The Determinants of the Post-Adoption Satisfaction of Educators with an E-Learning System

1. INTRODUCTION The traditional context of learning is being altered by e-learning systems within educational institutions and corporations. The extension of the Internet as a delivery platform and the increasing use of location-independent education and training programs have resulted in an increase in educational and business organizations adopting and using e-learning systems. Furthermore, the increase in investment in e-learning systems by educational and business organization has meant they have become increasingly aware of the importance of seeking a return on their investment. The evaluation of user satisfaction is regarded as one of the most important methods for evaluating e-learning systems (Wang, Wang, and Shee, 2007). Bailey and Pearson (1983, p. 531) define user satisfaction as "the sum of one's positive and negative reactions to a set of factors. " Doll and Torkzadeh (1988, p. 261) describe it as "the affective attitude toward a specific computer application by someone who interacts with the application directly. " Eagly and Chaiken (1998, p. 296) regard user satisfaction as "a psychological tendency expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor and disfavor. " User satisfaction with Information Systems (IS) has been seen as one of the most important issues in IS research and it has often been linked to two important outcomes: IS success (DeLone and McLean, 2003) and the continued use of IS (Bhattachejee, 2001a). User satisfaction is an important measure of IS success and is often regarded as the easiest and the most useful way to evaluate it (DeLone and McLean, 2003). Additionally, the expectation-confirmation based IS continuance model views it as one of the most important predictors of IS continuance intention (Bhattacherjee, 2001a). Due to its importance, organizations often invest significant amounts of financial and human resources in the measurement and analysis of user satisfaction while simultaneously trying to improve the level of satisfaction. A significant amount of research has been conducted on user satisfaction over the last two decades (Bailey and Pearson, 1983; Benson, 1983; Doll and Torkzadeh, 1988; Muylle, Moenaert, and Despontin, 2004). Although satisfaction has been studied extensively in IS research, the scope has primarily been limited to the study of system characteristics and the quality of service available to end-users (DeLone and McLean, 2003; Doll and Torkzadeh, 1988; Seddon, 1997). Such studies have often ignored the adoption process and selected only a small number of system or service attributes for measuring user satisfaction, despite the fact that IS continuance research has pointed out that the psychological motivations behind initial acceptance and continuance are different (Bhattacherjee, 2001a). The expectation-confirmation based IS continuance model examines user satisfaction from a solid theoretical base and explains it in terms of the adoption process and a single post-adoption belief, perceived usefulness (Bhattacherjee, 2001a). However, this ignores many important variables, such as system characteristics and the availability of support. Subsequent studies built upon the expectation-confirmation based IS continuance framework consider 'the use of a single belief (perceived usefulness) as the basis of satisfaction and continuance intention' to be a major limitation of the model (Hong, Thong, and Tam, 2006; Lin, Wu, and Tsai, 2005; McKinney, Yoon, and Zahedi, 2002; Thong, Hong, and Tam, 2006). To address this limitation later studies added more post-adoption beliefs: perceived ease of use (Recker, 2010; Sorebo and Eikebrokk, 2008); perceived playfulness (Lin, Wu, and Tsai, 2005; Tao, Cheng, and Sun, 2009); perceived enjoyment (Kang, Hong, and Lee, 2009; Thong, Hong, and Tam, 2006). However, the determinants of satisfaction cannot be restricted to just those factors because the IS continuance model provides only limited guidance on how to influence satisfaction through design and support. …