Music is an essential part of people’s every day lives, accompanying them as they go about their daily routines, and it can be experienced in almost any context now; which allows us to capture, categorize and reconstruct the activities and memories that shape our personal, social and cultural lives. In this thesis, the area of concern that I explore is the creation of an online community based on people’s experiences with music. Because of the personal nature of the topic and the tendency for the information to change over time, the methodology I chose was action research, specifically Checkland and Holwell’s (1998) FMA methodology. Using this approach, I investigate the different kinds of technology that can be used to build the foundations of the community and which factors are most salient to facilitate member growth. I also examine the effects that user-generated content has on the participation within an online community and the technological features that aid in facilitating this. I discovered that trust is a vital part of an online community because it fosters cooperation between members through visible pro-social behaviour, and that a combination of ease of use, usefulness and the size of the community could influence the participation and activity of users in generating content. I also found that the development cycle for Internet software never ends, thus permanently in beta, as there will always be improvements to the community based on user feedback. I analyzed the data by comparing key metrics such as membership and user-generated content growth for each community to see if the learning and reflections from previous cycles helped improve community participation in the current cycle. The results I obtained and method I used in the thesis demonstrated my contribution to the body of knowledge in using action research theory, specifically the FMA methodology, to investigate, learn and develop an online community as an app creator. I argue that action research can help guide academic-based startups in much the same way as other startup frameworks and this point is one of the focuses for future research on this topic.

Yes / The extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) is less than ten years old and has already garnered more than 6,000 citations with extensive usage in information systems and beyond. This research employed cited reference search to systematically review studies that cited UTAUT2 originating article. Based on UTAUT2 usage, the downloaded articles were classified into four categories such as: 1) General citation, 2) UTAUT2 application, 3) UTAUT2 integration, and 4) UTAUT2 extensions. Weber's (2012) theory evaluation framework revealed UTAUT2 as a robust theory on most dimensions except for parsimony arising from the complex model. UTAUT2 extensions emerged as popular UTAUT2 utilization category as researchers extended the model with context specific variables. Finally, UTAUT2 extensions were mapped to Johns' (2006) context dimensions to identify various limitations of the existing technology adoption research and to provide multi-level framework for future researchers with libraries of context dimensions.

During the past ten years the changing sociopolitical context in South Africa challenged mental health services to re-position themselves in order to stay relevant to specific contextual demands. The field of psychology has also been introduced to the application of postmodern principles in counselling and training practices internationally and nationally, which promised exciting alternative avenues for many practitioners and clients. In reading the literature on the possible opportunities of applying postmodern principles to psychological and educational practices, it became clear that the relationship between counsellors/clients and trainers/students can be a collaborative co-construction of knowledge production. Existing literature on current training practices however reflects a fragmented picture, in which the orientation, content and pedagogy are not consistently aligned with an epistemology and practice. Postmodern literature on the notion of “identity/self” as the narration of a multilevelled construct is used to conceptualise training contexts as contexts that provide students with certain narratives with which they can construct their counsellor identities. The aim of the research is to story the construction of counsellor identity through the application of narrative therapy within a learning model. Text production was imbedded in a referential research context which is defined as a context of the following relational positionings: narrative counsellor, trainer, researcher, students and participants. The contribution of this context towards the construction of counsellor identity is explored through engaging in and narrative analysis of written conversations, journals and visual projects of students who engaged in a training context. Through the narrative analysis process, temporal dimension story grids were developed for the written conversations and training journals and the visual projects were analysed according to denotational and higher signification inventories. Narratives that were co-created in the training context include that of uncertainty, self-awareness, growth, change, hope and respect for individual life narratives, which also contributed to the process of the construction of counsellor identity. These are all familiar narratives that exist in the South African context as we live in a country that is in a continuous process of change and where certainty is an elusive concept. On the basis of the narrative themes that emerged, guidelines were developed for creating training contexts that could facilitate the construction of a counsellor identity that is of relevance within the changing South African context. These guidelines include a repositioning in the trainer/student relationship; using externalising language practices to facilitate the co-construction of knowledge through a critical engagement with the learning material and a conceptualisation of evaluation as a process based activity rather than an outcome based activity. / Thesis (PhD (Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Psychology / unrestricted