Florence Mwagwabi

This study was conducted to explore education delivery formats aligned with Pakistan’s Vision 2030 for education. Data were obtained from focus group discussions conducted with 31 students (10 female, 21 male) from three mainstream Pakistani universities. Qualitative data were analysed thematically. The authors’ findings show that students were excited about the flexibility offered by mobile learning and the opportunity to collaborate with peers and teachers from home and other locations at various times. However, they also reported a number of challenges, such as cost, a lack of awareness, and universities’ failure to invest in mobile learning course design. The study’s findings and implications for practice are presented in order to help facilitate the implementation of mobile learning in developing countries, both in higher education and in other sectors, such as training, workplace learning and educational outreach to serve remote and disadvantaged communities (e.g. out-of-school children).

The role of information systems (IS) in sustainability has increased, and so has the demand for sustainability skills and competencies as organisations and people pursue sustainable ways of operating and living for the planet, the plants, the people, and the profit. Educational institutions are critical in enabling sustainable development as they provide learning environments for sustainability education (SE). Universities worldwide are integrating SE into curricula to enable learners to develop essential sustainability competencies for various industries.

The IS curricula need a clear agenda for integrating SE to develop the essential skills and competencies for sustainable design and use of IS. Yet, the IS discipline lays the foundation for rethinking diverse information technologies (IT) in organisations and the everyday lives of individuals and groups.

We propose a critical investigation of how IS academics integrate SE into the current IS curricula. The study will reveal how the integrations are mapped to the Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs), the economic, social and governance (ESG) framework, and the external curricular bodies such as the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The investigation will reveal the targeted sustainability competencies essential for IS practice. The anticipated outcomes are intended to guide the integration of SE in IS curricula in universities and develop critical sustainability competencies for enduring IS practice.

With the ongoing challenges of COVID-19, global economies continue to face uncertainties, widespread workforce volatility and employment challenges. During a sustained crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, university students’ self-perceptions about their employability and future career choices in their chosen industry sectors may be affected. Therefore, this study investigates graduate employability concerns and the perceptions of undergraduate students regarding employment prospects and future job security confidence in their disciplines’ industry sectors in light of this global crisis. Through the employment of a mixed methods design, the study investigates the perceptions of graduating students from three disciplines in Singapore: Tourism, Communications and Information Technology. The findings indicate that COVID-19 had a positive impact on perceptions of jobs that could be performed from home and those in essential services. Concurrently, there were notable variances in the students’ perceptions regarding career prospects and job security confidence across the three disciplines with regard to the impact of the crisis on their industry sectors in general and themselves individually.

This study adopts an experimental design to investigate the effectiveness of a password hygiene training programme. The password hygiene training programme adopted the Protection Motivation Theory’s framework in its development, and was delivered online to 84 students aged 13 to 16. Strength of password measures, such as time taken, and number of tries required, to crack the password, were administered pre and post intervention. The findings revealed that the password hygiene training programme was effective in changing actual password setting behaviour. This study also provided hints on which perceptual changes, based on the theory’s framework, was most influential in the exercise.

What drives teenagers to comply with computer password guidelines? Using an extended form of protection motivation theory (PMT) (Rogers, 1983), we found that even if teenage computer users believe they are susceptible to being hacked, or that being hacked would be detrimental, it has no bearing on their password choices. Other motives outside of PMT also drive teenage security behaviour. Personal norms fully mediate the relationship between the perceived severity of threat and compliance intentions such that perceived severity is not sufficient to encourage compliance. Teenagers must actually feel obligated to comply. While personal norms may encourage compliance, concerns about feeling embarrassed or ashamed if their social media accounts are hacked into actually encourages compliance. On the other hand, peer influence, such as the fear of being teased about someone hacking into their account, discourages compliance. Our study contributes to understanding early security practices and highlights potential differences between adult and teenage behaviours to consider in future studies. For example, our findings suggest that password security guidelines alone will not suffice to ensure teenage compliance; they may need enforced password rules at the authentication level to eliminate any opportunity to violate password rules. Our study will benefit children and parents as well as organizations that have changed work practices to enable employees to work from home, but which places children in danger of clicking on malicious links on their parents’ computers. To our knowledge, this is the first password security study that applies PMT to examine computer-based security behaviours in teenagers.

Drawing on lessons learned from research prior to COVID-19 and our study since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, we discuss insights into how older adults have adjusted to living in technologically advanced societies like Singapore. In this seminar we share lessons learned from our research, interviews with older adults as well as our experience training older adults how to use technology. We discuss key factors that influence use of ICT and new media in older adults and the role these factors play in providing better opportunity for life-long learning and quality of life. Recognizing the diverse social contexts of older adults’ use of technology, their interests and motivations, we share why some older adults use or do not use available ICT and new media apps to engage in learning and leisure activities. The session will conclude with guidelines on how to strengthen media literacy skills (such as tackling online misinformation), and how to better design, customize, and encourage older adults’ online learning and improve training experiences for them.

Our proposed study seeks to investigate how technology can improve quality of life in older people. In particular, we aim to advance our understanding of the role ICT and new media-related leisure activities such as social networking, mental games and language learning apps play as a source of meaning and well-being in older people. In doing so, we seek to identify key characteristics of the ICT and new media-related leisure activities that provide a source of wellbeing to older people, and the social norms and attitudes that motivate them to adopt and domesticate these technologies. We address three key questions. First, what kinds of leisure activities older people consider more desirable than others, and what make these leisure activities desirable. Second, we explore how social norms, technology attitudes and dispositions encourage or discourage older Asians’ to participate in the identified leisure activities. Third, we seek to identify individual characteristics beyond social norms, technology attitudes and dispositions, that differentiate elderly ICT and new media users and non-users, and how non-users can be motivated to adopt ICT and new media related leisure activities in their pursuit for well-being. A mixed method, longitudinal approach is proposed: (a) a survey to determine attitudes, norms, and other salient variables, (b) focus groups and (c) interviews of older people over the age of 55, in Asia. This will allow us to investigate the long-term effects of ICT and new media leisure activities on well-being and the extent of their adoption in their domestic life.

We examined factors that inspire teenagers to comply with cyber security guidelines. We used protection motivation theory (PMT), and extended the model to include personal norms and normative beliefs. For teenage computer users, believing they are susceptible to hacking or that the consequences of being hacked would be severe, had no bearing on their password choices. This is an interesting finding highlighting a potential difference between adults and teenagers. We found personal norms is a better predictor of teenagers’ security behaviour than PMT’s threat perceptions. This is an important finding which opens new avenues for future research, particularly in explaining teenagers’ security behaviour. This study contributes to finding ways to improve security practices at an early age. To the best of our knowledge this is the first password security study that applies PMT to examine security behaviours in teenagers.

Passwords are the most widely used method of authentication on the Internet, but users find compliance with password guidelines difficult, and we know little about the long-term effects of attempts to improve compliance. In this paper, we extend the work of fear appeals use in the IS security domain to investigate their longer-term effects. We conducted a longitudinal experimental study to examine fear appeals’ long- and short-term effects. Using a model based on protection motivation theory (Rogers, 1983), we found that fear of threat, perceived password effectiveness, and password self-efficacy predicted compliance. We also found that neither perceived vulnerability to a security attack nor perceived severity of an attack influenced compliance. Providing persuasive communication improved compliance with password guidelines and resulted in significantly stronger passwords, but the effects on compliance intentions were only short term. This study extends our understanding of the factors that influence compliance with password guidelines and how we can modify them to improve compliance. We raise interesting questions about the role of fear in different IS security contexts. We also highlight the need for more research on the long-term impact of persuasive communication.