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Paper (refereed) Current Issues and Trends in Information Systems Programs

Recommended Citation: Meso, P N and J O Liegle. An Exploratory Comparative Assessment of .NET as a Pedagogical Tool for Teaching Object-Oriented Systems Design. In The Proceedings of the Information Systems Education Conference 2002, v 19 (San Antonio): §244a. ISSN: 1542-7382.

An Exploratory Comparative Assessment of .NET as a Pedagogical Tool for Teaching Object-Oriented Systems Design

Refereed

Peter N. Meso    [a1] [a2]
Computer Information Systems Department
Georgia State University    [u1] [u2]
Atlanta, Georgia, USA    [c1] [c2]

Jens O. Liegle    [a1] [a2]
Computer Information Systems Department
Georgia State University    [u1] [u2]
Atlanta, Georgia, USA    [c1] [c2]

We employ the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) of information technology (IT) innovation diffusion to assess the suitability and fit of a new IT, the .NET suite of technologies, as a pedagogical tool for teaching a technical information systems (IS) course. The reactions of students who adopted this technology for the completion of a class project requiring them to design and build an object-oriented distributed-system are examined, and their performance compared to that of students who opted for the more conventional technologies. Results of this study indicate that the factors that led to the selection of .NET over the other technologies were consistent with the TAM theory. Those project-teams that opted for .NET performed significantly better on the implementation/deployment part of the project, and reported significantly less technical difficulties than those who used the conventional technologies. Thereby the results confirm the usefulness and the ease-of -use of the technology, as per TAM, in facilitating the completion of the design project. Thus this study confirms the effectiveness of TAM and similar IT innovation diffusion theories as approaches for assessing the pedagogical fit and suitability of specific IT for teaching specific IS courses.

Keywords: Technology Acceptance Model, innovation diffusion, .NET, TAM theory

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