Cultural trust in virtual learning environments

• Main Author: Omosule, Samson Taiwo
• Published: University of East London 2008
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.532888

Past research has striven to decompose the elements that constitute virtual trust often through the device of designing generalised online trust models or frameworks. Understandably most of these efforts have been centred on online trust with regards to buying and selling of commodities or services over the internet but this work extends these to Virtual Learning Environments. A number of online trust models and frameworks have been proposed but there remains an important omission (contribution to knowledge) in regards to trust within learning institutions. Within this omission, this investigation examines and reveals the factors that constitute students trust in Virtual Learning Environments. It also reveals how these trust factors and the elements that constitute them in Virtual Learning Environments vary in parametric values across cultures. The revealed trust factors (usability, Influence, trial and self-decision-making power) are what we used as constructs for the development of our Culture Influence Virtual Learning Environments Trust (CIVLET) framework. In CIVLET, culture is used as a major construct to determine the associated parametric values with these trust factors. Hence culture is seen as a major determinant of trust and students trust in VLEs is seen to vary with cultures. From the analysis of past work/literature in the field of Information Systems, Virtual environments, Virtual trust and Culture we derived the dependent and independent variables used in this work. The dependent variables were grouped under these four headings for questions to be asked in regards to students' opinion toward their intentions to participate and their experiences after participation to trusting VLEs across cultures: Behavioural Intention towards Virtual Learning Environments, Attitude towards Virtual Learning Environments, Subjective norm towards Virtual Learning Environments and Perceived Behavioural control. The cultures in questions are of the Europeans, Africans, Asians and the South American/Caribbean. We raised two hypotheses and set four research questions. From our hypotheses, we rejected hypothesis (HO) in favour of (HI). We derived Usability trust factor, Influential trust factor, Trial trust factor and Self-decisionmaking power trust factor as the factors that constitute students trust in Virtual Learning Environments across cultures. Our work also confirm that Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Expectation Confirmation Theory (ECT) are IS research theories that can be used to model behavior and on the bases of which our CIVLET framework was developed. We collected qualitative data (students' experiences) through a Web-based questionnaire survey and these data were coded into quantitative data for statistical analysis. We applied Principal Component Analysis technique to establish the linear components (factors) that exist within our data and to establish how each of the variables contribute to the components (factors) and to demonstrate the chances that the characteristics of our selected samples were found in the populations in questions.