Information technology and communications have now become the main elements that move forward and help Oman in its national development process. Internet penetration in most developing countries like Oman is still low as oppose to mobiles dissemination, despite the government plans and strategies to enhance internet diffusion. Internet subscribers comprised about 2.5% of the general population of Oman. In contrast, the number of mobile holders increased substantially since the launch of these services in 1996. Prepaid mobile services and SMS were introduced in 2001 and both are currently popular with subscribers. Such fine appeal influenced many government organizations to go mobile with their services. This paper reviewed the ICT sector and the current m-government initiatives in Oman setting up the mobile services and aimed to understand the key factors to adoption and diffusion of these services.

M-services (Mobile services) and commerce are growing rapidly with the explosive growth of mobile devices, technologies and networks. Hence, many enterprises use them to grow revenue, reduce costs, maintain their competitive edge and achieve high performance. This advancement in mobile technologies has also influenced many government organizations to go mobile with their services and Oman is not an exception. Oman has just started to utilize mobile channels to offer Mservices to its citizens and clients. Although there were many services introduced, but it was hard to find evidence of any study conducted to determine their successes or failures. This study is an attempt to explore adoption issues of these services. This study used a survey questionnaire to collect data on users accessing the M-services, users' attitudes and the users' preferences to use these services. The results indicated that little over 50% of the users had positive attitudes towards the M-services and similar number of users indicated their preference to use them. This finding is in accordance to the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), which states that the attitudes determine the intention to use which lead to the actual usage of the system. There were many users having negative attitudes toward these services. This study also explored some possible reasons which might be contributing towards the users' negative attitudes are the lack of users' awareness of these services; their usefulness; mobile technology literacy, publicity and marketing, which are needed to be addressed by the service providers for a greater success of the M-service adoption in Oman.

The changing information technology (IT) skill requirements for business professionals in the new millennium have forced many universities to review their IT curriculum. The concept of a traditional approach to developing IT skills to meet the educational needs of all future business professionals is becoming obsolete, and other approaches are needed. This article describes the practice of Information Systems Approach (!SA) along with the Traditional Approach (TA) for developing IT skills in the College of Commerce and Economics of Sultan Qaboos University, the only national university in Oman. In order to study the effectiveness of the !SA, two groups were randomly selected; one followed the !SA, and the other group used the TA. The design was pretest-posttest, control group. The initial and final IT skills were compared. This study was repeated three times and was segmented into Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III in order to increase the validity and reliability of the results. (Keywords: information systems approach, IT skills, IT effectiveness, IT applications, traditional approach.) To develop the information technology (IT) skills used in business, a course should include the basic concepts of IT business applications, followed by the introduction of business software such as word processing, spreadsheet/graphics, and databases. There are three possible approaches based on the importance and order of presentation of these software modules. These are the Word Processing First Approach, Spreadsheet First Approach, and Database First Approach. These approaches are briefly described here.Word-Processing First Approach: This approach starts with word processing, followed by spreadsheets and graphics. Students will then usually be introduced to databases and database software (Freeman & Rowley, 1995). I call this approach the Traditional Approach (TA) because it is the one most commonly used. Spreadsheet First Approach (SFA):This approach starts with spreadsheets and graphics, followed often by word processing. Students will then usually be introduced to databases and database software (Freeman & Rowley, 1995). This approach is not commonly used in educational institutions because it alone is restricted to handling quantitative data.Database First Approach: Very few instructors consider database software to be an appropriate starting point for an IT course. This approach starts with databases, followed by spreadsheets and graphics and finally by word processing. This approach can be called an Information Systems Approach (ISA) (Freeman & Rowley, 1995). The essential characteristic of the ISA is that it focuses on the quantitative and qualitative information commonly used in business environ-

This study investigated the students attitudes toward the use of World Wide Web Course Tools (WebCT) and its influence on learning taking a course Introduction to Computers in Business offered at the College of Commerce and Economics in Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. Sultan Qaboos University is a co-educational institution where in most computer classes the male and female students are equally distributed. Omani society is a segregated society where male and female students have some how different life style and have different attitudes towards learning Information Technology.This research is exploring the difference if any of their attitudes toward WebCT, where WebCT was introduced in their "Introduction to Computers in Business" course as a supplementary learning tool. The finding showed that though male students have little more exposure of WebCT at the beginning of the course than the females, but towards the end of the course the male and female students have appreciated almost equally the importance and the use of WebCT as it is easily accessible from any Internet enabled location and at any time in addition it helps them in better understanding and learning the course material.

This study investigated the students attitudes toward the use of World Wide Web Course Tools (WebCT) and its influence on learning taking a course Introduction to Computers in Business offered at the College of Commerce and Economics in Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. Sultan Qaboos University is a co-educational institution where in most computer classes the male and female students are equally distributed. Omani society is a segregated society where male and female students have some how different life style and have different attitudes towards learning Information Technology.This research is exploring the difference if any of their attitudes toward WebCT, where WebCT was introduced in their "Introduction to Computers in Business" course as a supplementary learning tool. The finding showed that though male students have little more exposure of WebCT at the beginning of the course than the females, but towards the end of the course the male and female students have appreciated almost equally the importance and the use of WebCT as it is easily accessible from any Internet enabled location and at any time in addition it helps them in better understanding and learning the course material.