Virtual Doors Research Articles

Internet security: Who is leaving the ‘virtual door’ open and why?

The purpose of the present paper is to study Chicago residents’ knowledge about Internet security and their utilization of prevention and detection tools. The results from hierarchical linear models suggest that there are significant gender, race, age, and community differences in knowledge about firewalls, spyware, phishing and data encryption, as well as the utilization of prevention and detection tools such as anti-virus programs, pop-up blockers and parental control software. Further, diffusion of innovation theory and utopian and dystopian perspectives toward technology help to explain some, but not all, of the variation in peoples’ knowledge about Internet threats and their use of security measures. These findings should help experts identify those people that may be more susceptible to cyber victimization, and highlight the importance of users’ behavior in the realm of Internet security.

Improving Reference Services Through a Library Website: Strategies for Collaborative Change

SUMMARY Websites are virtual front doors to the university library for many distance education students and for those simply choosing to access the numerous resources available to them through the library from off-campus. A driving force behind the redesign of the library website was to provide a user-friendly, content-rich website that offers assistance at the point of need, wherever the student is located. The University of Oklahoma Libraries' Web Committee's research and development focus combined with a collaborative environment provided a positive impetus for change to the library website and improved reference services to the University community.

Evaluating Electronic Commerce Acceptance with the Technology Acceptance Model

As many retailers struggle with their on-line operations and dot corns close their virtual doors, it has become critical to understand why consumers buy online. This study applies the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to electronic commerce participation using a sample of 138 college students. Ease of use was found to have an impact on whether someone would buy a product online and on usefulness. Usefulness had an impact on the number of times a respondent purchased items online. The number of hours spent using the internet per week had a significant impact on all four measures of electronic commerce participation, whether they bought something online, how many times they bought something online, how frequently and how much was spent buying online. Surprisingly, security and privacy concerns did not have an impact on electronic commerce participation. The implications, limitations and directions for future research are addressed.

Sorting through the dot bomb rubble: how did the high-profile e-tailers fail?

During the late 1990s and early into the year 2000, we witnessed the launch, rapid rise and sudden fall of a relatively new industry…e-commerce. With the widespread use of the Internet, exciting business to consumer (B2C) e-tail opportunities emerged. Sites began selling online directly to consumers, everything from books, to pet supplies, to clothing. This created a frenzy of companies trying to get online, to stake their claim, and to get a piece of the action. The hype did not last. In April 2000, a stock market correction sent prices in the high-tech sector tumbling, and prompted investors to re-evaluate, pull back funding and demand profitability. Many e-tail ventures were unable to survive in this new, harsher environment, and hundreds began to close their virtual doors. Analysts generalized that the business owners were just too young, or too inexperienced. Business models were criticized. Other theories maintained the people running the business were so intent on breaking all the rules that they failed to consider some of the traditional business success factors. Fingers pointed in all directions, to venture capitalists, to investors, and to the entrepreneurs themselves. The following research summarizes literature that seeks to explore the success and failure of traditional businesses, and applies those factors to some high profile failed e-tail businesses. The paper uses five e-tail companies, pets.com, boo.com, streamline.com, garden.com and eToys.com as examples of the hundreds of dot com businesses that failed. Each was a pure-play Internet business with no bricks and mortar presence. These five failures all occurred on a large scale, with the businesses burning through hundreds of millions of dollars in just a few years. Comparison against known factors of success and failure demonstrates that the e-tail businesses were victims of timing and natural industry evolution to some extent, but they also made fundamental mistakes in their attempts to grow quickly.

The University of Texas System TeleCampus: A statewide model for collaboration

The University of Texas (UT) System has been meeting educational needs of students for over 150 years. In 1997, the UT System initiated the development of the UT TeleCampus, a centralized facilitation point for distance learning. The TeleCampus opened its virtual doors in May 1998, focused entirely on support services for students. By late 1998, the TeleCampus had begun developing what would become collaborative benchmark online programs for the UT System.
 
 As a result of having developed over 12 complete online degree programs since that time, many lessons have been learned about (1) barriers to collaboration and how to overcome them; (2) faculty development and interaction; and (3) the commitment required to build successful online programs.
 
 This article describes the UT TeleCampus initiative and how it has grown from a services-only organization to a nationally recognized model for delivering high quality distance education.

Assuring Quality in Collaborative Distance Education Programmes: The Experience of the University of Texas System TeleCampus

In 1997, the University of Texas (UT) System initiated the development of the UT TeleCampus, a centralized facilitation point for distance learning. The TeleCampus opened its virtual doors in May 1998. At the start, its focus was entirely on support services for students. By late 1998, however, the TeleCampus had begun developing what would become collaborative benchmark on-line programmes for the UT System. Since then, in developing more than twelve complete on-line degree programmes, the administrators of the TeleCampus have learned lessons about creating and maintaining quality in collaborative, Web-based, distance, for-credit, education courses and degree programmes. Some of the key issues arising from the collaborative nature of these programmes and methods that are used to ensure that each course meets a high-quality standard are discussed.

Electronic Commerce Security

Current estimates indicate that there will be 500 million users connected to the Internet by 2001. If only ten percent of those users are potentially malicious, there are approximately 50 million threats to information assets connected to the network that an organization plans to use to conduct business. If only one percent of those users represent truly significant threats to an organization, there are 5 million potential intruders that can reach the virtual front door. If only one-half of one percent (0.5 percent) are criminals (a conservative estimate in most demographic groups), there are 2.5 million potential thieves who can try to steal things of value from an organization simply by turning on their PC.