Search

We conducted an exploratory study of the links found in Twitter tweets. Our results showed that the largest category of tweet links was social media platforms followed by alternative news sites. Government agencies and educational institutions were under-represented. In terms of relevance, about 75% of the links were related to COVID-19 but disappointingly, only 40% of the links were directly related to their respective tweets' topics.

Through the ethnographic survey of the ownership, use, and display of television-related devices of forty households in Singapore, this article frames the concept of Skeuomorphic Domestic Television. This term describes the continued centrality of the traditional “living room television” amid digital media’s portability. Results from the stocktaking of the ownership of television-related devices in the surveyed households point to the narrowing of the digital divide arising from the greater affordability of media technologies. However, within the highly densely populated city-state, it was found that social distinctions from television cultures were maintained in the skeuomorphic luxury of the “TV-Sofa space” in living rooms of surveyed households. Such a space that distinguishes individuals watching television in cluttered rooms against the more communal viewing practices in designated spacious living rooms characterizes the “Analog Spatial Divide” of skeuomorphic domestic television cultures.

Additional file 1. Search strategy.

This paper investigates the Twitter interaction patterns of journals from the Science Citation Index (SCI) of Master Journal List (MJL). A total of 953,253 tweets extracted from 857 journal accounts, were analyzed in this study. Findings indicate that SCI journals interacted more with each other but much less with journals from other citation indices. The network structure of the communication graph resembled a tight crowd network, with Nature journals playing a major part. Information sources such as news portals and scientific organizations were mentioned more in tweets, than academic journal Twitter accounts. Journals with high journal impact factors (JIFs) were found to be prominent hubs in the communication graph. Differences were found between the Twitter usage of SCI journals with Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) journals., Comment: Paper accepted for presentation at 21st International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL 2019)

Although interventions targeting the health of students in schools are becoming common, few studies have examined how health messages operate at the group level in school environments. This study examines the effects of message-based health interventions (extrinsic vs. intrinsic goal framing) in group environments (exergame competitive vs. exergame noncompetitive) on eliciting attitudes and intentions toward physical activity among children and adolescents. We conducted a 7-week school-based intervention program involving 336 children and 259 adolescents in Singapore in which pre- and post-intervention responses were recorded. Our findings revealed the difference in responses between child and adolescent groups. Children who participated in noncompetitive exergames with extrinsically framed health messages and those who participated in competitive exergames with intrinsically framed health messages demonstrated more favorable attitudes toward physical activity. However, the same effects were absent in our adolescent group. These findings suggest that the integration of exergames into competitive and noncompetitive environments can serve as a gateway to traditional physical activity in schools when strategically combined with intrinsically and extrinsically framed messages. Practical and theoretical implications for schools and health educators are discussed.

Today’s health and social care systems are facing a challenge in how to effectively address caregiving for ageing populations facing cognitive disorders and frailty. Scholars and policy makers are now identifying a rise of “hidden form of care”, e.g. informal caregiving, as a phenomenon in support for ageing populations. Across Europe for instance, the rise in the older old adult population has led to a rapid expansion of the number of carers, both professional (formal) and informal. The latter, representing mostly family members caring for their loved ones, truly represents a “hidden form of care”. This can be a problem if formal and informal caregivers are not fully integrated into the healthcare continuum or are not given a systematic support to carry out caregiving in a relevant and safe way. There is currently no comprehensive European-wide legal framework and support mechanisms, in terms of training and education for this group. CARE Campus, an EIT Health programme within the Educational Campus Pillar, is a new model of collaboration between academic institutions, the private sector, and the public sector whose main aim is to support the development of a comprehensive training for formal and informal caregivers in Europe. The initial phase of the development encompasses nine (09) online training modules with a quality control process to ensure that the curriculum is evidence-based, compliant with the national and local regulations, and addresses the needs of caregivers across Europe. The objective is to support formal, informal, and family caregivers and reduce the burden on health care systems, whilst improving the quality of care for older adults.

Presentation held by Prof Theng Yin Leng (CHESS, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) at the 2:am altmetrics conference in Amsterdam in 2015

Maternal mortality is still a serious problem in Bangladesh despite commendable reproductive health care improvements in the past four decades. Regardless of sound provisions for antenatal care (ANC), the focused uptake of ANC among pregnant mothers has been unsatisfactory. Research on the uptake of ANC has so far been only from the health system perspective. Although theories of health behavior highlight perceived risk as a significant factor for people to adopt health behavior, little is known about the association between uptake of ANC and perception of pregnancy complications in Bangladesh. ​Doctor of Philosophy (WKWSCI)

The popularity of social network sites (SNSs) has demonstrated their important role in the digital world, but they have also led to the serious issue of widespread misinformation (defined in this study as inaccurate information in general, be it spread intentionally or not). The widespread misinformation on SNSs can cause misunderstanding, unnecessary anxiety, and even physical damage on users. Moreover, it is a big obstacle that prevents social media from growing into powerful information sources. Research addressing the issue of misinformation can be roughly categorised into three main approaches, namely diffusion analysis, correction and labelling, and user education. However, a gap still exists, since most studies focused primarily on the inaccurate content and the misinformed users. The present study suggests addressing the issue of misinformation from an angle that does not start from the credibility or judgment of the content of misinformation. In this way, a wider population can be targeted: both the intentional and unintentional spreading by the informed and the misinformed. Specifically, the study proposed interventions to address users’ spreading of health-related misinformation on Facebook. The study suggests seeing individual users’ spreading of misinformation on SNS as an information behaviour with underlying motivations weighted heavier than the informational value of the content. Employing social cognitive theory (SCT) as the theoretical framework, three interventions were developed based on the three types of outcome expectation from SCT, namely physical, social, and self-evaluative outcome expectation. Through experiments, the effects of the interventions on user’ negative outcome expectation toward misinformation spreading as well as their spreading of misinformation were investigated. Results showed that the interventions, particularly the one developed based on self-evaluative outcome expectation, were effective in reducing participants’ misinformation spreading. The promising findings yield important knowledge that can direct and encourage further research on the new strategy proposed in this thesis. This study differs from and complements existing studies that focused primarily on the quality of content in SNS messages, together a more comprehensive solution for the spreading of misinformation on SNS may be gained. ​Doctor of Philosophy (WKWSCI)

Recent decades have witnessed a high-speed development of urban area with a large amount of POIs (point-of-interests) being built. A POI is a place with some functionalities in a location-based social network (LBSN), such as restaurants and movie theatres. In a LBSN, users can report their geographical locations and experiences explicitly via check-ins. However, the huge amount of heterogeneous information in LBSNs brings tremendous challenges to develop an effective POI recommender system. Due to the extreme heterogeneity, user check-in decision exhibits two critical properties: (i) diversity; and (ii) imbalance. The diversity property is that the choice of visiting a POI is often jointly influenced by multiple factors, such as geographical and social factors. Meanwhile, the imbalance property represents that various influential factors carry different levels of importance for user check-in decisions. To capture both properties, this thesis proposes more advanced POI recommender systems by considering two perspectives: (i) representation: model the heterogeneous information in a unified data structure; and (ii) methodology: develop more effective algorithms to exploit the data structure to facilitate the POI recommendation generation. For the representation, this thesis explores the graph-based techniques from homogeneous graph to heterogeneous graph with the aim to embed various types of data in a unified space; for the methodology, this thesis proposes a series of approaches from random walk based method, to latent factor model, and deep learning model to effectively employ the graph structures for both general and next POI recommendation tasks. The first study proposes a topic-sensitive POI recommendation model with a spatial awareness model (TSLRS) to exploit the geographical and content factors. Specifically, a homogeneous graph consisting of users is built with user topic preferences based on the textual information of POIs. The neighbors are discovered for each user by a topic-sensitive random walk over the graph. The opinions of neighbors are further aggregated to infer the preference score for a POI. Finally, the geographical factor is also used in the neighbor discovery process to find nearby neighbors. However, the homogeneous graph in first study projects the heterogeneous information into a homogeneous representation, leading to information loss. Hence, the second study designs a novel heterogeneous graph (AGS-IG) by fusing various relations among users, POIs and aspects from user reviews. Then, a novel graph-based ranking algorithm (AGS- RW) is proposed based on personalized PageRank (PPR) and meta-paths to model the diversity property by a full exploitation of both the heterogeneous graph structure and the semantic relations of AGS-IG. Despite the exploitation of multiple factors, AGS-RW fails to model the imbalance of user check-in decisions. Thus, the third study develops a matrix factorization framework (AGS-MF) to effectively model both properties. First, AGS-IG is also adopted to represent the heterogeneous information in a common space. Then, an efficient meta-path based random walk over AGS-IG is developed to find relevant neighbors of each user and POI based on multiple factors, which are further incorporated into AGS-MF. By doing so, AGS-MF not only models multiple factors, but also learns the personalized weights for each individual user and POI. Thus, both the diversity and imbalance properties can be captured in a unified manner. For next POI recommendation task, existing studies mainly model the sequential regularity of check-in sequences, but suffer from the severe data sparsity issue, making it extremely difficult to capture the transitional patterns between POIs. Thus, the fourth study proposes an recurrent model (ARNN) to jointly model both the sequential regularity and transition regularities of neighbors. Specifically, a meta-path based random walk over a novel knowledge graph is proposed to discover POI neighbors based on the heterogeneous factors. The transition regularities of various neighbors are integrated via the attention mechanism, which seamlessly cooperates with the sequential regularity as a unified recurrent framework. In summary, a series of recommendation approaches have been proposed for both the general and next POI recommendation tasks, which exploit graph-based techniques to represent the heterogeneous information in a unified space for more effective POI recommendation. The extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approaches over state-of-the-art techniques. Doctor of Philosophy

The number and percentage of older adults continue to increase dramatically around the world. Subthreshold depression is not often highlighted in the field of gerontology, although it has a high prevalence rate among older adults. Subthreshold depression refers to a cluster of depressive symptoms in which the number, duration, or quality are insufficient to meet the diagnosis of a major depression. Among older adults, subthreshold depression is at least two to three times more prevalent than major depression and leads to many negative outcomes. Among the various depression treatments, which range from biological to psychosocial interventions, exercise is considered to be an effective and cost-efficient non-clinical intervention for subthreshold depression. Exergame is a special type of exercise, wherein the exercise activities are combined with video gaming. Several recent attempts to investigate the feasibility and preliminary effects of exergames as a depression intervention have been conducted. However, because of the lack of rigorous controlled studies in this domain, the true effectiveness of exergames on subthreshold depression remains unclear especially on older adults. Hence, it is important to investigate the anti-depressive effects of exergames and the potential influencing factors of using exergames as depression therapy for older adults with subthreshold depression. The current research sought to understand the application and effectiveness of exergames for subthreshold depression. A systematic review and meta-analysis of ten existing studies were conducted to investigate the anti-depressive effects of exergames. An overall significant effect size of Hedges’ g = 0.23 was identified among eleven trials, which supported the positive effects of exergames on alleviating depression. Findings from the subgroup analysis further identified several significant moderators , such as demographic factors, number of sessions, depression severity, and player interaction. The systematic review also provided the basis and guidance to develop two controlled studies, Study One and Study Two, to empirically investigate the effects and influencing factors of exergames on subthreshold depression among older adults. From the previous depression studies and psychological theories, such as Theory of Flow and Social Cognitive Theory, Study One hypothesised that exergames have a superior anti-depressive effects over traditional exercise. A controlled study with repeated measures was conducted to test the differences in the effects of exergames and traditional exercise over six weeks among 50 older adults in Singapore. Results from the two-way MANOVA indicated that participants in exergames had significantly lower subthreshold depression and higher positive affect over the intervention period than those in traditional exercise. No significant exercise platform effects were reported on self-efficacy over time. Study Two further investigated the potential effects and mechanism of play mode in exergames. A conceptual model was built based on previous theories and game studies. The model implied that play mode might affect depression through the mediation effects of social support and loneliness. This implication was tested using a between-group study with two different conditions of single-player or multiple-player (two players) exergames among 52 Singaporean older adults for six weeks. Findings demonstrated that multiple-player condition led to better improvements on subthreshold depression and loneliness among older adults, when compared to single-player condition. The examination of the conceptual model further supported the mediation role of loneliness in the association between play mode and subthreshold depression. Although social support was not confirmed to be a significant mediator, the findings suggested its potential moderation effects, which should be tested in the future research. This research has several main contributions. First, findings were promising to suggest the implementation of exergames as a regular health programme for older adults, in both general and clinical practices. Second, the introduction of play mode effects opened the theoretical discussion on optimising the anti-depressive effects of exergames and encouraged the multiple-player mode. Lastly, the research highlighted challenges and future directions in this new domain, which include examining the effects of demographic factors, such as age group, gender, and physical conditions, exploring the effects of playing with different people, and calling for more Asian-focused studies. Doctor of Philosophy (WKWSCI)

Although there are studies that highlight how healthcare professionals use smartphones for work purposes, there is a scarcity of knowledge of this phenomenon among nurses – the largest group of healthcare professionals in a hospital. Existing studies are also theoretically and methodologically limited. To address these research gaps, this research aims to determine the factors and issues associated with nurses’ use of smartphones for work purposes in the Philippines based on a theoretical framework constructed using the Theory of Planned Behaviour, Organisational Support Theory, and IT Consumerisation Theory. First, an Exploratory Study based on in-depth interviews with 30 nurses in the Philippines was conducted. Results showed that nurses used their smartphones for communication, information seeking, and documentation purposes to facilitate clinical work. It also showed that several behavioural (i.e., instrumental and affective attitudes, injunctive and descriptive norms, perceived behavioural control, and intention) and organisational antecedents (i.e., perceived organisational support) could influence nurses’ use of smartphones for work purposes. Moreover, a relevant outcome of its use is enhanced quality of patient care. The study also uncovered some organisational issues that might affect how nurses used smartphones for work purposes. In general, results of the Exploratory Study were used to further develop Study I and Study II. Study I identified the predictors and outcome of nurses’ use of smartphones for work purposes. Hypothesis testing used structural equation modelling (SEM) of survey data from 517 staff nurses employed in 19 tertiary-level general hospitals in Metro Manila, Philippines. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis results showed that nurses’ use of smartphones for work purposes is operationally defined by its use for communication and information seeking purposes. Next, SEM results showed that injunctive norm and perceived behavioural control were positively associated with intention to use smartphones for work purposes. Moreover, intention was positively associated with nurses’ use of smartphones for work purposes. On the other hand, nurses’ use of smartphones for work purposes was positively associated with perceived quality of care. Results of the indirect effect analysis showed that perceived organisational support had an indirect effect on nurses’ intention to use smartphones for work purposes through injunctive norm and perceived behavioural control. Study II identified organisational issues that influence support to nurses’ use of smartphones for work purposes from the perspective of nurse administrators – one of the organisational agents where nurses derive organisational support. Nine focus groups were conducted with 43 nurse-administrators from nine randomly selected tertiary-level general hospitals that were part of Study I. The findings showed that the issues were divided on those that encouraged (i.e., problems with existing workplace technologies, absent or insufficient unit phones, insufficient unit phone credits, and unrealistic policies) or inhibited (i.e., smartphone use for non-work purposes and misinterpretation by patients) nurse administrators to support nurses’ use of smartphones for work purposes. Overall, the research findings were used to generate key recommendations on nurses’ use of smartphones in hospital settings. These recommendations can be used by hospitals to develop policies on nurses’ or healthcare professionals’ use of smartphones in hospitals. Doctor of Philosophy

Artificial Intelligence is currently a popular research field. With the development of deep learning techniques, researchers in this area have achieved impressive results in a variety of tasks. In this initial study, we explored scientific papers in Artificial Intelligence, making comparisons between papers authored by the top universities and companies from the dual perspectives of bibliometrics and altmetrics. We selected publication venues according to the venue rankings provided by Google Scholar and Scopus, and retrieved related papers along with their citation counts from Scopus. Altmetrics such as Altmetric Attention Scores and Mendeley reader counts were collected from Altmetric.com and PlumX. Top universities and companies were identified, and the retrieved papers were classified into three groups accordingly: university-authored papers, company-authored papers, and co-authored papers. Comparative results showed that university-authored papers received slightly higher citation counts than company-authored papers, while company-authored papers gained considerably more attention online. In addition, when we focused on the most impactful papers, i.e., the papers with the highest numbers of citation counts, and the papers with the largest amount of online attention, companies seemed to make a larger contribution by publishing more impactful papers than universities. NRF (Natl Research Foundation, S’pore) Accepted version

155 p. As security and privacy begin to be a major aspect of everyday computing, operating systems such as Microsoft Windows XP SP2 play an important role of securing information on personal computers both in corporate and home environments. With the release of Microsoft Windows Vista in January 2007 and Microsoft Windows being the most commonly used operating system on personal desktop computers, it has become necessary to investigate the use of security and privacy features present in these operating systems. Based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Corritore et al.'s Trust Model, a theoretical model was developed to better understand the relationships among, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived credibility, perceived risk and trust of security and privacy features (SPFs) in Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and Microsoft Windows Vista. The study also examined the impact of external variables on user perceptions of usefulness and ease of use, specifically the extent that perceived usefulness was influenced by awareness of SPF capabilities, and the extent that perceived ease of use was influenced by SPF self-efficacy, interface design of SPFs and prior experience with Microsoft Windows, security software and computers in general. Master of Science (Information Studies)

78 p. Although historical and cultural research is pertinent to a better understanding of the people in the Southeast Asian region, only few studies have been carried out to understand the people's lifestyles and cultures. We believe that digital resource that reflects the history and lifestyles would have a major organizational and national impact, and would be of interest to universities, public libraries and national libraries that have large user populations, in tens and hundreds of thousands of users, especially in their efforts to preserve and sustain the kind of rare books which require immediate attention. Master of Science (Information Studies)

73 p. Usability involves optimizing the human interaction with interactive products to enable them to carry out their activities in their everyday life. Usability does not exist in any absolute sense; it can only be defined with reference to particular contexts. This, in turn, means that there are no absolute measures of usability, since, if the usability of an artifact is defined by the context in which that artifact is used, measures of usability must of necessity be defined by that context too. Despite this, there is a need for broad general measures which can be used to compare usability across a range of contexts. In addition, there is a need for "quick and dirty" methods to allow low cost assessments of usability in industrial systems evaluation. It is set to achieve effectiveness, efficiency, safety, good utility, learnability and memorability in the context of use. However, there is always a challenge to show the inherent lightness of usability, more so in demonstrating the objectively and explicitly of its value. Hence, there are not many organizations that integrate usability activities as an integral part of their product development projects as the benefits of better usability are not visible for the management. Master of Science (Information Studies)

157 p. E-learning, with all its convenience and benefits to its users, also has its own problems. This dissertation is about incorporating new ways of improving edveNTUre using design patterns so that the efficiency and effectiveness of the system when used by the students, instructors and administrative people in NTU can be increased.. The overall aim of the study was to investigate whether different types of design features provided in edveNTUre, an e-learning environment at a local university, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), might be effective for learning and to find out how effective these design patterns could be used to enhance users' experiences with edveNTUre. It is hoped that such solutions could increase the efficiency and effectiveness of in edveNTUre when used by the students, instructors and administrative staff at NTU. Master of Science (Information Studies)

The dissertation aimed to explore the various limitations in terms of available information sources to the use of architectural professionals. The research methodology unfolded with an open task analysis that formed the basis for the formulation of the requirements for the design of an Information Search portal (ISP) for architects. The specific user needs and their requirements, the task nature and environment were some of the aspects discussed. The need for an expert’s opinion survey has also been established. A survey was conducted among the architectural community from the National University of Singapore, which had the only architecture school in Singapore, in order to establish the need for an ISP for architects as well as to obtain both the general and specific requirements of the community to tailor the design of the ISP in accordance with their needs. Based on the results obtained from the survey, a preliminary design of the portal had been attempted with Human Computer Interaction principles underlying the design. The design evolution and the schematic content and presentation styles used in the portal have been elaborated. The design was then subjected to a simple Heuristic Evaluation with five evaluators to ascertain the overall usability of the ISP for architects, based on the feedback obtained from the evaluation, suitable corrective measures had been proposed in the dissertation. In summary, this dissertation is an attempt towards a bigger goal of designing and materializing a complete one-stop solution for the information needs of the architectural community. Master of Science (Information Studies)

76 p. The adoption and acceptance of mobile payment systems (m-payment) is imperative for the growth and development of mobile commerce (m-commerce). Despite the various m-payment solutions, the penetration of m-payment in Singapore market and consumer adoption of inpayment services is very low as compared to other traditional forms of payments such as credit cards. Hence research is needed to explore and identify various factors determining user adoption of m-payment systems. Master of Science (Information Systems)

99 p. Content management and metadata tagging are important in today's web portals, internet resources and digital libraries (DL) as they facilitate in searching and discovery of the relevant information resources. This study addresses the issues of resource discovery in DLs and the importance of knowledge organization tools to be utilized in building DLs. Recognizing the importance of hierarchical classification of contents by subjects, the primary objective of this study was to develop the taxonomy structure in categorizing the contents for Greenstone Digital Library (GSDL) software. The proposed methodology introduces the five basic processes that helped to develop the taxonomy structure to be usable in GSDL. Master of Science (Information Studies)

134 p. The Internet had created new sets of problems to many people today who suffered from information overload, a problem that taxonomies could alleviate. Yet, the development of taxonomies needed to consider factors such as subject domain and its users. Since users were important stakeholders that decided the usability and usefulness of taxonomies, they had to play an active role in its design. Guidelines for developing taxonomies were readily available, but most of them pertained to adult users. When users were children, the situation became more complicated. Most current studies with children involved them as active participants in designing the graphical interface of websites, and there were fewer studies involving children in content organization of websites. This dissertation aimed to bridge the gap between the development of taxonomies and the involvement of children as technology design partners by applying the methodology of children-centered design on the development of taxonomies. Master of Science (Information Studies)

A study was carried out to investigate factors affecting database usage of eLibraryHub. The Technology Acceptance Model was used to study the various determinants of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of online databases which in turn affect the intentions to use and the actual usage of these databases. The results show that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use significantly influenced intentions to use e-databases of eLibraryHub. Perceived ease of use did not significantly influence perceived usefulness. Perceived usefulness was significantly influenced by job relevance, output quality and result demonstrability. Perceived ease of use was significantly influenced by accessibility and terminology clarity. Computer self-efficacy was not found to have a significant effect on perceived ease of use. The general acceptance level of e-databases was high among users. The results suggest that the public will use the e-databases if they perceive it to be useful and easy to use. In order to increase the perceived usefulness of the e-databases, attention must be paid to suitability of content, quality of output and result demonstrability. In order to increase the ease of use perceptions of the e-databases, the e-databases must be made more accessible and terminology used must be improved. Master of Science (Information Studies)

This dissertation provided an appreciation of whether Internet search engines appropriately provided an adequate number of relevant search engine results to its Internet users which were also free from any untoward legality. An empirical study was conducted to address the following research questions: (1) whether Internet search engines have failed to adequately retrieve and rank content-relevant search results despite their claim; (2) whether these search results were free from the effects of search engine spam and other means of tweaking web pages to raise their rankings in the search results; and (3) whether search engines retrieved search results that conveniently pointed users to sources of illegal copies of multimedia content. Master of Science (Information Studies)

This research study adapted the integrated Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Task-Technology Fit (TTF) Model to examine the degree of technology acceptance of handhelds in local secondary education with specific application to the use of personal digital assistants (PDAs) for Geography fieldwork. This research aimed to firstly investigate the students’ attitudes and behavioral intentions to use PDA for Geography fieldwork by considering the factors of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, intrinsic motivation, prestige, tool functionality and task-technology fit. Secondly, the suitability of the PDA to support the task of data collection for geography fieldwork would be examined. The study was conducted with a group of 39 Secondary Three male and female students in a Singapore government school. Findings from regression analysis showed that these students seemed to value more on the tool functionality and usefulness of the device in helping them complete their tasks during geography fieldwork. Perceived usefulness of the mobile device was most significant in influencing its acceptance as compared to intrinsic motivation, prestige and perceived ease of use. On the other hand, perception on ease of use and TTF influenced perception on the usefulness of the PDA. Both TTF and tool functionality also significantly affected the perceived ease of use of PDA. Their attitude affected their intention to use PDA for future fieldwork. Lastly, tool functionality also determined the match of the technology to the fieldwork tasks. Master of Science (Information Studies)

The main objective of this dissertation was to investigate the use of visual clues on mobile text entry. Based on ISO 92411-11 on the measure of system usability, an application should be tested on its effectiveness and satisfaction. For system effectiveness, a mobile application was developed for conducting usability tests and tabulate the text entry speed and accuracy. In addition, percevied effectiveness, ease of learning virtual keyboards and usefulness of visual clues were also captured. Master of Science (Information Studies)

However the implementation of such ERP systems in this particular case study have created users satisfaction and acceptance problems. The purpose of this dissertation is to study the key factors or reasons that have a direct or indirect influence on users’ satisfaction in using such Enterprise Systems. Master of Science (Information Studies)

This dissertation applied the Technology Acceptance Model to explore students’ and educators' perceptions towards mixed reality. Two case educational programs were used. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed. Perceptions were positive and key factors were perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, social influence, system quality, personal innovativeness and compatibility. Master of Science (Information Studies)

The objective of this study was therefore to determine if the assumption of previous learning, through formal education, training and experience, was a significant factor contributing to workplace performance in the Public Service Sector. In doing so, the relationships between previous learning and workplace standards and expectations in the modern work environment were addressed, specifically on whether what was previously learnt was applicable at work, and if what was previously learnt relied upon for performance. Master of Science (Knowledge Management)

The need to ensure users' satisfaction level gives rise to the emphasis on usability. To expand knowledge in this domain, a study was conducted with the objective of investigating how different elements of culture affect people's perception of an online healthcare portal. Online information portals are available in different domains like education, finance, healthcare etc. For the purpose of illustration, a healthcare portal was selected in this study. This study, therefore, focused on the relationship between national culture and the usability of an online healthcare portal. The study was conducted using the questionnaire survey methodology. A total of 42 participants from India and Singapore participated in this study. Master of Science (Information Studies)

The main aim of this dissertation was to determine a set of usability criteria and measures set within a suitable framework that could be used to evaluate digital libraries. Using Carroll’s modified stages of task completion (Carroll, 2000), a user-centered framework was used to integrate all the usability criteria and measures. For this study, usability was not confined to the interface, but included how the contents, systems and services components interacted to support the users in performance of their tasks. A broad definition of usability that included ease of use and usefulness was adopted. The criteria and measures were derived from various disciplines including Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science and Library Information Science. They included areas in goal support, accessibility, collections, visual appeal, functionality, help facility, systems status and response, error prevention and recovery, results presentation, task effectiveness and task completion. Focus group methodology was used to solicit feedback on the framework. Master of Science (Information Studies)

The main objective of this study was to investigate of students’ perceptions on whether learning outcomes of Project Work had benefited them. Master of Science (Knowledge Management)

Advancements in technology have opened up opportunities for more creative use of innovation, and in recent years, in the innovation use of Augmented Reality (AR). Despite numerous researches in AR on entertainment, engineering, military and medical field, educational AR systems are still relatively uncommon and unexplored. This dissertation sets out to uncover the hidden potential in educational AR systems among younger students. Master of Science (Information Studies)

Schools in the twenty first century must pay as much attention to how students learn as they do to what students learn. Part of the 'how students learn' encompasses attempts to address student mastery of the processes of becoming informed. The purpose of this study is to assess whether the incorporation of information literacy standards explicitly in the learner outcomes of Project Work would help build the students achieve a high level of information literacy as they progress through the information problem solving or research process. Master of Science (Information Studies)

This study investigated online trust for healthcare Web portals with respondents from Asian countries. In particular, it investigated the severity of violations of Nielsen’s usability heuristics in healthcare Web portals, possible relationship between usability and perceived credibility of such portals, as well as gender differences. Master of Science (Information Studies)

This study uses the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to investigate university students' acceptance of weblogs for learning. It examines the relationship between perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and intention to use weblogs for learning, and also the effect of external variables on perceptions of usefulness and ease of use. Master of Science (Information Studies)

This project investigates the use of technology, namely CBT, to instruct the students into acquiring information literary skills, namely, the Big6 model, through a step-by-step process. Master of Science (Information Studies)

This dissertation reviews the factors and corrective measures that are associated to the software piracy and counterfeiting issues. Master of Science (Information Studies)

The main objective of the study was to determine the use and perception of electronic journals by graduate students in the School of Communication and Information (SCI) in Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). This study involved the exploration of cognizance, that is, knowledge of use and perception, of electronic journals. Master of Science (Information Studies)

The use of blackboard in Singapore Polytechnic was investigated in terms of the usage of IT supporting tools for e-learning. User's perceptions in terms of their familiarity and comfort levels were also studied. Master of Science (Knowledge Management)

The main objective of this project was to develop a digital library of bibliographic data of theses and dissertations for the Asian Communication Resource Centre (ACRC). This project was specifically motivated to meet the needs of lecturers and students in the School of Communication and Information (SCI) of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in using the proposed digital library to browse and search for theses and dissertations. Master of Science (Information Studies)

A mentoring relationship framework is proposed for a youth mentoring program in Singapore. There are six components in the framework. These are, mentors’ personal qualities, good match between mentors and mentees, mutual commitment, reciprocal care, knowledge sharing and fun. A checklist has also been developed to help design a KM system for a youth mentoring program. Master of Science (Knowledge Management)

The objective of this study was to identify the frequency of use of information management tools by construction project managers to help them manage the vast array of information flowing through a construction project. Master of Science (Information Studies)

Examined the information literacy skills of physicians, specifically anaesthesiologists from Singapore General Hospital (SGH), through a survey research using a questionnaire supplemented by qualitative observations of recorded physician online interaction in a specific electronic environment. Master of Science (Information Studies)

This project involves the initial development and study of a web-based claims analysis usability tool. Master of Science (Information Studies)

New HE methodology to address challenges faced by practitioners by reviewing four aspects: context, procedure, wording and setting. Framework was structured to meet laymen’s information needs in medical domain. Developed by enriching Nielsen’s 10 HE with prompts and questions related to heuristic in the context of a healthcare portal. Master of Science (Information Studies)

This dissertation details the design and evaluation on the usefulness of the prototype of knowledge portal for the nurses of the Singapore General Hospital (SGH). The goal of this project is to develop and evaluate a suitable platform for nurses that cater to their needs. It aims to provide them with quick, comprehensive access to all of the resources they need, such as data, software, people, organizations, and learning. Master of Science (Information Studies)

This project aims to find out what nurses want to know and need to know. The results were then used to develop the knowledge portal requirements. At the same time, the contents of an existing Nursing Intranet were analysed in order to develop a knowledge strategy for the knowledge portal. Master of Science (Knowledge Management)

The aim of this study is to identify the preference of learning styles and preference of learning objects of undergraduates in Nanyang Technological University (NTU) of Singapore, and to investigate whether if there is any relationship between them. One hundred NTU undergraduates were surveyed for their preference for learning styles, as well as their preference for learning objects using a modified questionnaire. Master of Science (Information Studies)