UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS’ SATISFACTION WITH THE USE OF WEB PORTALS

Introduction

A portal is an application that primarily integrates the organisation’s information and provides users with a single interface. A student portal is a web-based interface to access personalized information, resources, applications, and education/academic options with which students can reach a range of internal and external sources through a network connection in a password-protected setting. The use of portals by university students has been growing steadily and – despite many restrictions such as information technology (IT) budgets – investments in portal solutions are still growing. As it has been observed, portal projects are usually complex, time and cost-consuming, and entail a high failure risk. Notwithstanding, the university of Ilorin Nigeria has embarked on the initiative of creating portal for all her students for the past five years and lots of resources have been invested on the project and students have been enjoying the benefits. However, since its creation; there has been no attempt to examine whether or not students are satisfied with the portal. If this is done, it is assumed the results will lead to better improvement and use of the portal.

The assessment of portal benefits is, however, often problematic, since common cost-benefit analysis methods do not take intangible impacts and intervening environmental variables into account. Similarly, measuring the success of information systems (IS) of which a portal is part and understanding the return on investments in IT is the focus of a large and growing body of research (Dehning & Richardson, 2002). Success of IS cannot be attributed to a single factor but rather to many including user satisfaction, user acceptance, system quality, service quality, etc.

Enormous benefits and advantages are associated with the implementation of a university portal. Karim and Masrek (2005) noted that portal implementations are helpful in helping enterprises achieve organizational effectiveness. According to Eisler (2003) other than providing a personalized and customizable user interface for accessing both internal and external information, a portal also provides the opportunity to create gateways to information and points of access for constituent groups. Bajec (2005) noted that today, almost all universities are either developing or purchasing portal solutions for their needs. Despite the growing interest in universities adopting portal technologies, studies addressing the issues of portal satisfaction are still very limited. Moreover, there are none or limited studies examining users’ satisfaction with e-portal. Extant literature has revealed several studies investigating employees’/staffs’ portal. However, evaluation and investigation of students’ portal have been neglected. Since the University of Ilorin has invested huge resources on the provision of portals for all her students, it is important to find out whether or not these students especially the undergraduate ones who constitute the majority are satisfied with its use.

The bulk of the studies that were found in the literature were mainly concerned with reporting the experiences of developing a university portal or setting plans and strategies for its development (see Jafari, 2003; Eisler, 2003; Thomas, 2003; Campbell & Aucoin, 2001; Frazee, Frazee, & Sharpe, 2003; Bishop, 2003). Hence, the purpose of this study is to examine the undergraduate students’ satisfaction with their web portals. It is expected that the outcomes from the study will lead to improvement and management of web portal for more functionality and efficiency at the university. In terms of contribution, it is expected that to advance the theoretical development in the area e-portal/information system in general and present a basis for further research in this field.