University Students Facilities

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Students/Faculty of University of St. La Salle. This study will also benefit the students and faculty members with regards to the experiences and quality of services that are provided by the university computer laboratories in order to meet their expectations and satisfaction.

Researchers. This study will enable the researchers to apply principles of marketing; specifically understand the importance of customer satisfaction and services.

Future researchers. This research can be a reference to other future researchers as they themselves are students, in providing additional data and information in a similarly research area.

Definition of Terms

Computer – operationally used as a system device use to enhance the teaching and learning process in the USLS computer laboratory

Computer Laboratory – place or setting whereby the study was conducted; research area.

Customer Satisfaction – use as measurement for the level of fulfilment of the computer laboratory services perceived by the participants; achieve perception and expectation of the participants.

Functionality – the quality of practical use of the facilities and equipment provided by the computer laboratory

ITC (Information Technology Centre) – facilitates the computer laboratory and its services.

Participants – refers to Information Technology and Computer Science students as assessors in this study.

SA – operationally this abbreviation stands forUSLS student assistant

Service/s – key factor in determining the level of satisfaction of the participants; the intangible products consumed and used by the participants in this study.

Services Marketing – a marketing tool used by the researchers as the basis for recommendations

Software Programs – programs on the each computer unit provided by the computer laboratory for the students e.g. Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and Google Sketch etc.

Rational capacity – refers to the equal number of computer units to the number of students

User – pertains to the following conditions:

- any bona fide student of University of St. La Salle – Bacolod who has paid the Computer laboratory fee;

- any USLS faculty who is holding his scheduled class in any of the computer s;

any person officially enrolled in Information Technology and Computer Science course.

University – the establishment and the educational institution wherein researchers gathered their data; particularly refers to the University of St. La Salle.

Satisfaction – key determinant in identifying the factors affecting services in the computer laboratory.

Level of Satisfaction – criteria use in identifying the students perception in computer laboratory services.

Chapter 2

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter discusses the findings from related studies which involve customer satisfaction, services and services marketing as applied with the use of computer laboratory in the University of St. La Salle.

Demographic Profile

Popovich, Gullekson, Morris and Morse (2008) have made a comparison in the attitudes of undergraduates from the year 1996 to 2005 regarding to the computer usage. They found that the significance and make use of computers has greatly increased over the last two years. Male and female students don’t have any longer significant difference in their attitudes toward computers and total amount of time spent using computers inside the computer laboratories. Another study in 2008 by Teo and Lee, noted a great level of positive attitudes to students in higher education as regard to the use of computer laboratories and other services it offers. There were no significant differences in computer attitudes by gender despite the fact that more male students show a positive attitude towards the computer rather than female students. Inoue (2007) cited also that attitudes of the students with regards to the information technology were greatly positive and there were no differences in their perspective among several educational classes between the male and female students with regards to their experiences in using the computer laboratory. However, a significant difference in computer perspective was found between students who have a computer at home and those who do not.

According to Gay (2006), majority of the students in a university shows a positive attitude with regards to the use of computer laboratories within the academic environment. Specifically, students were likely used computers for typing assignments with an average of (92%), while from the part of their studies (95%), education from home (68%). But in contrast to the statement of the previous researchers, there is somehow a significant gender and age differences developed in relating to attitudes in their study.

Information and Communication technologies through the education system became very significant. Therefore, Information technology is now being connected to the educational purposes during the past years. Aside from that, the study and publication in this area rises. From the earlier studies of (Abdulrasool& Mishra, 2009; Alseddiqi, Mishra &Abdulrasool, 2009; Jamsek&Kocijancis, 2007), it shows that there’s a cooperation in the importance of using computers in technical and vocational education and especially in the course of Engineering. In this study, it pointed out that the tools used in the computer oratories could be used for engineering subjects both in technical and vocational such like in computer aided- drawing and design, AutoCAD software, simulation products, animation and multimedia.

Computer Laboratory

A computer laboratory is a cluster of computers that usually are networked and available for use by the public. Laboratories frequently are found in public buildings such as libraries, schools such as colleges and universities, community centres. Almost all computer laboratories offer user’s access to the Internet and provide software that students can use to do research and complete their