An article featuring the quality delivery of online education written by three Lamar University College of Business professors has been accepted for publication in a well-respected, peer-reviewed journal.

“Evaluating Online Complex Technology-Enabled Course Delivery: A Contextualized View of a Decomposed IS Success Model,” has been accepted for publication in the “Communications of the Association for Information Systems.” The authors are assistant professor of information systems and analysis, Yu Zhao, professor and chair of the Department of Information Systems and Analysis, Kakoli Bandyopadhyay and professor of marketing and associate dean of Graduate Studies and Research, Soumava Bandyopadhyay.

The collaborative article focuses on understanding the factors that are likely to impact the success of online delivery of courses involving complex technologies. The work was based on a study utilizing SAP software as the complex technology that students learn online via Blackboard, a widely used learning management system.

“This research work provides important findings to online educators of complex technologies, such as SAP,” said Kakoli Bandyopadhyay. “The results provide empirical evidence about the impact of system quality, information quality and service quality on students’ learning outcomes, satisfaction and intent to continue using an e-learning platform to take complex technology-enabled online courses. The study complements earlier research in that it augments our understanding of success factors of e-learning by extending it to include online delivery of SAP-enabled courses.”

To gather the data for the work, business students from four mid-sized state universities in the United States were surveyed. The universities were members of the SAP University Alliances, and the students had taken at least one online SAP-enabled course.

The findings indicate that system quality, information quality, and service (instructor) quality are all significant antecedents of student satisfaction; system quality and information quality are significant antecedents of perceived learning outcomes; and only system quality is a significant antecedent of students’ continued intention to use online learning.

Growth in online learning and Lamar University’s involvement in SAP-based online courses was the impetus for the research.

“The e-learning market worldwide is expected to exceed $243 billion by 2022.  Faculty and students worldwide have shown considerable support in favor of online education,” said Kakoli Bandyopadhyay. “The ERP application’s market is expected to reach $86 billion by 2022, compared to $82.6 billion in 2017, at a compound annual growth rate of 0.8 percent. SAP has led all ERP vendors with the most market share for the last several years. Lamar University is a member of the SAP University Alliances, and offers several SAP-based online courses in its M.B.A. as well as its B.B.A. and M.S. in Management Information Systems programs. These courses have gained widespread popularity.

The article will be published in a forthcoming issue of the “Communications of the Association for Information Systems,” which is the official journal of the Association for Information Systems (AIS). Historically, the journal publishes novel, original and groundbreaking research, methodological essays and guidelines and important lively debates about research practices. It is also the only dedicated AIS outlet that publishes matters and studies related to IS education and pedagogy.

“Evaluating Online Complex Technology-Enabled Course Delivery: A Contextualized View of a Decomposed IS Success Model” was accepted under the IS education category which has only a 7% acceptance rate. “Communications of the Association for Information Systems” is featured prominently in a range of journal rankings including classification as an “A” journal in the respected Australian Business Deans Council journal rankings.