Title: An empirical investigation on learners' acceptance of e-learning for public unemployment vocational training

Authors: Shi-Ming Huang, Chun-Wang Wei, Pao-Ta Yu, Ta-Yi Kuo

Addresses: Department of Accounting and Information Technology, National Chung Cheng University, 160 San-Hsing, Min-Hsiung, Chia-Yi 621, Taiwan. ' Department of Management Information System, Far East College, 49 Chung-Hua Road, Hsin-Shih, Tainan 744, Taiwan. ' Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, 160 San-Hsing, Min-Hsiung, Chia-Yi 621, Taiwan. ' Department of Information Management, National Chung Cheng University, 160 San-Hsing, Min-Hsiung, Chia-Yi 621, Taiwan

Abstract: Public vocational training is one of the major tasks for the modern government to solve the unemployment problem. The e-learning technology has been seen as a potential solution. However, we cannot confirm whether learners would like to accept e-learning systems. Unfortunately, most of the e-learning research focuses on the platform development. Without the real user acceptance, the implementation of the new technology will be difficult. This study focuses on the user acceptance investigation for the e-learning technology in public unemployment vocational training. The Technology Acceptance Model is adopted for this empirical study. The result shows that most of the public vocational training learners will accept the e-learning technology and the content usefulness is a major factor to impact the learner adoption decision. It suggests that the government e-learning project should focus on the content designed with a standard format (such as SCORM), but not put most budget on the e-learning platform infrastructure.

Keywords: e-learning; online learning; web-based learning; public vocational training; technology acceptance model; TAM; innovation; sharable content object reference model; SCORM; unemployment; user acceptance; learner adoption; content design; platform infrastructure; jobless.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIL.2006.008419

International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2006 Vol.3 No.2, pp.174 - 185

Published online: 19 Dec 2005 *

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