites. Educational Web sites are often used to provide Web‐based instruction, which itself is a relatively recent phenomenon for business schools, and additional research is needed in this area. Educational Web sites are designed with a different set of criteria as compared with other sites, such as those having an e‐commerce or marketing focus. More research is needed to build a theoretical foundation for feature requirements in educational Web sites. As in any new approach to teaching and learning, critical issues need to be examined before Web‐based instruction is fully integrated into teaching processes. When developing educational Web sites, features that support pedagogy should be given primary consideration. It is therefore important to identify key elements that will have maximum impact on learning. Using Q‐sort analysis (a type of Factor Analysis), this study investigated feature requirements of educational Web sites as perceived by business students. Based on the analysis of user requirements in relation to several variables that were identified from a review of literature, group characteristics emerged from students' responses. Similarities and differences between groups were investigated, and implications of these results for development of educational Web sites are presented in this study.