Acceptance of a new reporting platform for work experience reporting in an Engineering discipline

Technology has become crucial to the success of learning design, and more so in the recent years. The success of technological solutions depends on its acceptance within the target community of users, which in most cases is the student community it is meant to serve; but when it succeeds, it can be a great enabler of learning. A department in a University decided to migrate from the paper based approach submission of students' vacation work report to electronic based submission. Adapting this technology platform to continue to meet student needs is important, and so, it is necessary to understand the students' perception of the new submission system. Students were requested to complete questionnaires related to their perception of the system relative to the traditional system in order to guide the future evolution. The basic Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used to elicit students' changeover experience. Results suggest that the changeover is acceptable to the students, and the basic TAM hypotheses postulated seem empirically supported. Moreover, it seems the category of students that have used the previous paper based submission appreciated the shift more than those that had little contact with the old system.