WebSAMS in Hong Kong Secondary Schools

[Pages:92]Factors Affecting the Effectiveness of WebSAMS in Hong Kong Secondary Schools

By

Leung Cheuk Kwan 03007189

Information Systems Management Option An Honours Degree Project Submitted to the School of Business in Partial Fulfillment of the Graduation Requirement for the Degree of

Bachelor of Business Administration (Honours) Hong Kong Baptist University Hong Kong April 2006

Leung Cheuk Kwan BBAISM 03007189

HKBU Honours Degree Project/April 06

Acknowledgement

I must take this opportunity to express my gratitude to my project supervisor, Dr. Tony C. K. Wong. He could understand and take up the progress of my research study rapidly and provided many valuable feedbacks in a pretty professional manner to facilitate my research study. Though he was extremely busy, he could still be willing to contribute his valuable time on my research.

I would also like to give appreciation to my previous project supervisor, Ms. Sharon S. F. Tang. She helped me a lot in preparing the early work of my research study, especially providing recommendations in finding useful materials.

I was also grateful to those secondary schools teachers and administrative staff which had taken their valuable time in responding the questionnaires. Without their supports, I could not be able to finish the research study.

Through the project, I have learnt how to conduct a research study formally. I have been more familiar with the source of journals and the way to read and analysis those literatures. The project also gave me a chance to learn practical statistic analysis skills, which could be very useful in the future career or higher study.

Factors Affecting The Effectiveness of WebSAMS in Hong Kong Secondary Schools i

Leung Cheuk Kwan BBAISM 03007189

HKBU Honours Degree Project/April 06

Abstract

WebSAMS (Web School Administration and Management System) is a new online school management information system launched by Hong Kong S.A.R. Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) in 2003. It was expected to improve the efficiency of school administrative works and the communications between the schools and EMB. Unfortunately, the system was complained largely that it was not effective enough to bring in the expected benefits to the schools. This research paper is hereby to investigate the influential factors that would affect the system effectiveness of WebSAMS, so that appropriate steps could be taken thereafter to improve the effectiveness of WebSAMS.

This study made use of the goalcentered view and the systems' resource view from the literature review to define the system effectiveness. A questionnaire survey was conducted, which had collected the responses from 119 WebSAMS Users from different secondary schools in Hong Kong. The survey result focused on how WebSAMS users perceived the five factors (system quality, information quality, service quality, presence of real time support and presence of training) would affect the perceived usefulness and the user satisfaction of WebSAMS and eventually affect the effectiveness of WebSAMS in Hong Kong secondary schools with reference to the literature review.

The research result suggested that the significant factors, including the system quality, presence of real time support and presence of training, would positively affect the user satisfaction and eventually increase the effectiveness of WebSAMS, which proved that the system's resource view is valid in this study. The result further proved that the

Factors Affecting The Effectiveness of WebSAMS in Hong Kong Secondary Schools ii

Leung Cheuk Kwan BBAISM 03007189

HKBU Honours Degree Project/April 06

system quality is the most vital factor in affecting the effectiveness of WebSAMS, which was same as the result of the five factors priority ranking by the respondents in the survey. Therefore in order to improve the effectiveness of WebSAMS fundamentally, EMB and the WebSAMS official unit were recommended to improve the WebSAMS's system quality by minimizing the existing system bugs and upgrading the server hardware, and complement the system quality by providing more adequate real time support and training to the WebSAMS users.

Last but not least, the research result showed us that perceived usefulness is insignificant to affect the users' intention to use WebSAMS, which indeed is also insignificant to affect the effectiveness of WebSAMS altogether, which indicated that the goalcentered view is not applicable in this study.

Keywords: educational IT, school management, system effectiveness, WebSAMS

Factors Affecting The Effectiveness of WebSAMS in Hong Kong Secondary Schools iii

Leung Cheuk Kwan BBAISM 03007189

HKBU Honours Degree Project/April 06

Table of Content

1. Introduction

1

2. Objectives

2

3. Literature Review

3

4. Research Methodology

15

5. Results and findings

19

6. Implications and Discussions

30

7. Limitations

32

8. Conclusion

32

9. Recommendations

34

References

36

Appendix A: Functions of WebSAMS

44

Appendix B: Measurement Items

47

Appendix C: Questionnaire Sample

53

Appendix D: Statistic Data

56

Factors Affecting The Effectiveness of WebSAMS in Hong Kong Secondary Schools iv

Leung Cheuk Kwan BBAISM 03007189

HKBU Honours Degree Project/April 06

1. Introduction Nowadays, information technology has been widely popularized and applied in educational area. Different kinds of school management information systems1 were implemented in facilitating school administration by many different types of schools throughout the world in the recent decade (Kalay & Chen, 2002). The computerization of school administration has therefore become a central issue in current school management. (Telem, 1999)

In Hong Kong, since the educational policy SchoolBased Management (SBM) has been introduced to all secondary school in 1999, the schools have got more liberty in administrative management. To facilitate SBM, Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) has introduced the Web School Administration and Management System (WebSAMS) since 2003, which expected to provide the applied schools with certain planning and operational functions needed in many areas such as general administration and student affairs. Most secondary schools (94.6%) have adopted the system because of the promotion of EMB in these two years (EMB, 2005). Therefore, WebSAMS has become the main school management information system used for administration by secondary schools in Hong Kong.

The idea of WebSAMS is through a central internetbased system and database, to help the schools on the administrative activities especially on the timeconsuming data processing and data exchange (EMB, 2005). However, the situation is not so optimistic. There is a news report (SingPao Daily News, Mar 3, 2004) showed some WebSAMS users complained that the new system was not yet perfect for operation.

1 Examples include Overseer by Robust Software Inc., SchoolGen by Edvantage India Software Solution and SchoolWrite by BBA Software.

Factors Affecting The Effectiveness of WebSAMS in Hong Kong Secondary Schools 1

Leung Cheuk Kwan BBAISM 03007189

HKBU Honours Degree Project/April 06

They claimed a lot of problems have been aroused when using the system. For examples, lack of expected data2 which should be included on the exam report, hardware failure because of big amount of data processing, the existence of bugs, etc. Besides, users could not master the system well due to insufficient support. The effectiveness of WebSAMS was consequently affected. Absolutely, this is not the desired outcome. Though the public is interested in investigating how to measure and improve the effectiveness of WebSAMS efficiently, most people realize that measuring information system effectiveness is not an easy task. (Visscher and Bloemen, 1999)

2. Objectives This paper is going to take up the challenge in discovering and investigating the practical factors that can measure and affect the effectiveness of WebSAMS, so that the WebSAMS developers would have a reference on improving the system. DeLone and McLean (1992, 2003) had developed an IS Success Model in order to measure an information system's performance. It has been widely adapted by IS researchers. (DeLone and McLean, 2003) By further applying the model in this study, we are going to look at what factors are significantly affecting the effectiveness of WebSAMS in Hong Kong secondary school. Possible factors affecting system effectiveness will be found from literature review. Survey will be conduced to obtain current WebSAMS users' perception on these factors. By analyzing the results and findings, some suggestions will be made for improving the effectiveness of WebSAMS in Hong Kong secondary school.

2 Examples of lacking expected data include extracurricular activities record, awards and punishments record and total number of students in each form.

Factors Affecting The Effectiveness of WebSAMS in Hong Kong Secondary Schools 2

Leung Cheuk Kwan BBAISM 03007189

HKBU Honours Degree Project/April 06

Besides, it is obvious that management information system has taken an important role in educational management in this recent. However, there is still insufficient research on conducting an evaluation of the effects of these systems on administrative activities in the school (Kalay & Chen, 2002). Therefore this paper is hoped to contribute to the inadequate literature library about the effectiveness of information systems in educational administration.

3. Literature Review 3.1 WebSAMS WebSAMS, short for Web School Administration and Management System, is a web based school management information system introduced by Hong Kong S.A.R. Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) since 2003. It totally costs 30 millions Hong Kong dollars for the whole development. The latest version is 4.8. (EMB, 2005)

WebSAMS requires two Dedicated Servers: WebSAMS and HTTP Server. Every school has to install both servers in order to use WebSAMS. Table 1 shows the basic hardware and software requirement for both servers in each school.

WebSAMS Server

HTTP Server

CPU

P III 600 MHz

P II 400 MHz

RAM

1GB RAM

128 MB RAM

Harddisk

3 x 9 GB

4 GB

Other

Windows 2000

PC class

Backup

AntiVirus Software

Existing SAMS Server

Table 1. Basic Hardware and Software Requirements for WebSAMS

(Li, 2003)

Factors Affecting The Effectiveness of WebSAMS in Hong Kong Secondary Schools 3

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