IT governance in higher education as reflected in the adoption, diffusion and integration of course management systems

Chan Namkiu and Allan Yuen
University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR, China

The rise of the knowledge-based society and the proliferation in the use of information technology (IT) to support administration, research, and teaching and learning have brought new challenges and opportunities to higher education institutions. Aligning institutional priorities and IT-related resources has become one of the major concerns in strategic planning, and higher education institutions have been exploring effective ways to get the best value from IT by integrating its uses into the curriculum to better serve the needs of the students.

A recent study on how IT is being governed in over 300 corporations worldwide suggested that 'effective IT governance is the single most important predictor of the value an organization generates from IT' (Weill and Ross 2004). Also, various case studies on how universities govern IT have been reported (e.g. Beeby et al. 2006; Clark 2005; McCredie 2006). However, there has not been much empirical evidence showing that the best practices in IT governance in successful corporations could produce the same results in universities, which, with their broader strategic objectives on higher education, differ significantly from business enterprises and other for-profit organizations in their the requirements for using IT.

In this study, we examined episodes in the adoption, diffusion and integration of course management systems across different faculties at one university, offering a provisional schema to address issues of IT governance in higher education. The emerging patterns of governance at both the individual and institutional level as reflected through past major decisions on the use of course management systems for teaching and learning will be explored. Descriptive data will be collected through interviews with teachers and administrators, observation of relevant committee meetings, and textual analysis of relevant documents. The purpose of the study is not to provide a replicable conceptual framework for IT governance or a grand theory out of the study of a single instance. Rather, we aim at offering the schema as a working model in order to expand research into a relatively new terrain. It is anticipated that the findings of this study will be of considerable value to the host university, with wider implications in the area of IT governance in higher education, in both practical and theoretical aspects.