A Comparison Between the Use of IT in Business and Education: Applications of the Internet to Tertiary Education

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, there have been many claims that the Web has become the new paradigm for teaching. However, most academics do not 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. In this chapter, the similarities between the use of IT in business and education are discussed, and the categorization of aspects of Web use in education using standard business categories relating to savings and quality are explored. The results are obtained from a survey of academics conducted internationally using the Web, and it 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. An analysis of the correlation of the benefits identified for institution and students showed a correspondence between most of the uses, with a few interesting differences.