Using the Technology Acceptance Model in Understanding Academics ’ Behavioural Intention to Use Learning Management Systems

Although e-learning is in its infancy in Saudi Arabia, most of the public universities in the country show a great interest in the adoption of learning and teaching tools. Determining the significance of a particular tool and predicting the success of implantation is essential prior to its adoption. This paper presents and modifies the technology acceptance model (TAM) in an attempt to assist public universities, particularly in Saudi Arabia, in predicting the behavioural intention to use learning management systems (LMS). This study proposed a theoretical framework that includes the core constructs in TAM: namely, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and attitude toward usage. Additional external variables were also adopted— namely, the lack of LMS availability, prior experience (LMS usage experience), and job relevance. The overall research model suggests that all mentioned variables either directly or indirectly affect the overall behavioural intention to use an LMS. Initial findings suggest the applicability of using TAM to measure the behavioural intention to use an LMS. Further, the results confirm the original TAM’s findings. Keywords—Technology Acceptance Model; Higher education; Learning management systems; Saudi Arabia


INTRODUCTION
The rapid development of information and communications technology (henceforth ICT) makes using ICT imperative.The interest in ICT has drawn substantial research attention [1], and more importantly, ICT contributes directly to the significant changes in teaching and learning that have been occurring in regards to e-learning [2].The increasing access to ICT creates a new paradigm for education known as e-learning.Therefore, universities around the world have started to revise their strategies in order to adopt technologies that assist in achieving their pedagogical goals.E-learning is commonly defined as the intentional use of ICT in teaching and learning [3].
One of the ICT tools that is incorporated into the education sector is called a learning management system (henceforth LMS).LMS is one of the rapidly-emerging technologies that is widely used in higher education, whether in open-source (Moodle) or commercial LMS such as Blackboard [4].Paulsen [5] argues that the availability of LMS is considered a critical factor in the success of e-learning.An LMS, alternatively called a learning platform, refers to a wide range of systems that assist teachers and students alike in accessing online learning services [6].Services provided by an LMS vary from one system to another.However, common services available in an LMS may include access control, performance management, communication facilities, assessments, study schedule documentation, and provision of learning content [7].Current reports show that more than 95% of all responding universities and colleges in the USA have adopted one or more LMS [8] and that the same adoption rate exists in institutions in the UK [9].The trend of using LMS in the Middle East is not different.LMS is a promising tool around the globe, including in the Middle East [10].According to a survey, outcomes about elearning services provided by 26 Arab universities reveals that 96% adopt LMS as a learning environment to assist in providing blended learning [11].Blended learning is a term usually used interchangeably with e-learning in the literature involving e-learning in Arab world.In the Gulf Cooperation Council, the education sector has taken care in designing strategic plans to incorporate e-learning [12].
An effective implementation of LMS should highly consider academics who will use such systems for teaching.Therefore, the aim of this research is to develop a theoretical framework based on a well-known technology acceptance model (TAM) [13].The proposed model contributes to the high volume of research on e-learning in Saudi Arabia, and it will be used to measure academics' behavioural intention for using an LMS.The model is presented in depth in a separate section.The rest of the paper is structured as follows: first, LMS in Saudi Arabia is presented.Then, a brief review on the previous studies of LMS usage in Saudi Arabian higher education is presented, followed by the theoretical framework on which the research model was based.The research context and significance appear next, followed by the methodology section, which provides insight into the research model and hypothesis development.The research methodology section includes a comprehensive structure about the method of validation for the proposed model.The results and discussion are provided prior to the research conclusion and future considerations.

A. LMS in Saudi Arabia
In Saudi Arabia, although e-learning is in its infancy, most of the Saudi universities keep pace with the development of ewww.ijacsa.thesai.orglearning around the world.All governmental universities in Saudi Arabia have a deanship for e-learning and distance learning, created to assist with matching this development and meeting the need to utilise e-learning at universities.The Ministry of Higher Education has initiated an ambitious plan in its establishment of the National Centre for E-learning and Distance Learning (NCeDL).The centre was established to assist in the plan of providing educational tools for local universities [14].NCeDL contributes to the e-learning industry in the kingdom by providing services and solutions to the local universities.One of the solutions developed locally by the National Centre is an LMS called JUSUR [15].JUSUR provides academics with features to facilitate their teaching experience, like course and user-management tools, forums, quizzes, and announcements.It also assists in managing the elearning process by keeping students' data organized, planning courses, making content available to students, tracking students' performance and producing reports about it, facilitating communications with students, and offering testing and assessment tools [16].
JUSUR is hosted and managed by NCeDL.Academics who wish to use the system can register for it by filling out a registration form to create their profiles.Once registered, the NCeDL registration system verifies their academic email.Once verified, the account will be approved and activated.Despite the ease of joining, JUSUR has not been adequately utilised by academics in Saudi Arabia [16].The highest usage of JUSUR occurs at King Saud University, one of the largest universities in Saudi Arabia.As yet, however, only 55% of the courses at the university are offered through the system.Similar results were reported by [17], who found that the overall utilisation of LMS fell below the satisfactory level.The results of these studies are consistent with another study that showed the harnessing of LMS to accomplish pedagogical benefits in higher education has yet to reach the required level of use [18].JUSUR LMS has not been the only e-learning system used at Saudi universities.Other commercial LMS such as Blackboard, WebCT, and Design2Learn have been adopted.However, [19] pointed out that only a few faculty members have utilised these systems at each university.Reflecting this issue, a growing number of studies have been conducted on the use of e-learning technologies, whereas research focusing on LMS use receives little attention and remains relatively insufficient.The following section provides the roadmap for these studies.

B. Previous studies on LMS in Saudi Arabia
First, it is noteworthy that e-learning is commonly used in place of blended learning in Saudi Arabia.A plethora of studies have examined e-learning in the context of Saudi Arabia; however, little has emerged on LMS usage.
A high percentage of these studies have targeted learner usage of LMS, specifically JUSUR LMS, whereas academics receive only a little attention.Further, most of the studies focus on examining the volume of LMS usage, features used within an LMS, and attitudes towards using such systems.Hence, the previous studies did not target the intentions and behaviours of LMS users.Most importantly, use of the technology acceptance model within LMS in Saudi context is virtually non-existent.Moreover, studies only consider user groups that have already utilised an LMS.The potential users of LMS, however, are not considered.[20] investigated the use of JUSUR LMS for blended learning in the College of Applied Studies and Community Services at King Saud University.Prior to Alebaikan and Troudi's study [20], an LMS had already been implemented by the faculty to serve the high number of students applying to the college.Their study aimed to interpret students' and academics' perception of a new learning environment with a focus on online discussion features in LMS.From the instructors' point of view, the study concluded that lack of pedagogical and technical experience is an issue in using the Web as a medium of instruction.Further, not all features needed by instructors are available within an LMS.As this study was conducted in one of the largest and most advanced universities in Saudi Arabia, technology integration in teaching within this context could consequently be affected by organizational arrangement [21].Further, facilitating conditions in which academics would be likely to have more resources and assistance would affect the intention to use the system [22] as they will receive the required support when they need.In addition, Mulkeen [23] suggests that ICT infrastructure should be considered when investigating LMS usage.Finally, it is noted that this study focuses only on online discussion featured within learning management systems that were provided to academics and students prior to the study.

Alebaikan and Troudi
In an attempt to further analyse academics' use of LMS in Saudi Arabia, Asiri, Mahmud, Abu-Bakar, and Ayub [24] suggests a theoretical framework in an attempt to identify factors that influence JUSUR LMS utilisation in public universities in Saudi Arabia.This study is based on the library research approach, and the theoretical framework proposed by the authors was constructed based on well-known theoriesnamely, the theory of reasoned action [25] and the technology acceptance model [13].In this study, factors that influence the use of JUSUR LMS are divided into two main categories: internal variables and external variables.First, internal variables consist of three factors that could affect potential users of JUSUR LMS in terms of their attitude, pedagogical beliefs towards e-learning, and level of competency.The authors confirmed that a positive attitude towards JUSUR LMS will likely motivate academics to utilise it.Further, along similar lines with other studies [26,27], beliefs about e-learning were found important in determining the use of JUSUR LMS.Moreover, the study noted that the use of JUSUR LMS could be predicted by competence level, meaning that having the skills and knowledge to use the system will affect an academic's use of the system.Second, the external variable indicated in this study includes external barriers faced by academics as well as demographic factors.Barriers such as organisational, technological, and social barriers were hypothesised to serve as factors that determine JUSUR LMS usage.Similarly, demographical factors such as gender, computer self-efficacy, and training are also used to predict JUSUR LMS usage.
In a different study, Asiri, Mahmud, Abu-Bakar, and Ayub [28] studied faculty members' utilisation of JUSUR LMS at three public universities in Saudi Arabia and their attitude towards such utilisation.Like the previously-mentioned study, www.ijacsa.thesai.orgthis study targeted academics who have already utilised LMS to assist them in teaching.The study aimed to determine the volume of JUSUR LMS utilisation that constitutes a moderate level.It is noteworthy that, according to the study, the moderate level is explained as the use of LMS for less than one hour on average twice a month.However, the finding of this study is not consistent with that of other studies mentioned earlier, wherein LMS usage is believed to be below the satisfactory level.Nevertheless, the study confirms that faculty members have a positive attitude towards JUSUR LMS.
In the same way, Hussein [16] studied the attitude of faculty members in Saudi universities towards JUSUR LMS.Similar to other studies, academics in these universities had developed a sufficient awareness and positive attitude towards JUSUR LMS.Despite that, the study confirmed their low level of JUSUR LMS usage, which was not justified within the study.
Similar to the study above, Albalawi and Badawi [29] conducted a study targeting faculty members of the University of Tabuk, which is a public Saudi Arabian university.The study aimed to highlight academics' perception and awareness of e-learning.Surprisingly, the study revealed that almost 63% of faculty members had a negative perception of e-learning.It is worth mentioning that this study was conducted prior to any implementation of e-learning technologies at Tabuk University, making the situation similar to the current study in terms of the absence of LMS.
Other research exists on acceptance of e-learning in general, with a focus on LMS systems.However, this research has used students as subjects [30][31][32][33], and students are outside of the current study's research scope.
The main limitation of the previous studies, however, is that they mostly focus on measuring the attitude of faculty members towards already-implemented LMS systems.In other words, most of the existing research focuses on users who have already used an LMS in teaching.Therefore, intention to use an LMS by those who have not used one is not considered.Moreover, although higher education providers in Saudi Arabia are implementing LMS, little has been done to examine the factors that influence academics to use an LMS.Further, the previous studies limited their scope to an examination of the use of JUSUR LMS in Saudi Arabia.However, as stated earlier, JUSUR LMS is not the only LMS employed in Saudi Arabian public universities [11].In this study, an LMS is defined as any LMS that is either centrally-managed and government-run or privately adopted in a public university.
In response to this gap in literature, this paper develops a research model based on the technology acceptance model (TAM).The following section presents the theoretical framework of the study.

III. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
From the stream of research on information systems (IS), many theories have been proposed to explain the relationship between determinants that would affect technology acceptance.The most common factors are user attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, and actual system use.Frameworks such as the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) [25], diffusion of innovation [34], the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) [22,35], the DeLone and McLean model of IS success [36], and measurement and analysis of computer user satisfaction [37,38] are popular models used in the context of technology acceptance.Most of these models, however, focus on only technical factors [4].
The technology acceptance model (TAM) [13] is possibly the most widely-used framework in the field of IS for measuring technology acceptance [4,[39][40][41], and its high validity has been proven empirically in many previous studies [42][43][44].Further, Al-Gahtani [45] confirms the validity and reliability of TAM constructs to predict IS adoption in Arab culture, specifically in the Saudi culture.In relation to elearning and LMS, TAM has also been adopted and tested [46,47].Although TAM is a well-known and tested theory in the field of IS, using TAM in predicting and explaining LMS usage has so far received little attention [48].
Fig. 1.The technology acceptance model [13] TAM was first introduced by Davis [49] around the concept of technology acceptance.As depicted in Figure 1, TAM posits that acceptance of a new IS can be predicted based on users' behavioural intention (BI), attitude towards use (A), and two other internal beliefs: perceived usefulness (U) and perceived ease of use (E).Davis [13] defined perceived usefulness as "the prospective user's subjective probability that using a specific application system will increase his or her job performance within an organizational context" (p.985) and perceived ease of use as "the degree to which the prospective user expects the target system to be free of effort" (p.985).
According to TAM, behavioural intention (BI) defines the actual use of a given IS system and therefore determines technology acceptance.Attitude towards use (A) and perceived usefulness (U) jointly influence BI (A).BI is also indirectly affected by perceived ease of use (E).A is directly affected by both U and E, while U is directly influenced by E. Further, TAM theorizes that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are affected by external variables.Thus, U and E mediate the effect of external variables on user's attitude and behavioural intention, and therefore the actual system use.

A. Shaqra University
Shaqra University is a public university established in 2008, located in Shaqra, Saudi Arabia.In addition to the main campus, there are eight other campuses in geographically www.ijacsa.thesai.orgdistributed locations that include a total of twenty-one colleges and approximately twenty departments.The latest figures [50] show a total of 761 faculty members and 10,767 enrolled students.Table 1 provides information about the different campuses, colleges, departments, and faculty members' ranks.

TABLE I. Shaqra University Demographics
In line with the national strategic plan, Shaqra University shows interest in incorporating ICT into learning and teaching practices.The university regularly participates in conferences hosted by the ministry of higher education in Saudi Arabia.In addition, soon after the establishment of the university, the deanship of information technology and e-learning was also established.The aim of this initiative is to provide both academics and students with pedagogical and technical support.Moreover, different workshops have been held to raise faculty members' awareness of e-learning.As yet, however, face-to-face teaching is the official medium of instruction at the university.

B. Study significance
The significance of the current study stems from various considerations.First, no previous research has sought to investigate faculty members' behavioural intention to use LMS and empirically validate the technology acceptance model at Shaqra University.Moreover, the findings of this study will provide the university with more insight into academics' perception of LMS.Further, this study will pave the way for future research on technology acceptance within the higher education context in Saudi Arabia.Specifically, this study adopted and modified a questionnaire to suit the LMS acceptance context that may be reused in future research.

IV. RESEARCH MODEL AND HYPOTHESES
The research model is applied to two different groups: academic users and academic non-users.Those in the user group are examined based on their current use of an LMS or their previous experience of usage.Due to their potential to use an LMS, a non-user group is also examined.According to Taylor and Todd [51], TAM has successfully predicted and explained almost equal behavioural intention to adopt a new technology among inexperienced and experienced users.Further Shih [52] noted that TAM can be applied prior to the adoption of a new technology.
In accordance with the research objective and consistent with the related literature, the research model, as shown in Fig. 2, consists of the TAM core constructs and three key moderators.The following section discusses the development of relevant hypotheses.

A. Hypotheses in relation to TAM variables
As previously discussed, TAM proposed the following relationship between its constructs: a) Intention to use is positively affected by attitude toward using and perceived usefulness; b) Attitude toward using is positively affected by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use; and c) perceived usefulness is directly affected by perceived ease of use.In this study, perceived usefulness is defined as the degree to which a faculty member believes that using an LMS would enhance his or her job performance, while perceived ease of use is defined as the degree to which a faculty member believes that learning to use an LMS requires a relatively low degree of effort.The linkage between the different variables has been proven by different studies on e-learning and LMS usage [31,[53][54][55][56]. Therefore, the relationships between perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude toward using, and intention to use an LMS system are hypothesised as the following: 1) Perceived ease of use positively affects perceived usefulness of an LMS.
2) Perceived ease of use positively affects attitudes towards using an LMS.
3) Perceived usefulness positively affects attitudes towards using an LMS.
4) Perceived usefulness positively affects intention to use LMS.
5) Attitude towards using positively affects intention to use LMS.
Ong, et al. [57] highlights that intention to use e-learning is also effected by perceived ease of use.Therefore, the relationship between perceived ease of use and behavioural intention for use is hypothesised as: 6) Perceived ease of use positively affects intention to use an LMS.

B. Hypotheses in relation to external factors and TAM variables
The ease of use and usefulness constructs may not be sufficient, and therefore other variables may be needed [58].Thus, after reviewing the relevant studies, this study suggests three external variables: LMS usage experience, job relevance, and lack of LMS availability.As in figure 2, researchers believe that the suggested external variables moderate the original TAM variables.The following explains the hypotheses on the relationship between external moderators and TAM variables.
Venkatesh and Davis [59]found that experience using technology serves as a critical factor in determining technology acceptance.Thompson, et al. [60] defines usage experience as individual involvement in or exposure to a particular system and the accumulative skills the user gains by using the system.In this study, LMS usage is suggested to moderate TAM variables.LMS usage is defined as academics' previous or current use of an LMS as a medium of instruction within an elearning environment.Therefore, the following is hypothesised: LMS usage experience negatively influences the non-user group's perceived ease of use of an LMS.9) LMS usage experience negatively influences the non-user group's perceived usefulness of an LMS.

Professors
TAM was extended to incorporate job relevance as a factor that directly affects perceived usefulness [59].According to Venkatesh and Davis [59], job relevance is "an individual's perception regarding the degree to which the target system is applicable to his or her job" (p.191).Similarly, this study proposes that job relevance affects both perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness.Job relevance in this study is defined as an academic's perception regarding the degree to which an LMS system is relevant to use in managing learning activities at Shaqra University.As found by Venkatesh and Davis [59], job relevance is believed to positively exert a direct effect on perceived usefulness.Consequently, this study argues that job relevance also affects perceived ease of use (PEOU).Therefore, the following are the hypotheses of this study on the relationship between job relevance and TAM variables: 10) Job relevance positively affects the perceived usefulness of an LMS.
11) Job relevance positively affects the perceived ease of use of an LMS.

C. Hypotheses on the relationship between lack of LMS availability and TAM variables
At the present, Shaqra University provides no LMS to faculty members.Therefore, as mentioned earlier, academics at Shaqra University can be categorised into the following groups in relation to LMS usage: a) experienced members who have used, and/or are using an LMS in their teaching, or b) inexperienced members who have not utilised an LMS yet.For both categories, the study proposes that a lack of LMS availability has a negative impact on perceived ease of use (E).
Therefore, the relationship between lack of LMS availability and perceived ease of use is hypothesised as following:

1) H12
Lack of LMS availability negatively affects the perceived ease of use of an LMS.

V. RESEARCH METHOD
The study is quantitative in nature and employs an online survey for data collection.Online surveys provide researchers with various benefits [61], saving researchers time and expenses by overcoming geographic distance.Moreover, they assist in accessing unique subjects.Due to Saudi Arabia's gendersegregated higher education system, the online survey was the appropriate tool to use in order to access both male and female participants.The online survey was developed to examine the relationship between variables proposed in the research model.

A. Questionnaire
To ensure content validity, the questionnaire used in this study was adapted from the original measurement scales used in TAM [13] and from other literatures [31,55,59,62] with some modifications and the necessary wording changes and validation to fit the context of LMS usage.To avoid issues that can occur in wordings, measurement and ambiguities, the questionnaire was pre-tested by two native English speakers.Sekaran and Bougie [63] highlight that such pre-test is essential because wording problems significantly influence accuracy [64].The questioner was also translated into Arabic because most of the academics at Shaqra University are native Arabic speakers.For the Arabic version, the back translation method suggested by [65] is used.This method suggests that the questionnaire measurements should be translated by bilingual experts back and forth from the source language to the targeted language.Based on that concept, the English version was sent to two bilingual experts to translate it into Arabic, and the back translation method was followed until the English and Arabic version converged.Finally, the Arabic version was also revised by an expert in the Arabic language for clarity.

B. Participants
The participants in this study were 59 faculty members from different colleges and different departments who voluntarily participated in the online survey.All participants in this study were academics working for Shaqra University, who fit well with the aim and context of this study.

C. Sampling technique
While it is difficult to get responses from a whole population, sampling is an attempt to draw a conclusion based on a small representation in a given population [66].The sample in this survey is considered a subset of academics at Shaqra University, comprised of some faculty members selected from the institution.The sampling technique used in the present study is non-probability convenience sampling.Convenience sampling is found used in many studies investigating technology acceptance.Further, the technique is used to ensure a better response rate in a short amount of time.Finally, it is against Shaqra University privacy policies to obtain academics' contacts and email addresses from the faculty or its departments.Additionally, using the university's mailing list may have led to the inclusion of other participants who are out of this study scope and therefore distort the findings.Hence, convenience sampling was the optimal technique for the purpose of this study.

D. Instrumentation
The research instrument consists of two main sections.The first section incorporates a nominal scale to identify respondents' demographic information.The second section uses 7-point Likert response scale where 7: Strongly disagree, 6: Moderately disagree, 5: Slightly disagree, 4: Neutral, 3: Slightly agree, 2: Moderately agree, and 1: Strongly agree.This section includes TAM constructs.

E. Demographic characteristics
This part of the questioner identifies respondents' basic demographic characteristics.It contains 10 items such as gender, age, teaching experience, academic rank and administration position, academic field, faculty and departmental information, and previous experience with LMS (Table 2).

F. Measuring TAM constructs
The second section of the survey(Table 3), as discussed in the questionnaire design above, measures TAM constructs used in this study.As shown in table 3, there are 20 items measured in accordance with the current study's research model.The measured items include perceived ease of use (7 items), perceived usefulness (6 items), attitude toward usage (3 items), behavioural intention to use (2 items), and job relevance as an external factor (2 items).It is noteworthy to mention that the seven items used to measure perceived ease of use include one item-lack of LMS availability-that is hypothesised in this research to moderate perceived ease of use.

G. Data collection
The questionnaire was made available at the beginning of academic year 2013/2014.The survey was distributed online by emailing a convenient sampling of 105 academics with the URL to the survey.Participants had the option to switch between English and Arabic at any time during the survey.At this time, of the 105 questionnaires distributed, 69 responses were recorded (65.71%).Of that, only 59 responses yielded valid responses that were used for analysis.The overall response rate was 56.19%.www.ijacsa.thesai.org

H. Ethical issues
Ethical clearance was obtained prior to the study.Participation in this study was voluntary and data was collected anonymously.This study did not involve personal information about subjects.Prior to commencing the survey in this study, all participants were made aware of the research significance and type of information being collected.The researchers explained that the participation in this research is based on subjects' interest, that they are under no obligation to participate, and that they may decline to participate at any time.Their right to withdraw at any time during the survey was explicitly stated.Further, data confidently was assured.Data collected from this research is to be kept confidential.

I. Procedure
In accordance with the hypotheses of the present study, a presentation was designed about LMS.The presentation consists of three main parts.The first provides a general overview about e-learning and presents its basic definition.The second part introduced LMS as a tool used in e-learning.The second part, in turn, includes basic definitions of LMS, describes its main features and components, and provides examples of various examples of LMS.The third part encloses a video presenting a local university experience with elearning.The presentation was made available in English as well as Arabic.The presentation was designed using Prezi, which is a cloud-based presentation software program that presents ideas in a non-liner manner [67].It incorporates maplike features to allow users to highlight the concepts that are most important to them and the relationships between these concepts while providing ease of navigation.
As mention earlier, the present study assumes that participants are mainly experienced (referred to as a usergroup) and inexperienced (the non-user group) with regard to LMS usage.Within the questionnaire structure described above, all participants had access to the demographic section, which is presented first.At the end of this section, participants were asked whether or not they had previous experience with LMS.Based on their response to this question, participants were directed to the appropriate following section.If they answered that they had no previous experience and proceeded, the following section embedded the presentation described earlier.After the presentation concluded, the non-user could proceed to Section 2, about the perceived ease of use.On the other hand, any other response to the question about LMS usage experience led respondents to skip the presentation and proceed directly to Section 2. The presentation was provided to support this study's hypothesis that there would be no significant differences between the user and non-user groups in their intention to adopt LMS in teaching.

A. Demographics
The participants were almost equal in terms of gender, with 28 (47.46%)males and 31 (52.54%)females.The majority of participants were between 25 and 40 years, with 28.81% from 25 to 30, 37.29% from 31 to 40, 22.03% from 41 to 50, and 10.17% above 50, with a low minority (1.69%) below 25.Saudi-nationality academics recorded the highest response rate, at 54.24%.The rest of the figures and information are presented in Table 6.

B. Experience with LMS
The current study, as previously discussed, investigates the applicability of using TAM on two groups: a user group and a non-user group.As expected, consistent with other figures, almost half of the respondents had not used an LMS (49.15%), while the rest vary in their experience with LMS as follows: Those who had used LMS for less than a year stood at 16.95%; and almost double this number, 28.81%, had used LMS for more than a year but less than 3 years.Only a few respondents had used an LMS for more than three years (3.39% for more than three years and only 1.69% for more than 5 years).In general, the results reveal that 49.15% of respondents were non-users and 50.85% were users.This distribution enables discrimination between the two groups' responses within the study context (Table 4).www.ijacsa.thesai.org

C. Validity and reliability
In addition to the steps mentioned earlier to assess instruments' validity and reliability, a further test was performed.Reliability assessment was done using Cornbach Alpha [68].Reliability concerns internal consistency between multiple measurements of variables, and Cornbach Alpha is commonly used to measure it [69].As per many studies (i.e., [70,71], constructs are considered to have internal consistency reliability when the Cronbach Alpha value exceeds 0.07. In this study, the reliability assessment was done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.All measures in this study show a high level of reliability, ranging from 0.901 to 0.924, with a satisfactory value of 0.801 for behavioural intention to use.All scales exceeded 0.70, and therefore the survey is considered reliable.

D. Statistical analysis and hypotheses testing
In line with the study objective, correlation analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between the variables used within this study, and therefore to empirically decide whether or not to accept or reject the null hypotheses.The structure of hypothesis testing is as follows.First, hypotheses were tested based on the size of the whole sample.Second, the study investigated the role of prior experience, and therefore hypotheses were tested on the non-user group.Finally, the user-group sample was used for testing the hypothesis.The aim is to provide a comprehensive correlation analysis and then investigate the impact role of prior experience on the correlation significance.

E. Hypotheses testing for all participants
As stated, this section used the sample size as a whole to test the research hypotheses.Hypotheses on the relationship between TAM original variables are presented first.

1) Hypotheses for TAM variables
a) Perceived ease of use positively affects perceived usefulness of an LMS.
From the correlation analysis result in Table 7, it can be observed that there is a significant positive relationship between the perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of an LMS.Therefore, H1 is supported.PEOU: Perceived ease of use; PU: Perceived usefulness b) Perceived ease of use positively affects attitudes towards using an LMS.
From the correlation analysis result in Table 8, it can be observed that there is a significant positive relationship between the perceived ease of use and attitude towards usage.Therefore, H2 is supported.PEOU: Perceived ease of use; ATU: Attitude towards usage c) Perceived usefulness positively affects attitudes towards using an LMS.
From the correlation analysis result in Table 9, it can be observed that there is a significant positive relationship between the perceived usefulness and attitude towards usage.In fact, the relationship between perceived usefulness and attitude towards usage indicates a stronger relationship than the relationship between perceived ease of use and attitude towards usage.In general, H3 is supported.From the correlation analysis result in Table 10, it can be observed that there is a significant positive relationship between the perceived usefulness and behavioural intention to use an LMS.Surprisingly, the relationship between perceived usefulness and behavioural intention to use does indicate a strong correlation.However, H4 is supported.From the correlation analysis result in Table 11, it can be observed that there is a positive relationship between the attitude towards usage and behavioural intention to use an LMS.
However, the relationship does not seem to be significant, and the correlation is not strong.Statistically, H5 is supported.f) Perceived ease of use positively affects intention to use an LMS.
From the correlation analysis result in Table 12, a significant positive relationship between perceived ease of use and behavioural intention to use can be observed.Therefore, H6 is supported.2) The role of prior experience hypotheses Table 9. PU and ATU correlations www.ijacsa.thesai.org The current study introduced LMS usage experience as a new moderator believed to affect the original TAM constructs.The users were categorized into two groups based on their previous experience using an LMS.Users who had used, or had been using, an LMS were called the user group.The inexperienced users, named the non-user group, were those who had not utilised an LMS before.The related hypotheses were: a) LMS usage experience negatively influences the nonuser group's intention to use an LMS.b) LMS usage experience negatively influences the nonuser group's perceived ease of use of an LMS.c) LMS usage experience negatively influences the nonuser group's perceived usefulness of an LMS.As shown in Table 13, there is a positive correlation between TAM variables for both groups, and it is statistically significant in most cases.Interestingly, a stronger correlation between TAM variables occurred for the non-user group.For instance, when comparing the effect of perceived ease of use on behavioural intention to use an LMS, the non-user group showed a significantly stronger and positive correlation.However, with the user group, the correlation was not statically significant.Consequently, it can be concluded that H7 is not supported.
The correlation between the two main constructsperceived ease of use and perceived usefulness-indicates a significant positive relationship with other variables.In fact, the non-user group shows a higher correlation.In general, both H8 and H9 are not supported.

3) The role of the job-relevance hypotheses
Job relevance was hypothesised to have a positive impact on both perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, as follows.
a) Job relevance positively affects the perceived usefulness of an LMS.
Job relevance correlates strongly with perceived usefulness.Further, there is a significant positive relationship between the two variables.Therefore, H10 is supported (Table 14).b) Job relevance positively affects the perceived ease of use of an LMS.
Job relevance correlates moderately with perceived ease of use.Similar to the correlation for H10, there is a significant positive relationship between the two variables.Therefore, H11 is supported (Table 15).

4) The role of the lack of LMS availability hypotheses
It is hypothesized that the lack of LMS availability would positively affect the perceived ease of use as follows: a) Lack of LMS availability positively affects the perceived ease of use.
Surprisingly, the result shows a negative relationship between lack of LMS availability and perceived ease of use.This result indicates that all participants (in both the user and non-user groups) perceived that lack of LMS availability does not affect ease of use.Therefore, H12 is not supported.

H11
Job relevance positively affects the perceived ease of use of an LMS.supported H12 Lack of LMS availability negatively affects the perceived ease of use of an LMS.Not supported

VII. DISCUSSION
The current study modified TAM mainly to validate the relationship between the TAM core constructs as well as the effects of moderators proposed with this study.Overall, the statistical analysis shows that the findings of the current study are consistent with the original TAM findings [13].All TAMrelated hypotheses within this study were proven to have positive correlations that are statistically significant.In line with other studies [18,24,[72][73][74][75], academics involved in this showed a positive attitude towards LMS, and they intent to use an LMS in their work.Further, the study indicates that when users' perceived ease of use increases, the perceived usefulness increases accordingly.As expected, when academics perceived LMS as easy to use, they developed a positive attitude towards utilising it.Similarly, the perceived usefulness increased the degree of positivity toward usage, which subsequently affected the behavioural intention to use.Interestingly, the findings vary between the user-group and the non-user group.The results show that the non-user group shows higher intention towards using LMS.While both groups perceived LMS as easy to use, the statistics show that the nonuser group perceived LMS as more useful than the other group.
Job relevance, adapted from [22], showed a strong relationship with perceived usefulness.Academics believed that the use of LMS for teaching is relevant to their job and is a useful matter.On the other hand, lack of LMS availability did not affect academics' perceived ease of use.Based on the presentation provided to them, they believed that LMS would be easy to use.Gender and academic rank did not correlate significantly with other variables.The findings suggest that gender and academic rank do not reflect a significant correlation with other constructs.However, the effect of age and gender does not fit within the scope of this study objective.

VIII. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
In general, this study modified the original TAM in order to measure academics' behavioural intention to use an LMS.The current study adapts the core constructs used in TAM.Specifically, it validates the relationship between perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude towards usage, and overall impact on behavioural intention to use.No surprising findings were found regarding the previous constructs.Therefore, this study confirms other empirical evidence and findings based on TAM.Further, the study successfully confirms the applicability of TAM in the Arab world, specifically in Saudi Arabia in higher-education settings.
As suggested by TAM, this study incorporates external variables including lack of LMS availability, job relevance, and experience with LMS usage.First, the unique environment in which data is collected influences the theoretical framework for this study.Subjects' lack of access to LMS during the data collection phase was assumed to exert a moderating effect on the relationship between TAM constructs, specifically the ease of use.However, the findings show that lack of LMS availability does not automatically mean academics believe using an LMS is difficult.The other external variable, job relevance, was also proven to have a strong relationship with TAM constructs.In particular, job relevance within the context of this study positively affected academics' perceived usefulness of an LMS.The role of prior experience with LMS usage was also investigated.The overall results for both experienced and inexperienced users confirm the original TAM findings.Within this study, inexperienced users indicated a higher degree of positivity towards LMS adoption.
The implication of this study can be surmised as follows.First, this study proposed a theatrical framework based on a robust acceptance model (TAM).This framework can be used to predict the behavioural intention to use an IS prior to the actual implementation.Further, the research model is validated with two different groups in the higher-education context.Moreover, this study contributes to the efforts to empirically validate TAM in the Arab world.Most significantly, this study could benefit Shaqra University's management staff in their future plans to adopt e-learning technologies.

A. Research limitations and future work
This study is not free of limitations.First and most importantly, this study was limited by time.Further, the findings of this study may not be greatly generalised for various reasons.First, the researchers conducted a size power test, and the result suggests that the sample size should be increased, as a higher sample size would help to make the conclusion more general.In addition, the research framework was designed to be used with LMS.Moreover, the focus on individuals was the main theme of this study.Future studies www.ijacsa.thesai.orgcould focus on general ICT adoption for teaching and learning.Additionally, collecting data from different groups could be affected by the increase of usage and experience of users [22].Therefore, longitudinal research may be more suitable to better predicting attitude and behaviour, and hence facilitating comprehensive understanding of the relationships between variables.Moreover, other statistical tests such as factor analysis, multiple regressions, and structural equation modelling could be conducted to confirm variables' validity.

TABLE IV .
Academics experience with LMS

TABLE XIV
JR: Job relevance; PU: Perceived usefulness

TABLE XV
JR: Job relevance; PU: Perceived usefulness

TABLE XVI .
The Lack of LMS availability with PEOU PEOU: Perceived ease of use

Table 14 .
JR and PU correlation www.ijacsa.thesai.orgThetable below summarises the hypothesis after the testing was done.