Papers by Maria Jakovljevic
A Communities of Practice (CoPs) is formed when two or more individuals come together voluntarily... more A Communities of Practice (CoPs) is formed when two or more individuals come together voluntarily and informally to share expertise or ideas and are passionate about a common venture. However, the specific guidance to form CoPs in higher educational institutions (HEIs) doesn't exist. This longitudinal comparative action research study will investigate, explore, and describe ways and the feasibility to develop learning communities at higher education institutions in South Africa and Europe. This paper aims to investigate the students' willingness to share their range of resources, preferred forms of communications and readiness to accept tacit (knowing how) knowledge sharing in order to enrich their study methods and decision making skills. Furthermore, the aim is to explore the students' vision of CoP joint activities and discussions in building relationships, trust and an innovative knowledge base in their field of expertise. The researchers conducted an online e-survey of 20 close-ended questions using a five-point Likert-type scale amongst part-time and full-time postgraduate and undergraduate students in three faculties at higher education institutions. The estimated size of the sample for the survey is approximately 500.
The rise of electronic commerce and the Internet have created new technologies and capabilities, ... more The rise of electronic commerce and the Internet have created new technologies and capabilities, which increase concern for privacy online. This study reports on the results of an investigation of Internet users attitudes towards concern for privacy online, online behaviours adopted under varying levels of concern for privacy (high, moderate and low) and the types of information Internet users are protective of. Methodological triangulation was used, whereby both quantitative and qualitative research was conducted. A questionnaire and semi-structured individual interviews were used as the data collection methods. The results of a cross-sectional survey of 104 Internet users suggest a lack of control over personal information online, a lack of privacy rights online, a dislike of government regulation and other privacy concerns. Concern was decreased if personal information was provided for customisation or if there was the ability to opt-out. Anonymity also decreased concern. The qualitative results reveal five areas of concern for privacy, namely the role of Internet Service Providers, online businesses, Internet shopping, government regulation and general Internet privacy problems. This study attempts to add something of value to the body of knowledge regarding concern for privacy on the Internet in the context of South African environment.
One of the major obstacles facing project managers and information system designers is creating a... more One of the major obstacles facing project managers and information system designers is creating an appropriate environment to excel system design skills. Instructors in Information System Design (ISD) environments are responding to the increasing demands posed by time and complexity through investigating a variety of tools, system design methodologies and software technologies. The intention is to help students/information system designers to take more control over their own learning process and to demonstrate system design skills.
F1000Research
Background: A growing body of research indicates that psychological coercive control poses a thre... more Background: A growing body of research indicates that psychological coercive control poses a threat in academic environments. Little is known, however, about the process, the dynamics, and the phases used to impose silently a variety of non-violent assaults on students and academics. A lack of awareness of coercive intimidation and psychological coercive control obstructs a student’s path to academic achievement, which can have an impact on his or her emotional and mental well-being and diminishes the prosperity of society. Methods: A methodological selection and review of the scientific literature, theories, and practice on psychological intimidation, coercive control, and systems thinking has been employed in this study. A comprehensive reflective analysis and critical synthesis of the relevant scientific literature were conducted to gain insight into the design of a model of psychological coercive control applicable to educational environments. Results: This article identifie...
Disability, CBR and Inclusive Development, 2011
Purpose: The employment equity policies and implementation of technology-specific guidelines with... more Purpose: The employment equity policies and implementation of technology-specific guidelines within the South African ‘Code of Good Practice on the Employment of People with Disabilities’, was created to encourage employment equity for employees with disabilities, by companies in Johannesburg. This study reports on the results of the investigation in assistive technologies in a workplace environment, and barriers for the employment of people with disabilities in the South African environment. Method: Qualitative data, collected from two retail and service companies in the form of semi-structured individual and focus group interviews, was analysed using a constant comparative method, identifying major themes and sub-themes. Results: A surprisingly small number of persons with disabilities were found to be employed by participating companies, which tended not to focus on these people when formulating their policies and plans. In addition, technological aspects of the Code were largely...
Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal, 2021
The usability of multimedia E-Learning management systems (MEMSs) is critical as it leverages ins... more The usability of multimedia E-Learning management systems (MEMSs) is critical as it leverages institutions in the educational value chain. The paper aims to investigate the usability effect of an integrated MEMS called Towards Student-Centered Integration of Multimedia E-Learning (TSIME) used at the University of Zimbabwe. This study adopted a quantitative approach, where two self-administered questionnaires were used to gather data on a sample of students and lecturers (n = 492) across ten faculties. Design quality, interaction and feedback, content availability and ethical issues were key independent variable constructs while attitude towards use, overall satisfaction, and likelihood to use TSIME being dependent variables. The results were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The structural Equation Model was used to measure how multimedia design features influence overall satisfaction and likelihood to use. The results showed that ethical issues and content avai...
Forming communities of practice is an important approach for knowledge sharing and well-designed ... more Forming communities of practice is an important approach for knowledge sharing and well-designed communities of practice may provide mechanisms for innovation in Open, Distance and eLearning environments. However, the specific guidance to establish communities of practice in higher educational institutions does not always exist. The question further remains how willing are the students to share knowledge within communities of practice at institutions of higher education in order to empower learning and knowledge sharing within those institutions. The aim of this article is to explore the attitudes of 502 students at an open distance e-learning higher education institution or university towards communities of practice. The study applied a quantitative approach using a questionnaire and descriptive and inferential statistics to analyse the responses. The students were invited to engage in learning activities within communities of practice. They were free to decline to participate in this research study, and could withdraw their participation from the study at any time. Returning the completed questionnaire to the researchers indicated their willingness to participate. They preferred online forms of communications. The findings can be used to analyse relationships among communities of practice knowledge-sharing enablers and students' willingness to engage in communities of practice processes. This study described several implications essential to successful learning and knowledge sharing through communities of practice. 1 Increasing numbers of ill-prepared students with inadequate study skills are entering open and distance e-learning (ODeL) environments and performing their study tasks in socially isolated contexts. ODeL in general involves the use of online tools and infrastructure that are currently not well-designed to satisfy the needs of students with varying learning skills and experiences (
Ekonomska Misao i Praksa, 2012
Svrha je rada predstaviti novi organizacijski model kreativnosti i inovativnosti (OMKI), primjenj... more Svrha je rada predstaviti novi organizacijski model kreativnosti i inovativnosti (OMKI), primjenjiv na mala i srednja poduzeća u RH, a koji se temelji na konceptu umrežene kreativnosti. U radu se analiziraju postojeće teorije i modeli kreativnosti i inovativnosti u organizaciji te se postavlja pitanje mogu li se i na koji se način mogu primijeniti navedeni modeli na mala i srednja poduzeća u Hrvatskoj.
Journal of information and organizational sciences, 2021
Educationists are urged to investigate the effect of social networks control. There is a lack of ... more Educationists are urged to investigate the effect of social networks control. There is a lack of multidisciplinary studies with a focus on coercive social network control in the higher education sector. This exploratory and descriptive study presents a theoretical contemplation of social network control based on ten key elements that influence teaching and learning in higher educational environments. The paper provides a critical analysis of the impact of an economic model on social networks control and examines social engineering through the tenets of digital presence, psychological strategies and tactics. Insights into user-generated content and the learning process of manipulative assimilation that influence current ways of thinking in higher educational contexts are offered through the lens of social networks control mechanisms. A framework for social network control was derived, signifying the flow and dynamics between key elements which might impact on various aspects of socia...
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom u... more Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, that the copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than SAICSIT or the ACM must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.
Journal of information and organizational sciences, 2018
This study presents the construction of a niche search engine, whose search topic domain is to be... more This study presents the construction of a niche search engine, whose search topic domain is to be user-defined. The specific focus of this study is the investigation of the role that a Support Vector Machine plays when classifying textual data from web pages. Furthermore, the aim is to establish whether this niche search engine can return results that are more relevant to a user than when compared to those returned by a commercial search engine Through the conduction of various experiments across a number of appropriate datasets, the suitability of the SVM to classify web pages has been proven to meet the needs of a niche search engine. A subset of the most useful webpage-specific features has been discovered, with the best performing feature being a web pages’ Text & Title component. The user defined niche search engine was successfully designed and an experiment showed that it returned more relevant results than a commercial search engine.
This paper was an attempt to investigate agile group dynamics and knowledge sharing in an ICT pro... more This paper was an attempt to investigate agile group dynamics and knowledge sharing in an ICT project classroom. The paper furthermore explains how agile group dynamics influence logical reasoning and information processing capabilities of project team members. This research was based on a qualitative, action-research approach. Twenty students at an institution of higher education expressed their experiences of agile project dynamics. The sample was selected using a purposeful convenient sampling method. The data in the ICT classroom were collected by means of semistructured interviews, the hybrids of formal interviews and observations. Findings highlighted some agile methods and techniques (adaptive innovation agile strategies, conceptual mapping, telling and predicting, communication skills, entrepreneurial initiatives, show time, agile planning, discipline of dialogues,) that were successfully applied in the ICT classroom. Findings indicated the positive influence of agile group ...
South Africa like other developing nations is in the process of commercialising the formally stat... more South Africa like other developing nations is in the process of commercialising the formally state controlled electricity industry. The Internet and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are becoming an integral part of many business operations, including commercialised electricity utility companies. Information systems practitioners are striving to understand how the Internet and ERP systems could be integrated in order to service the customers better in the electricity utility industry. Deise, Nowikov, King and Wright (2000: 65) state that “... By opening internal information to selected partners and customers over the Internet, or extranet, suppliers can speed up delivery of necessary supplies, and customers can make orders faster and easier. Not only will time be saved, but costs will be reduced as well.” The aim of this paper is explore the requirements that need to be satisfied in order to successfully integrate the Internet and ERP systems in commercialised electricity u...
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Papers by Maria Jakovljevic