Using the Internet to Add Value to Tertiary Education: A Comparison between the Use of IT in Business and Education

摘要

Since the mid 1990's, there have been many claims that the Web has become the new paradigm for teaching. However, most academics don't use the Web as a replacement for teaching, but to provide extra benefits for their students. There is a strong parallel between this use of the Internet for teaching, and the use of IT in business for providing added value products or administrative efficiencies. This paper discusses the similarities between the use of IT in business and education, and explores the categorization of aspects of Web use in education using standard business categories relating to savings and quality. The results are obtained from a survey of academics conducted internationally using the Web, and surveys perceptions of benefits gained from supplementing teaching with Web based services. The results revealed similar usage levels of Administrative and Educational Features to aid tertiary education on the Internet. The Administrative uses showed slightly more benefits for the institution than for students and vice-versa for Educational uses. In both types of uses, their adoption seemed to be based upon how difficult the feature was to set up as well as the added value benefits it provided.