Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Sciences de l'information et de la communication : Metz : 2004. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Notes bibliographiques.

Research paper / The use of Mobile technologies in organisation including institution of higher education has increased significantly in recent years. In institution of higher education, the focuses have been on its use for teaching and learning. Due to the flexibility and easy accessibility, learners and educators are increasingly depending mobile technologies for their academic activities. The development of mobile technology has resulted in shifting the academic environment from traditional to mobile learning settings. This paper focused on the possible implications of mobile devices on teaching and learning. The qualitative case study approach was employed in the study. Based on the finding from the analysis of the empirical data, a Framework was developed. The Framework could be employed to address the implications in the drive to enhance the services of academic library. Mobile learning has a lot of potential for quick and wide reaching out to the geographically wide spread of learners. The paper helps to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of mobile technology in providing services in the library of academic institutions.

In developed countries, the business environment is highly saturated, with large numbers of banks, and mobile network operators. As a result, customers have a range of options in choosing preferential services providers. In Africa, most countries have dissimilar business environments; however, some countries have paved new frontiers in enabling access to financial services mainly through mobile banking services.In South Africa, a different situation prevails even though in certain instances the business environment is more advanced than other African countries. Over the past five years, South Africa reported upward trends in real income for LSM1-5 (living standard measure), and the number of mobile subscribers per household. Conversely, it also reported 60:40 ratios between the number of mobile subscribers and bank account holders with an expectation that the gap will grow further if key fundamentals are not revised in the banking sector.This research explored mobile banking capabilities required to serve the unbanked market of South Africa; and in doing so highlight the prospects of financial inclusion towards social and economic development, particularly when the firm seeks to offer products and services, which are reflective of the demographics of this country.Thus, as an exploratory study, it was necessary to gain insights from experts involved in designing, co-ordinating, and delivering mobile banking products and services. As a result, the research noted gaps in the products and services being offered across the different market segments. It also noted that in addressing these gaps; the banking sector requires participation from other key role players, such as the mobile network operators, regulator, and government. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

While there has been a strong history of using personal electronic devices in education, more recent endeavors have worked to establish the place of contemporary mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) in post-secondary education. However, these devices do not seem fully realized and leveraged as a useful tool in many curricula, particularly in the field of composition. This work seeks to explore the potential for integrating mobile technologies in writing courses and writing centers in ways that value contemporary composition pedagogy and in ways people actually use smartphones. Such an approach consists primarily of unpacking the usage patterns, user experiences, and attendant attitudes of those who would be primary users of this technology, thereby better understanding how to more effectively craft meaningful, mobile learning applications for composition students. Towards those ends, a mobile web application was developed and tested in two scenes: first-year composition classrooms and an intensive summer bridge program for incoming freshmen.

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Advancement in information technology has influenced various aspects of human lives. The penetration of information technology is likely to increase in future. Therefore, it is imperative that one should be aware of the factors, which encourage or discourage customers towards use of information technology and related products and services. With reference to e-commerce, organizations should analyze preferences of consumers in mobile-commerce environment and based on their findings, should adjust their product or service accordingly. The current research was based on the future research areas highlighted by Pantano and Priporas (2016) and covered the limitations of their study using a larger sample (150 customers) using the context of Pakistan. Shahid et al. (2015) Highlighted that mobile-phone industry of Pakistan is one of the vibrant industries of the world. The mobile-density of Pakistan is one of the highest of Asia. The findings of this research revealed different dimensions of independent variables. For perceived ease of use, these dimensions were understandable and easier for one to become skillful in using MBA. Likewise, for perceived usefulness, these dimensions were opportunity of processing more banking transactions and always available. Further to this, for innovativeness of user, these dimensions were being an unconventional person, prefer to experiment new things in life and prefer to obtain information about new products. Likewise, for design of application, these dimensions were using MBA is secure, using MBA has a pleasant experience on my mood, easier to navigate MBA, can customize MBA according to my needs and MBA gives me an opportunity to compare charges with competitors. Finally, for finance cost these dimensions were using MBA saves transportation cost, to and from stores and using MBA saves time of visiting Bank. In addition, this study helped in identification of relative importance of different independent variables on the dependent variables. It was revealed that perceived usefulness is the most influential factor which influences future usage intentions of the people whereas design of application is least influential factor. Likewise, finance cost and innovativeness of users are also important factors. It was suggested that MBA providers should focus on female segments as well, create awareness of MBA among older people, provide MBA in native language, and focus on promoting MBA using different dimensions such as perceived usefulness and cost efficiency. Moreover, this research contributed to previous research in various forms including identification of important dimensions of select variables as well as relative importance of perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, innovativeness, design of application and cost. Researcher identified various research limitations. Future researchers should overcome these limitations.

M.Sc. (Computer Science) / In the rapidly evolving world that we live in, the methods by which items are purchased are starting to be revolutionized. In a developing country such as South Africa, financial institutions within the banking sector are starting to implement their own systems or processes to process bank transactions. These processes include the identification and authentication of bank transactions, as well as the validation of the integrity of bank transactions between buyer and merchant. The changing of these processes by the banking sector could be viewed as a result of the increase in mobile device users. The purpose of the research presented within this dissertation is to explore an alternative method for identifying and authenticating a user in order to authorize a purchase made from a mobile device. The research will include evidence for the necessity of an alternative process as well as investigate the current technology by examining a few mobile banking solutions provided by the banking sector. The alternative process will be based upon a prototype design, which will employ Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to forward the purchase information from a point-of-sale (POS) device to the client’s mobile device, as well as employ fingerprint recognition technology to improve the identification and authentication of a user in order to authorize the purchase. The prototype will be known as BankAuth. The researcher hopes that this dissertation encourages other academics to discover new approaches in further researching mobile banking solutions.

Les récentes évolutions technologiques des terminaux mobiles tels que les téléphones portables, assistants personnels ou GPS, ont été très importantes. Il est aujourd’hui possible d’af?cher en temps réel des scènes 3D complètes sur de tels appareils. Cependant, les spéci?cités ergonomiques et techniques des appareils mobiles risquent de rendre l’interaction avec l’environnement 3D dif?cile à réaliser ef?cacement. En particulier, les techniques d’interaction 3D développées pour les ordinateurs de bureau risquent de souffrir de l’absence de souris. Dans ce mémoire, nous nous intéresserons aux contraintes et aux spéci?cités des ter- minaux mobiles et étudierons leur in?uence pour des tâches d’interaction 3D. La première partie du mémoire constitue une introduction aux différents domaines abordés dans cette thèse. Nous y dé?nirons le terme de “terminal mobile” et aborderons les spéci?cités technologiques et ergonomique de ces appareils. Nous introduirons également les notions essentielles de géométrie et d’interaction 3D. Nous nous intéresserons dans un second temps à l’interaction 3D avec un contrôle direct, utilisé dans beaucoup d’applications 3D. Dans ce mode d’interaction, les actions de l’utilisateur produisent des modi?cations dans l’environnement 3D en temps réel. Après une analyse de l’existant, nous présenterons nos travaux avec une technique d’inspection de modèles 3D qui utilise des informations telles que la profondeur ou la présence de contours dans l’image a?n de calculer des mouvements de caméra adaptés au contexte. La suite de la deuxième partie sera consacrée à l’étude de l’apport de l’utilisation de deux doigts sur un écran tactile multi-points. La troisième et dernière partie de ce mémoire est consacrée à l’interaction 3D “plani?ée”. Ce mode d’interaction est plus adapté aux contraintes des terminaux mobiles et possède l’avantage d’offrir une interaction d’un plus haut niveau que ne l’offre le contrôle direct. Nous verrons dans cette partie la dé?nition exacte de ce mode d’interaction, ainsi que les différences, les forces et les faiblesses de cettemanière d’interagir avec un environnement 3D. Nous présenterons dans cette partie nos contributions, à savoir une technique de sélection de point 3D utilisable à l’aide des touches de l’appareil, ainsi qu’une technique de placement de caméra simple à utilisermais offrant un contrôle avancé, qui permet aux utilisateurs, novices ou experts, de spéci?er un point de vue à l’aide de quelques gestes simples seulement. / Mobile devices, such as phones, PDAs or GPS, are getting more and more powerful. They are now able to compute and to display 3D scenes in real time. However, mobile devices’ ergonomics and technical limitations may make 3D interaction hard to achieve ef?ciently. In particular, 3D interaction techniques developed for desktop computers may be affected by the lack of mouse. In this thesis, we will study mobile devices’ constraints and speci?cities, and their in?uences on 3D interaction tasks. The ?rst part of this thesis will be an introduction to the domains addressed in this thesis. We will de?ne the term “mobile device” and analyze their technical and ergonomic speci?cities. We will also de?ne some 3D geometry and 3D interaction basis. In the second part of the thesis, we will talk about 3D interaction with direct control, which is used in many 3D applications, where the user’s actions induce modi?cations into the 3D environment in real time. After presenting the related works, we will introduce a 3D inspection technique we have developed. This technique uses depth and contours information in order to compute camera movements adapted to the current context. The following of this second part will be dedicated to a study about bene?ts of using two ?ngers on a multitouch screen. The third part of this thesis is dedicated to “planned 3D interaction”. This kind of control is more adapted to the mobile devices’ constraints and offers a higher level of interaction than direct control. We will de?ne and analyze planned 3D interaction in this part. We will then present our contributions : a key based 3D navigation technique, and a 3D camera positioning technique based on some gestures which allows both expert and novice users to easily specify a point of view.

Due to constraints on spectrum availability and transmitter power, both bandwidth and power efficient communication techniques are desirable for mobile radio. Continuous phase modulated (CPM) signals have gained attention because of their attractive power spectra (Steele, 1992). It has been shown that the trellis coded modulation (TCM) schemes could provide better bit error rate performances compared to the uncoded schemes (Ungerboeck, 1982). Therefore, the combination of TCM which improves error probability and CPM signals which yield low spectral occupancy is expected to provide good coding and modulation over bandwidth and power limited channels such as the one encountered in mobile radio communications.In this research, a Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM) scheme, which combines convolutional coding and partial response Continuous Phase Modulation (CPM) such as Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK), is investigated. Also, this study concentrates on the use of rate-half convolutional codes, and GMSK (B(subscript)0T=0.3). The latter has been adopted in the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) system.Appropriate codes are selected assuming Maximum Likelihood Sequence Detection (MLSD) based on the Viterbi algorithm using an extensive computer search. The bit-error-rate (BER) performances of the selected trellis coded GMSK schemes are theoretically evaluated in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and frequency-flat fading. In the case of fading, the analysis is simplified to assume only amplitude-fading, and without considering the effect of fading on the phase of the received signal.Computer simulations are used to evaluate the BER performances of the proposed trellis coded GMSK schemes in the presence of AWGN and practical impairments, such as sample timing offset and carrier phase errors. Coding gains of up to 2.2dB at a BER of 10(subscript)-3 ++ / are obtained under ideal sample timing and carrier recovery conditions. This has been achieved without increasing the receiver complexity based on the number of states in the Viterbi decoder, compared to the uncoded GMSK scheme. Furthermore, these coded schemes are more tolerant to sample timing and carrier phase impairments.Also, the BER performances of the proposed trellis coded GMSK schemes have been extensively investigated by computer simulations for frequency-flat and frequency-selective fading channels. In the case of frequency-selective fading, the Viterbi decoding is made adaptive to cater for the channel impulse response variations with time. With this adaptive receiver, the irreducible BERs of the coded scheme is found to be lower than that of the uncoded. Performance improvements are obtained with a trellis coded GMSK scheme using a constraint length 2 code with a Viterbi decoder of 16 states compared to the 128 states required for the uncoded scheme. Further, the coded scheme has shown less sensitivity to carrier phase errors, compared to the uncoded.

The convergence of mobile commerce and internet technologies has promised users unprecedented convenience and greater enjoyment. Over the past few years, the development of mobile information and entertainment services (MIES) has been phenomenal. Recently, research has been conducted into ways toward better acceptance of these services by users. However, many of these studies are technical driven, without discussing important end user needs. To understand users' perception associated with mobile information and entertainment services the author extended and empirically tested a new antecedent model of Perceived Playfulness an intrinsic motivator toward technology acceptance by users, based on previous research. It has been shown that user's Perceived Playfulness toward information technologies has a direct impact on his/her subsequent use. Using the new antecedent model of Perceived Playfulness, the author argues users' Autotelic Personality, Perceived Service Quality, Perceived Technology Compatibility, their Motivation for Using and tolerance of Social Influence affect their Perceived Playfulness when interacting with MIES. A questionnaire was administered to students in business and computing schools at Auckland University of Technology. The closed-ended questions within the questionnaire were used to validate the proposed research model. The data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares. Most of the proposed hypotheses were supported, rendering several significant findings in this thesis. In this study, it has been found that individuals who are more innovative and confident about using MIES are more likely to develop a positive image toward these services. They also value services that are useful and easy to use and demonstrate high enthusiasm for more personalized mobile services. More importantly, their perceptions toward MIES can be further reinforced if their mobile phone functionalities are highly compatible with these services. Therefore, service providers should strive to create a seamless MIES experience for users. Furthermore, given that mobile phones have their own strengths and limitations, the motivation behind user's choices of various applications becomes an important issue for service providers to consider. It has been shown that the importance of service attributes vary with user's motivations of using MIES. This study therefore focuses on several important end user issues which are not well explored in the research of mobile internet services. Overall, this study contributed to existing research into user s perception toward MIES as an information technology based on his/her intrinsic motivator. Several important antecedents have been identified to influence user's Perceived Playfulness in this context. Limitations and suggestions for future studies are considered at the end of this thesis. Implications are also discussed.