Travel is now the largest online business-to-consumer product in the United States. Online hotel bookings are the second largest segment of online travel. Leisure travelers online spending will increase dramatically from 2002 to 2007. However, a majority of hospitality companies do not currently take advantage of the Internet as the cheapest and most efficient distribution medium. The purpose of this study examined leisure travelers' demographic and psychographic characteristics, online booking and travel frequency that influence travelers' desired hotel Website features and functions. The results found out that demographics (gender, occupation, and ethnicity), and psychographics (travel benefit sought), number of leisure travel trips per year, and number of online hotel bookings per year have impact on hotel Website attribute preferences.

The purpose of this document is to review the incorporation of technology into a math classroom. With technology becoming more a part of our growing society it is important for teachers and students to stay up with the times.

This project examines online learning tools and software that are applicable to K-12 and post-secondary distance learning environments. Powerpoint, Webquest and Inspiration 7 have been utilized to develop a lesson plan and storyboard that incorporate the constructivist theory of learning. An accompanying Web site, "Learning Tools for the On-Line Student," serves as a resource for instructional technology educators and includes information on designing lesson plans and evaluating students. The site also provides links to online tools and software that are useful in online learning environments.

The purpose of this project was to develop a Web site that would facilitate students' use of the Internet to research topics relating to the study of biology. This Web site serves as a bridge to link classroom topics to real world scientific information and research available on the Internet. Methods of preventing plagiarism and focusing Internet research were incorporated into the overall Web site design.

Introduction. Against the background of the last decades’ developments of Swedish public library websites and the changing language and minority situation, a study of the multilingual web accessibility status is motivated, including identifying obstacles for moving forward on the topic. At its core it’s a question of democratic rights. Method. Website observations with multilingual aspects in focus were conducted on the public library websites housing their catalogues, for all Swedish municipalities. Same libraries and their web system vendors (or the like) were then invited to an online survey which complemented the observations with their thoughts and opinions on the topic. Both studies produced primarily quantitative data, although the response rate from system vendors (or the like) was low. Analysis. Quantitative analysis was carried out on the data, with an element of content analysis on the survey’s comments and open-ended questions. The quantitative analysis employed Microsoft Excel for descriptive statistics. Activity theory constituted the main theoretical framework for further analysis and interpretation. Results. Prerequisites of multilingual accessibility were largely in place, but potentials of underlying web systems were not fully utilized. Checking against selected official web guidelines in the public sector, library websites showed varying compliance but also room for improvement in general. Survey results proved respondents consider multilingual accessibility on library websites fairly important. Libraries show awareness of current language minorities although demographic assessments are rarely made. Lack of resources in a broad sense was stated as a hindrance for multilingual website work. The systems of Swedish public libraries are largely dominated by one vendor, although this is a field undergoing changes, with some libraries switching to open source systems. Conclusion. Results suggest progress on this topic is highly dependent on getting library management and decision makers on board. More co-operation is needed, and there’s room for education. A few suggestions for future research were given.

People with disabilities, including those on the autism spectrum, comprise the world's largest minority and experience significant inequities in Internet use. Existing standards for accessible web sites are necessary but not sufficient without the direct engagement of end users in identifying access needs. Yet little is known about methods for effective engagement, and there are no systematically derived Web accessibility guidelines for autistic end users. Here I explore a hybrid approach to direct engagement using critical systems thinking (CST) and community based participatory research (CBPR) during the co-development of a healthcare-focused web site by the Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE). I explore these ideas on three levels: theory, practice, and critical self-reflection. On the theory level, I examine the common philosophical and historical roots of CST and CBPR, ways in which they intersect and complement, and propose the hybrid approach exemplified by AASPIRE. On the practice level, I explore our web site development process and evaluate the accessibility, usability, and acceptability of the web site for autistic end users; from that work, comes a set of recommendations for working with people with disabilities in technology development and a set of accessibility guidelines for autistic end users. On the critical self-reflection level, I inquire into my own experiences as an insider-researcher during the web site development. I then synthesize the levels to evaluate whether or not taking a hybrid CST/CBPR approach to web development was effective, as indicated by the team's ability to function as an emancipatory learning organization (an indicator of effective systems thinking on an organizational level), and the overall usability and accessibility of the web site. The result of the synthesis suggests a hybrid CST/CBPR approach was effective. Implications of this work include innovations in CST methods for operationalizing its commitment to human emancipation, potential for drawing a more ideologically-aligned systems thinking literature into the domain of CBPR, a means for individuals wishing to create a more power-balanced learning organization, innovations around including people with disabilities in research and technology development, more accessible web sites for people on the autism spectrum, and a potential small shift of dominant discourse around autism, disability, and the value of insider-researchers over time.

In order to experience unconditional love, prejudices must be exposed and overcome. People often meet others with a disability or handicap and unknowingly treat these individuals negatively. As a middle school teacher, I have often witnessed students behaving cruelly towards those that are different. When my dog became a paraplegic I was inspired to develop a project to assist young readers in the development of conscientious actions towards individuals with disabilities. This document chronicles the development, procedures, and outcomes of the process behind that artistic endeavor. The artistic elements of this thesis project are a written children's storybook and an educational interactive Web site to further teach inclusiveness to young readers. The images are real photos that have been manipulated to look like illustrations that enhance elements that are visually appealing to children in order to increase the images' communication value. The site has been designed to integrate the look and feel of the book, complementing and referencing it

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The object of this research is the practice of quality news on internet-native news outlets. It aimed at answering the following questions:<p>1) What is high quality news in internet-native news outlets? What is the criterion?<p>2) What are the process of development and experience of internet as news outlets? Why do professional journalists of traditional media seek internet as news outlets?<p>3) How do journalists use ICTs to make the best of alternative news outlets? What are the operation models and their characteristics?<p><p>This dissertation derived from the assumption that internet-native news outlets are effective journalistic practices to improve the quality of the news. To understand this proposition, various perspectives of definition and the way of measuring the quality of the news were adopted in this research. Practically, three internet-native news outlets were chosen as case studies in this research: The French website Rue89, Belgium website Apache and Spanish website Eldiario. The empirical part of this study includes twenty in-depth interviews and observation in their newsrooms, and basic statistics of top news stories in the home page of six websites from the three countries. Therefore, both quantitative and qualitative methods have been used in this research.<p><p>The contribution of this research is rethinking quality journalism in the digital age and introducing the journalistic experiences of professional journalists. First, this research provides an academic definition for the newly generated websites, and theorizes it as Internet-native news outlets. Next, this research analysed internet-native news outlets systematically, especially importing the European journalism website to the domain of online journalism studies. Moreover, the introduction of journalist’s statues in different countries is a valuable complement for journalism studies. Furthermore, the method of interview, observation and case study were applied in this research, which is a new examination of online journalism research. Finally, internet-native news outlets create a positive interaction between journalists and readers, which also enrich the news issues and news resource. It is quite important to rethink and discover the social problems. These academic explorations certainly confront many challenges because of majority of social and culture factors, but the results would be valuable for the reflection on knowledge construction in the international academy.<p> / Doctorat en Information et communication / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Customer satisfaction is a key concern in any business strategy. It is often assumed that customer satisfaction can be enhanced using e-services. E-service is defined as interactive service received via the Internet (Jiang et al., 2013). E-service has contributed to business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce by providing on-demand solutions to customers. The relationship with the customer is enhanced by introducing self-service options, product customisation and variety. However, there may also be negative impacts, such as techno-stress and lack of online customer assistance. The primary aim of this research was to develop a conceptual framework to describe the correlation relationship between the factors that influence customers’ adoption of e-services. Organisations use the Internet to attract customers, to conduct financial services and obtain information. This research focussed specifically on online shopping. The Grounded Theory research methodology was chosen for its flexibility and iterative comparison of data. A quantitative survey was conducted to determine the relative significance of the factors uncovered by the Grounded Theory methodology and to validate the hypothesis of the conceptual model. Customer adoption is attained where customer satisfaction is high, where the customer sees value in the service, and where there is customer loyalty or trust. To date, research has focussed primarily on developed countries. Many challenges face South Africa as a Newly Industrialised Country (NIC). The negative factors facing developing countries in terms of e-service adoption include: lack of infrastructure, economic constraints and an emergent socio-political framework. The aim of this research was to build a conceptual model for explaining interrelationships between the identified factors that have an impact on customer e-service adoption. The customer’s perception of technology-driven services affects the organisation’s reputation, which in turn affects profitability. This research will be beneficial to managers in local organisations that thrive on e-services. An understanding of customer preferences will lead to improvement of customer services in South Africa. / Information Science / M. Sc. (Information Systems)