| dc.description.abstract | In the information age, the importance of information technology to the business community is growing. Meanwhile, the importance of information technology to the Taiwanese small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has been emphasized recently. In order to reduce the national digital divide, the Taiawnese Ministry of Economic Affairs has allocated 1 billion NT dollars to electronicalize the SMEs, and assisted the SMEs in coping with different information needs, as well as identified the applied software solutions to effectively reduce the digital divide in the industry.
Among the policies that attempt to solve the digital divide problem of the industry, there exists a lack of awareness of the real meaning of the digital divide. It is found that the hardware digital divide is overemphasized, but the software digital divide is neglected. The software digital divide is related to whether an individual is able to use information effectively and efficiently, which is regarded as an important key factor in the E-learning arena.
Because there are a variety of resources for self-learning on the Internet and many instructional materials from different subject areas have available digitally, the learners’ abilities to use computer hardware and software effectively and efficiently remain key factors that determine the success of their learning. The degree of the information literacy may affect an individual’s work performance, their future academic achievement, and also impact their learning within the enterprises.
Generally speaking, we need to prevent “the poor from being poorer,and the rich from being richer” situation in the information age, the information literacy training is a necessity. Specifically, the information literacy is an essential ability of an indivudal to learning, and it is an integral part of the life-long learning. In the era of rapid dissemination of information, the information literacy to enterprise employees is of great value.
In this study, relevant literature was reviewed. Through content analysis, the research attempted to identify the major dimensions of information literacy. They included 13 dimensions, including the basic traditional knowledge, the information cognitive ability, the information retrieval and search capabilities, the capacity for the assessment and analysis of information, the ability to integrate information, the ability to apply information, the ability to present relevent information, the decision-making ability, the information communicative skill, the information dissemination ability, the ability to use computer equipment, the ability to use of Internet tools, the ability to use multimedia tools, etc.
This research used a well-designed questionnaire to investigate the current situation of the Taiwanese SMEs, to explore the condition of electronization and to probe the the current level of information literacy of the SME staffs. Seven hundred and eighty seven questionnaires were sent; 199 questionnaires were responded and valid. The response rate was 32.3 percent. The data were analyzed using SPSS13.0.
The results indicated that:
(1) The gender distribution of the higher-level workforce in Taiwanese SMEs was uneven.
(2) The industrial electronization had more impact on the women’s information literacy than on the men’s information literacy.
(3) The impact of the enterprise knowledge management electronization (e-learning) on the staff’s information literacy was found to be the most significant.
Hence whether the company can improve an individual’s information literacy in their staff training remain an important element in the implementation of e-learning. | en_US |