Digital Commons Network^™

Can They Use It? Studying The Usability Of The Canvas Learning Management System At Bowling Green State University, James Faisant

Honors Projects

Students’ use of the Canvas learning management system (LMS) as implemented by Bowling Green State University (BGSU) is a substantial part of their learning experience. A well designed and easy to use LMS not only allows students to be more efficient, it allows students to engage effectively with their coursework. Students’ ability to effectively use the LMS is examined to understand whether the system is usable, and if not, what changes should be made. Research included two distinct elements. First, students were asked to complete nine tasks identified as common tasks within Canvas, while being timed. Additionally, students responded to …

Personal Decision Factors Considered By Information Technology Executives: Their Impacts On Business Intentions And Consequent Cloud Computing Services Adoption Rates, Marcus Lee Smith Jr

Theses & Dissertations

During its infancy, the cloud computing industry was the province largely of small and medium-sized business customers. Despite their size, these companies required a professionally run, yet economical information technology (IT) operation. These customers used a total value strategy whereby they avoided paying for essential, yet underutilized, resources (e.g., full-time IT personnel and computing equipment with excess capacity) by outsourcing most, if not all, of their entire IT function. Since that time, the cloud industry has expanded the breadth of its service offerings greatly and the economies of scale have reduced the unit price point. In addition, research suggests other …

User Acceptance Barriers For Warehouse Environment Mobile Wireless Technology, Anran Wang

Open Access Theses

This research adopted Technology Acceptance Model 2 to investigate users’ acceptance barriers for mobile wireless technologies such as RFID, bar-code scanners and Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) in warehouse environments in Lafayette and West Lafayette, Indiana.

Through survey data collections from two companies that met the research requirement and through statistical analysis of the data, the researcher found answers to the research question.

System functionality is the most important factor in determining the users’ intention to use. System failure would be the biggest acceptance barrier. Secondly, it is critical for companies to establish and strengthen the link between job relevance and …

Big Data And Organizational Impacts: A Study Of Big Data Ventures, Taha Havakhor

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

New information technology (IT) ventures are at the forefront of developing IT innovations. In spite of their importance in the advancement of IT and the unique risks of survival that distinguishes them from established firms, the organizational literature on IT has mostly overlooked new IT ventures. Specifically, Big Data industry is a context where new IT ventures actively change the landscape of IT innovations. However, less is known about the factors influencing the economic success of Big Data ventures (BDVs), as well as the established firms that invest in them. To shed light on these factors, three essays are designed …

Two Essays On Analytical Capabilities: Antecedents And Consequences, Rishikesh Jena

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although organizations are rapidly embracing business analytics (BA) to enhance organizational performance, only a small proportion have managed to build analytical capabilities. While BA continues to draw attention from academics and practitioners, theoretical understanding of antecedents and consequences of analytical capabilities remain limited and lack a systematic view. In order to address the research gap, the two essays investigate: (a) the impact of organization’s core information processing mechanisms and its impact on analytical capabilities, (b) the sequential approach to integration of IT-enabled business processes and its impact on analytical capabilities, and (c) network position and its impact on analytical capabilities. …

Erp Critical Success Factors: Importance Of Erp Consultants In Erp Implementation, Adekunle S. Balogun

Dissertations and Theses

Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP is one of the most popular and successful information technology solution used in many organizations to share information within different business units to enhance and maximize productivity. The system is expensive, time-consuming, and complicated to implement and manage. The difficulties of ERP implementation have resulted in high rates of unsuccessful ERP implementation according to the stories of many organizations that have implemented the solution. The failure of ERP implementation has then led to several studies to investigate the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) that could influence the ERP implementation during and after implementation phases. Some of the …

Improved Sprint Results With Offshore Indian Teams, Fnu Abdul Hasheem

Dissertations and Theses

Due to the cultural and linguistic differences, different time zones, and complexities of knowledge transfer involved in IT offshoring, offshore-outsourced projects are more prone to failure than in-house and domestically outsourced projects. These inherent risks exacerbate the communication, coordination and collaboration between vendors and clients and thus affect various stages of the offshore outsourced software development (OSD).

Communication is a major factor of success or failure for any software project. In offshore software development OSD, communication is more critical than collocated software development. Frequent communication is not always possible due to challenges like time zone differences, holiday customs etc. where …

To Overcome Communication Challenges In Distributed/Virtual Scrum Teams, Priyamvada Walimbe

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this research is to give an overview of a scrum in distributed teams and to suggest ways overcome communication challenges in such projects. In this research proposal, the latest available research on a scrum in distributed teams will be thoroughly analyzed and evaluated to know the possible solutions for communication problems in distributed teams. A review of the literature suggested scrum is widely accepted agile methodology in software projects and also it works best within collocated teams. However, the literature review also proposes that lack of proper communication is one of the main challenge faced by distributed …

Challenges When Using Scrum In Globally Distributed Teams, Sweta Shah

Dissertations and Theses

The interest of companies towards using agile approaches in GSD projects is growing at a rapid pace. On that note, it is extremely vital to consider the challenging factors involved in agile practices such as scrum in GSD projects. However, the remarkable and effective attempts towards precisely identify, synthesize and report the literature on agile practices for GSD projects have always been inadequate (Hossain, AliBabar & Young Paik, 2009).

With the purpose of encouraging research committee to explore and analyze the projects that implements scrum process in globally distributed environment, the thesis paper places great emphasis on challenges involved with …

The Transition Experiences Of International Graduate Students In Clark University School Of Professional Studies, Xuesong Huang, Mingyang Lian, Dang Trung, Jay Sheth, Yuwei Yang, Irina Klimenko

School of Professional Studies

In the last decade, the School of Professional Studies at Clark University has witnessed a sharp increase in international students. More and more international students in the millennial generation have entered the School of Professional Studies pursuing one of the two-year graduate programs: Master of Science in Professional Studies, Master of Science in Public Administration, and Master of Science in Information Technology. In the past, working adult student dominant the program. These students already had a career outside the classrooms before them came to study. The millennial international students have generated new adjustment problems. Some of the transition issues of …

A Case Study On Ppl's Journey To Agile Transition, Jayalakshmi Tenali

Dissertations and Theses

PPL Pennsylvania Power and Light Electric Utility Company is one of the largest power and light provider. PPL was found in 1920 and since then PPL has developed and extended its business over Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Great Britain. PPL performs planning and managing of several different Agile and Traditional projects. This paper will contain the information on PPL value services and challenges faced in developing traditional projects and agile projects. Attaining and maintaining competitive advantage of the company in the market.

Challenges faced by the human resources in Agile and waterfall projects and with the implementation of using latest technical …

Investigating Personal Intelligent Agents In Everyday Life Through A Behavioral Lens, Sara Moussawi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Personal intelligent agents (PIA), such as Apple’s Siri, Google Now, Facebook’s M, and Microsoft’s Cortana, are pervading our lives. These systems are taking the shape of a companion, and acting on our behalf to help us manage our everyday activities. The proliferation of these PIAs is largely due to their wide availability on mobile devices which themselves have become commonly available for billions of people. Our continuous interaction with these PIAs is impacting our sense of self, sense of being human, perception of technology, and relationships with others. The Information Systems (IS) literature on PIAs has been scarce. In this …

Role Of Mobile Technologies In Diabetes Self Management: Technology Affordance Persepctive, Ramakrishna Dantu

Information Systems & Operations Management Dissertations

Diabetes is costly and a leading cause of death and disability in the United States (CDC, 2015). There is no known cure for the disease, however, it can be managed and controlled through self-management. This process involves patients managing a complex set of distinct but related tasks including, but not limited to, monitoring health conditions, tracking medication dosages, food intake, physical activities, complying with treatment regimens, and solving problems that may arise due to illness (Clark et al., 1991; Hill-Briggs, 2003). In recent years, mobile apps and devices (henceforth labeled mobile technologies) have emerged as a promising means to help …

Mobile Way Or The Highway! The Role Of Deployment And Design In Problem Solving Using Information Dashboards, Ganapathiraman Raghu Raman

Information Systems & Operations Management Dissertations

Information dashboards are becoming very popular in the areas of decision making and problem solving. Decision makers use heuristics when facing challenging environmental situations. These could result in systematic errors called biases. How do mobile information dashboards impact these biases? We propose that decision makers are more prone to biases associated with certain heuristics when using information dashboards deployed on mobile devices. Data visualizations on dashboards could be distorted. We also propose that employment of heuristics could increase the negative effect of distortions. There is a distinct bias in favor of deploying these dashboards on mobile versus static desktops. Is …

Effects Of Diagrammatic Representation On Software Evolution Programming Performance—An Experimental Investigation Of Uml Diagrams, Lulu Zhang

Information Systems & Operations Management Dissertations

The fundamental question of the present study is to investigate whether fit between representation and task type matters while developing software. The UML (Unified Modeling Language) includes diagrams that allow developers to represent software artifacts at different levels of abstraction. These diagrams facilitate design, specification, and testing during the software development life circle. However, they are expensive and difficult artifacts to maintain because of the l time pressure that developers in the software industry typically experience. The present study hypothesizes that the selective usage of diagrammatic representations would justify the cost of maintaining these representations. Student subjects participated in controlled …

An Improved Model For Trust-Aware Recommender Systems Based On Multi-Faceted Trust, Peihu Zhu

Theses & Dissertations

As customers enjoy the convenience of online shopping today, they face the problem of selecting from hundreds of thousands of products. Recommender systems, which make recommendations by matching products to customers based on the features of the products and the purchasing history of customers, are increasingly being incorporated into e-commerce websites. Collaborative filtering is a major approach to design algorithms for these systems. Much research has been directed toward enhancing the performance of recommender systems by considering various psychological and behavioural factors affecting the behaviour of users, e.g. trust and emotion.

While e-commerce firms are keen to exploit information on …

Adopting Agile Scrum, Anirudh Chaganti

Dissertations and Theses

Agile Scrum has created great impact on project management. It has shown promising results and return of investment. This research paper fully gives reports on what type of projects actually fit with Scrum. Many teams tend to fail to during the migration and I will be putting forward points which will explain how and what things will happen in the teams during the migration from traditional methodology to agile Scrum. I will be discussing about the problem statements, success and failure factors our team come across during implementing scrum and come up with solution to figure out the ways for …

Scrum Sim - A Simulation Game To Learn The Scrum Agile Framework, Anshuman Bassi

Dissertations and Theses

In recent times, organizations have been attempting to shift from Traditional project management methodologies such as waterfall model to incorporate agile methodologies such as scrum for their project development. The main features of these agile methods include incremental and iterative delivery that allows inclusion of the requirement changes at any stage of the project lifecycle and the most commonly used agile method is scrum. As are result of wide usage of agile mythology in the IT industry, scrum framework is now being taught in various software engineering and project management courses. Even though scrum has been introduced in various academic …

Hybrid Agile Approach: Efficiently Blending Traditional And Agile Methodologies, Rashmi Wankhede

Dissertations and Theses

Agile development, in its simplest form, offers a lightweight framework for helping teams, given a constantly evolving functional and technical landscape, maintain a focus on the rapid delivery of business value. Traditional project management focuses more on distinct and predefined sequential phases. It assumes that once requirements are fixed there won’t be any changes or additions in future. In today’s world however this is not true and development teams have to incorporate changes at later stages to be competitive. This is where agile methodologies have an edge over traditional methods. Agile can handle more complex and highly adaptable projects. However, …

Enterprise Resource Planning Systems In Family Firms, James Nathan Smith

Doctor of Business Administration Dissertations

For organizations that have them, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is an organization’s most wide-reaching information system, sitting at the heart of its accounting and operational structure. Thus, successful implementation of an ERP is critical to an organization’s success. Organizations have long struggled with achieving successful implementations of large-scale information systems, and family influenced firms are no exception. In light of unique considerations for family influenced firms as compared with non-family influenced firms, this research examines the relation between the influence of family ownership in family business and success in implementing an ERP system. This research presents a quantitative …

Management And Organizational Influences On The Compliance Behavior Of Employees To Reduce Non-Malicious It Misuse Intention, Randy G. Colvin

Doctor of Business Administration Dissertations

The widespread use of information technology and information systems (IT) throughout corporations, too often includes employees who choose not to follow the stated policies and procedures in performing their job tasks. In many cases, this encompasses employees who mean no harm, but choose not to comply with IT policies and procedures. The present study frames such compliance behavior as non-malicious IT misuse. Non-malicious IT misuse by an employee occurs when the employee improvises, takes short cuts, or works around IT procedures and guidelines in order to perform their assigned tasks. As expressed, they do not intend to cause internal control …

The Effect Of Xbrl And Social Media On Information Asymmetry: Evidence From Bank Loan Contracts, Dazhi Chong

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Theses & Dissertations

This study analyzes how two information technology advancements, the adoption of XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), and social media, affect bank loan contracting using a sample of 554 US bank loan contracts in 2011. I hypothesize that the adoption of XBRL and social media can enhance information dissemination and mitigate the information asymmetry problem between borrowers and lenders. Consistent with this hypothesize, I find that borrowers that adopt XBRL and/or receive positive social media user opinion in social media enjoy more favorable price and non-price terms of bank loan contracts. Additional analyses indicate that the relations among XBRL adoption, social …

Collaborative Development Of A Small Business Emergency Planning Model, Arthur Henry Hendela

Dissertations

Small businesses, which are defined by the US Small Business Administration as entities with less than 500 employees, suffer interruptions from diverse risks such as financial events, legal situations, or severe storms exemplified by Hurricane Sandy. Proper preparations can help lessen the length of the interruption and put employees and owners back to work. Large corporations generally have large budgets available for planning, business continuity, and disaster recovery. Small businesses must decide which risks are the most important and how best to mitigate those risks using minimal resources.

This research uses a series of surveys followed by mathematical modeling to …

Mediating Chance Encounters Through Opportunistic Social Matching, Julia M. Mayer

Dissertations

Chance encounters, the unintended meeting between people unfamiliar with each other, serve as an important social lubricant helping people to create new social ties, such as making new friends or finding an activity, study or collaboration partner. Unfortunately, social barriers often prevent chance encounters in environments where people do not know each other and people have to rely on serendipity to meet or be introduced to interesting people around them. Little is known about the underlying dynamics of chance encounters and how systems could utilize contextual data to mediate chance encounters. This dissertation addresses this gap in research literature by …

Investigation Of Supply Chain Governance Mechanisms And Assessing Their Effect On Supply Chain Performance In The Manufacturing Industry, Nisha Paul Kulangara

Information Systems & Operations Management Dissertations

With the increasing level of globalization in manufacturing, it is becoming increasingly pertinent to monitor the execution of contractual agreements between buyers and suppliers. These monitoring mechanisms are essential to mitigate risks associated with measurement difficulty, behavioral uncertainty, and environmental uncertainty. Drawing from transaction cost theory and resource dependence theory, this study illustrates frequently applied formal and relational governance mechanisms to ensure a successful supply chain partnership and its effects on various performance measures such as supply chain and innovation performance. Most firms go through three stages of a relationship, namely-contact, contract, and control (Greenberg, Greenberg, and Antonucci, 2012). Once …

Applying Gis Technology In Airport Management, Eleanor Clark

Honors Projects

This honors project involved applying two disciplines to aid in advancing the efficiency of airport management at the Toledo Express Airport. I utilized my geography and aviation knowledge and geographic information system (GIS) skills to create a GIS, a webmap, and a 3-in-1 map-based program that had the capabilities of executing Part 139 Self Inspections, asset management, and work orders. The GIS system and webmap were successfully created to aid in management, cohesiveness, and efficiency within the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, the managing entity of the Toledo Express Airport. For the 3-in-1 map-based program, I worked closely alongside a programmer …

Charlton Fire Department Resident Expectations: Survey And Analysis, Natalie Omary, Jingxin Wen, Junchen Chen, Denis Kornev

School of Professional Studies

The Town of Charlton is located in the heart of the Massachusetts with a resident population of just under 14,000 people. The Charlton Fire Department serves the town for needs related to fire fighting, fire prevention, burning permits and inspection services along with emergency medical services. The Department has requested the assistance of the Clark University COPACE Capstone students in creating and conducting survey in order to get a sense of what the resident of the town know about the fire department and to better gauge their expectations about what the department can provide for them. The survey was formulated …

Cybersecurity Awareness Shrewsbury Public Schools, Brittany Crompton, David Thompson, Manuel Reyes, Xueyan Zhao, Xueke Zou

School of Professional Studies

In the 21st Century, technology reaches every aspect of our lives. As “digital citizens” we must be aware of the dangers both to our technological equipment and our personal information stored, transmitted, and processed on this equipment. The Cybersecurity Awareness curriculum developed for the Shrewsbury Public School district is designed to meet this need, as well as foster an interest in technology and ethical computer use.

Modeling Mobile Website Usability, J Matt Hamil

Honors Theses

Smartphones have become a prevalent part of today’s society. Smartphone users have begun using their phones to make purchases on the mobile web. This study focused on usability characteristics of mobile websites of large retail companies. The aim of this study was to conduct quantitative analyses building upon previous usability research both in the e-commerce and m-commerce realm. A sample population was obtained from a convenience sample recruited from a social media and email campaign. Respondents were asked to visit an assigned website and find three products for a friend, family member, or significant other. The data were analyzed quantitatively …

Hybrid Project Management Approach For Software Modernization, Chintan Bhavsar

Dissertations and Theses

Software modernization or legacy modernization, refers to the conversion, rewriting or porting of a legacy system to a modern computer programming language, software libraries, protocols, or hardware platform. Legacy transformation aims to retain and extend the value of the legacy investment through migration to new platforms [1]. Currently, I am working as a Senior Business Analyst with Blue Cross Blue Shield, one of the largest insurance provider in the United States across the health sector. I am deployed to work on their initiative towards software modernization along the healthcare industry through their software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform – “The Healthcare Online Resources …