Abstract
In the Japanese university context, student and faculty acceptance of technology is a rather underresearched
field. Due to this lack of research and our universityʼs move towards promoting
e-learning, this project aimed to examine the reception of the learning management system (LMS),
officially known as Manaba, currently in place at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. Although
the current LMS has only been in place for two years, it was necessary to analyze student and staff
perceptions of its utilization in order to improve its implementation in the future. Therefore, to
understand student and faculty perceptions of the LMSʼs use, a quantitative survey was designed
and modified from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the most widely used model to
classify a userʼs technological acceptance. The quantitative TAM survey, consisting of 17 questions,
was distributed to 446 students and 16 English lecturers based on the categories of perceived selfefficacy,
perceived enjoyment/ease of use, perceived usefulness, and behavioral intention of the
LMS. The results of the survey indicated students and lecturers leaned favorably toward accepting
the new technology in place. We believe these results offer valuable insights for universities seeking
to effectively implement an LMS for homework and assessment purposes.
