ICT Indicators in Higher Education: Towards an E-readiness Assessment Model
Abstract
The potential for information and communications technology (ICT) to transform teaching,
learning, research and management in higher education has been the subject of many articles and
reports [1]. Higher education institutions in developing economies are at different stages of
adoption ICTs for education and management. For institutions that are in the early stages of the
ICT adoption, there are no appropriate models or frameworks that are being used to assess their
state of readiness to use ICTs in education and to develop appropriate institutional ICT strategies
aligned to the institutional strategies. In addition, the few existing models can only be used for
qualitative assessment without explicit and measurable indicators and targets. In other words, the
indicators they use do not have quantitative targets that could be used for benchmarking and
quantitative assessment of ICT strategies. This paper describes a model that overcomes this
limitation by developing indicators with quantifiable targets. The proposed e-readiness
assessment model contains 17 indicators grouped into five categories of network access,
networked campus, networked learning, networked society and institutional ICT strategy. The
model defines over 88 sub-indicators of the 17 indicators based on both hard facts and perception
data. The model has also developed a staging framework with quantifiable targets for staging
each of the 17 indicators and sub-indicators on scale of 1 to 4, where 1 is the lowest
stage of preparedness and the 4 the highest stage of preparedness. Since collecting
perception data based statistically significant is expensive, the researchers propose that
institutions could integrate a sub-set of six sub-indicators into their strategic ICT plans in order
to improve the integration of ICT in education. This framework has been tested in two separate
e-readiness assessments of universities in Eastern Africa [2, 3]. This paper argues that the model
is a good starting point for empirical studies on the assessment of the integration of ICT in higher
education institutions and invites practitioners to adopt the indicators, modifying where
necessary, to guide integration of ICT into higher education and to develop roadmaps for
accession to higher stages of e-readiness for higher education institutions. Finally, the paper
recommends further research to establish relationships between the indicators and sub-indicators
and quality of higher education and to derive an ICT readiness index for higher education
institutions.