The learning environment usually raises various types of anxiety based on the student’s abilities to use technology and their abilities to overcome the negative feelings of an individual being watched all the time and criticized. Hence, learners still feel anxious while using computers and socializing in an e-learning environment. Learners who are faced with computer and AI tools are confused and frustrated. The uneasiness stems from anxiety or uneasiness, which is highly evident in daily interaction with computers and artificial intelligence tools or devices in e-learning contexts. The uneasiness stems from anxiety or uneasiness, which is highly evident in the daily interaction with computers and artificial intelligence tools or devices in e-learning contexts. To investigate this phenomenon empirically, a questionnaire was distributed among a group of undergraduate students who are studying different majors. This study aims to investigate the role of social anxiety and computer anxiety in an e-learning environment at the university level. Universities in the Gulf area are among those implementing e-learning systems. In spite of this, recent studies have shown that most students at Gulf universities are still resistant to using online systems; hence, it is necessary to determine the type of anxiety that creates such resistance and their relationship with other external variables such as motivation, satisfaction and self-efficacy. Students would be more likely to use e-learning tools and participate more effectively in their courses using the accessible electronic channels when the degree of anxiety is low. In this study, we have proposed a theoretical framework to investigate the role of social anxiety and computer anxiety in e-learning environments in the Gulf region. We examined how different variables such as satisfaction, motivation and self-efficacy can negatively or positively affect these two types of anxiety.

Google classroom can work in unidirectional process as it can serve the teachers’ strategies and styles on one hand and students’ perception, understanding, and effective participation in different classroom skills on the other hand. The ac-ceptance of Google classroom is affected by different factors. Some of them are still not clearly specified and discussed in previous research; therefore, they need further investigation. Based on the previous assumption, this study is an attempt to examine the factors that affect the students’ acceptance of Google classroom at Al Buraimi University College (BUC) in Oman. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was adopted to formulate the hypotheses of the current study. The data was collected through an online questionnaire with 337 respondents. The Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) approach was used to assess both the measurement and structural models. The results of the study prove that both the perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) positively influence the behavioral intention, which in turn influence the actual usage of Google classrooms. This study helps the decision makers of the higher educational institutions to have a better understanding of the effectiveness of us-ing Google classroom by their students. It is assumed that it helps in measuring the level of students’ acceptance to the previously mentioned technology.

Artificial intelligence applications (AIA) increase innovative interaction, allowing for a more interactive environment in governmental institutions. Artificial intelligence is user-friendly and embraces an effective number of features among the different services it offers. This study aims to investigate users’ experiences with AIA for governmental purposes in the Gulf area. The conceptual model comprises the adoption properties (namely trialability, observability, compatibility, and complexity), relative advantage, ease of doing business, and technology export. The novelty of the paper lies in its conceptual model that correlates with both personal characteristics and technology-based features. The results show that the variables of diffusion theory have a positive impact on the two variables of ease of doing business and technology export. The practical implications of the current study are significant. We urge the concerned authorities in the governmental sector to understand the significance of each factor and encourage them to make plans, according to the order of significance of the factors. The managerial implications provide insights into the implementation of AIA in governmental systems to enhance the development of the services they offer and to facilitate their use by all users.

This study seeks to explore the effect of fear emotion on students' and teachers' technology adoption during COVID-19 pandemic. The study has made use of Google Meet© as an educational social platform in private higher education institutes. The data obtained from the study were analyzed by using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and machine learning algorithms. The main hypotheses of this study are related to the effect of COVID-19 on the adoption of Google Meet as COVID-19 rise s various types of fear. During the Coronavirus pandemic, fear due to family lockdown situation, fear of education failure and fear of losing social relationships are the most common types of threat that may face students and teachers/educators. These types of fears are connected with two important factors within TAM theory, which are: perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU), and with another external factor of TAM, which is subjective norm (SN). The results revealed that both data analysis techniques have successfully provided support to all the hypothesized relationships of the research model. More interesting, the J48 classifier has performed better than the other classifiers in predicting the dependent variable in most cases.

This paper investigates adopting metaverse in academic institutions based on a conceptual model. The proposed conceptual model was created to empower future perspectives of the metaverse system. Even though the metaverses system was just recently launched, few attempts have been made to evaluate its impact on the educational sector. This paper attempted to determine the impact of metaverse system by providing a conceptual model that encompasses innovativeness, context awareness, perceived enjoyment, ubiquity, complexity, and value. The information was gathered using an online questionnaire completed by 953 people. The findings indicate that an innovative academic environment can influence teachers’ and students’ attitudes toward new technology. Understanding how the metaverse system functions as an innovative educational tool can influence students’ views regarding the use of new technology, assisting higher education institutions in developing regulations that enhance the learning process. As a result, the study discovered that the moderating impact of’ innovativeness is critical since it contributes to the pervasiveness of users’ perceptions of adopting new technology. The findings show that inventiveness is important in determining the metaverse system’s effectiveness. However, apparent ubiquity appears to have a less effective function in promoting the use of the metaverse system. The factors of context-awareness, perceived complexity and perceived enjoyment possess a substantial impact on the metaverse system’s adoption. Researchers have gained some insight into how university leaders can use current findings to spread awareness about the metaverse system in the educational environment by organizing seminars and workshops, offering incentives for teachers to use it, and allowing experts to assist teachers in better understanding the system’s benefits.

The growing use of the Internet of Things (IoT) around the world has encouraged researchers to investigate how and why the IoT is implemented in colleges and universities. Previous studies have focused on individual attitudes rather than the integration of attitudes from two different perspectives. Furthermore, other studies have investigated the use of the IoT in non-educational settings, ignoring the effect of the IoT related to the technology acceptance model (TAM) and technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) model. The present work aims to address this research gap by determining the main factors that influence acceptance of the IoT, leading to increased awareness in collaborative learning, where technology forms the core tool in enhancing the use of the IoT. A questionnaire was used to collect data from teachers and students from colleges and universities in Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The data were analyzed through the structural equation modeling (SEM) method. The findings indicated that there are two levels of positive effects on the intention to use IoT. The first level is technology features, which are represented by technology optimism and technology innovation; these factors are crucial to using the IoT. The second level is learning motivation, which has a close relationship with teachers’ knowledge, and content pedagogy, which has a significant effect on the familiarity with IoT tools and applications. TAM constructs have a positive and direct impact on the intention to use IoT. The practical and managerial implications show that teachers, educators, and students can obtain benefits from these results to help IoT features to suit users’ needs.