User Perceptions of Information Quality in E-Learning Systems

Abstract

With the prevalent use of e-learning systems as an information exchange means, the need for quality published materials within these systems has become vital. In previous work by the authors, an information quality framework for e-learning systems was developed. The proposed framework consisted of 14 quality attributes grouped in three quality factors: intrinsic, contextual representation and accessibility. Within the proposed quality framework, the authors assigned a relative importance weight for each attribute within the main quality factors, and a relative importance weight for each factor in the overall quality score. The idea of using relative importance as a parameter for the measurement is important, since it provides the framework with the flexibility to be adopted and used in different e-learning environments and with different users. The importance weights could be updated if a quality attribute or factor appeared to have the same significant value for the quality assessment no longer. This study examines whether any significant gender and cultural related differences exist in user perceptions of the relative importance of the main quality factors within the proposed framework. Reported results are based on the collection of original questionnaire data and t-test analysis supporting the conclusions.