University Students’ Acceptance of A Web-Based Course Management System

Abstract

In this study, university students’ acceptance of Minerva is assessed. Minerva is the web-based course management system (CMS) of Ghent University. In Minerva students can download and upload files, discuss with their teachers and fellowstudents, consult their agenda and the official bulletin board, and much more. Students of two faculties (medicine and health sciences, and engineering) were questioned. Only first grade students who had no prior experience with Minerva – except during the current academic year – were withheld. The questionnaire was taken online, about two months after the start of the academic year. It contained scales of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). This way, three models could be tested: TAM, TPB and C-TAM-TPB. 573 usable responses were collected, a net response rate of 40%. The results reveal that there were some interesting differences between students of the two faculties. In TPB and C-TAMTPB, the main predictor of self-reported frequency of Minerva-use (USE) was attitude (ATT), for both groups. However, ATT was the only predictor of USE for the engineering students, while for the medical students PU (positive influence) and Social Influence (negative influence) also predicted USE. In TAM, the best predictor of ATT was PU for all students, but only for the medical students EOU was also of importance for predicting ATT. C-TAM-TPB gives the best insight into how students accepted Minerva.KeywordsBehavioral IntentionBehavioral ControlTechnology Acceptance ModelEngineering StudentPerceive Behavioral ControlThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.