ITC563 | Management Issues | A Case Study Of E Learning For A College

Introduction

Information technology or IT is the significant utilization of various computers for the specific storage, retrieval, transmission and finally manipulation of information or data within any enterprise or business (Clark & Mayer, 2016). This information technology is the subsequent subset of ICT or information and communications technology. IT comprises of three distinct categories, which are techniques to process the information, apply mathematical as well as statistical methodologies for taking proper decisions and even simulate the high order thinking by the various computerized programs. The information technology also encompasses the technologies of information distribution like telephones and televisions (Verbert et al., 2013). The following report outlines a brief discussion on the case study of E Learning developers in a specific college. These developers are approached by a college authority, who wishes to start the process and programs of E Learning within their college. This report provides proper details regarding integration of social media into the platform of e learning. Relevant recommendations will also be provided here.

Discussion

Case Study

A group of e learning developers is responsible for providing services of e learning programs to various schools and colleges. This specific team is being approached by a popular and successful college, which is recently delivering the several training programs explicitly through the traditional mode of delivery like classroom or face to face meetings. Presently, they have taken the decision of tapping into the advanced and technology oriented e learning service. This particular college is completely unknown from these types of services and has only offered its services online in simplified billboard style website. They wishes to engage the developers of e learning in building the required platform for such services right from scratch and then assist for moving all the courses online. This college is ready to pay the expenses for the platform and even the timeframe and the scope for this project with the completed information regarding the recent business environment such as students, courses, facilities, resources and may others. Not only, the developers of this e learning program will be earning much, but also they would be competing the modest sharing for turning the educational world to a much better place by simply making the cost effective and high quality training course more easily accessible. A detailed report is required for this particular purpose and this report is to be provided to the senior management of the college from this team of e learning developers.

Integration of Social Media into E Learning Platform

Social media are the interactive computerized technologies, which solely facilitate the proper creation as well as sharing of the ideas, information, data, interests of careers and even all other types of expressions with the help of virtual networks and virtual communities (Rennie & Morrison, 2013). There is a variety of built in and stand alone services of social media that are available for the social media. Some of the most significant and important aspects of the social media technology are as follows:

i) Web 2.0 Internet Applications: Social media are providing interactive Web 2.0 Internet based applications for the users and hence is quite popular for the users (Ellis & Goodyear, 2013). It is the second version of Internet application that is being utilized in all types of businesses.

ii) User Generated Contents: The second common feature of the social media is that it allows the provide user generated contents like the digitalized photos and videos, text posts and comments and even generated data with the help of various  online interactions (Cheung & Vogel, 2013).

iii) Development of Online Social Networks: Another important aspect of the social media is the helps to develop the online social networks for the connection of any user’s profile with the other groups and individuals (Allen, 2016).

The above mentioned three aspects are extremely important and significant for the e learning service implementation with the college in the given case study (Liaw & Huang, 2013). The social media can be integrated within the platform of e learning in the college. This social media is the structure, which comprises of individuals and communities of students. In the field of e learning, the structure of social media could be utilized in several ways and in by several tools (Ortigosa, Martín & Carro, 2014). The most popular tools of social media that could be used for the proper integration with the e learning platform are given below:

i) Facebook: The teacher could effortlessly and easily create a closed or open group for sharing the information, materials, ideas, questionnaires, pictures, quizzes and many more for any specific course and module (Gallagher & Sixsmith, 2014). The students could freely talk or interact regarding the issues related to their course and can even share information with other students.

ii) Twitter: This particular social media platform could be utilized as the back channel for the purpose of connecting the learning communities or the smaller classrooms within a specific event or topic for sharing highlights and making statements (Urh, Vukovic & Jereb, 2015).

iii) LinkedIn: This social media platform provides discussion forum for the students for sharing views, developments and problems. The students could even have their own discussion leader or expert for clearing the doubts online (King & Boyatt, 2015).

These above mentioned three social media platforms would be extremely popular and significant for the e learning courses if these two will be integrated together for the college.

Identification of Tools and Applications for Providing Customer Support

The next important point of the e learning development is the proper identification of tools as well as applications for providing the customer support (Castillo-Merino & Serradell-López, 2014). This particular college is making this platform for the betterment of their students and so that the students could interact with the college authorities 24*7 without any complexity. The customer support software makes sure that the customers are being attended all the time. Since, this is a college, this particular support chat will be helping the students in accessing their notes and assignments any time of the day or whenever they are working (Witten et al., 2016). Moreover, the students, who are working somewhere, will get extra help from this type of customer support. These types of applications even bring the chat messages, tweets and electronic mails into the command centre of customer support. Then the messages could be sorted as required and assigned them to the appropriate team member and hence the student gets reply (Tayebinik & Puteh, 2013). Furthermore, these customer support applications are also responsible for building a basic knowledge base so that the customers could find the quick answers for their common questions.

The most suitable applications and tools that would be effective for the customer support for this particular college’s e learning platform are as follows:

i) Team Inbox: A team inbox is responsible for simplifying the complexity of sending separate replies to each and every mail for the customer care. It forms a team inbox, where all the messages are being delivered to one distinct location and so that each and every member of the team could easily log in and check their mails (Feng et al., 2013). Moreover this particular application even helps in closing ticket whenever they are opened. The team inboxes even allow the users in bringing the electronic mails from several email addresses for answering the questions easily and promptly.

ii) Knowledge Base: The second important application of customer support is the knowledge base. This specific application allows the users or administrators of a web site to answer all the common questions even before they are being asked (Chung, Pasquini & Koh, 2013). The students might be having various doubts regarding the courses or modules and hence they might be asking frequent questions about the course. Knowledge base allows to keep a set of frequently asked questions or FAQs in its database. Document sharing is also allowed by this application of customer support.

iii) Mobile App Support: The mobile phones are the most common technologies that are being used by every student for communication purpose. The mobile support tools would be including relevant codes for adding in the documentation, support of electronic mails and even live chat within the mobile applications (Ortigosa, Martín & Carro, 2014). A help button is present for helping the customers easily. The e learning platform of this college will be having a mobile app support for their students.

Recommendations for Interactive Enrolment and Time Tabling System

This particular college has decided to start e learning courses for their students and for this purpose; they have engaged a team of e learning developers (Liaw & Huang, 2013). The few recommendations for involving interactive enrolment system and time tabling system are as follows:

i) Interactive Enrolment System: The first and the foremost recommendation for this particular college is to implement interactive enrolment system in the platform of e learning. This particular system would be eventually allowing the students enrol themselves within any specific course completely online (Cheung & Vogel, 2013). They do not need to visit the college for this purpose. Moreover, they could even interact with the teachers or other students with this system.

ii) Time Tabling System: The next significant recommendation for this college is to implement the system of automatic time tabling (Clark & Mayer, 2016). The time tables are usually generated manually for the students in all college. However, this particular system will provide a system design that could generate the time table automatically. With the increment of the students in the college, new programs could be mounted and the extra lectures’ detailed could be added in this automatic time tabling system. The very first step for the development of this software is by gathering the information from the college community about the availability of the teachers and students (Allen, 2016). Then system analysis and documentation is to be done for this designing. The college as well as the students will be highly benefitted with the successful implementation of this system.

Recommendations for Integration of Virtual Assistant Service into e Learning Platform

The various recommendations for the proper integration of virtual assistant service into the e learning platform are as follows:

i) A virtual assistant service is the self service that provides professional technical, creative or social and administrative assistance to the clients remotely from the office (Rennie & Morrison, 2013). The most significant recommendation for this college to integrate virtual assistant service into the e learning platform is that the services would be always available for the students. Moreover, a better productivity and efficiency is obtained by this integration.

ii) The next recommendation is that the virtual assistant service could bring major work flow within the e learning platform so that they could respond promptly as well as quickly for the moments of requirements (Gallagher & Sixsmith, 2014). The well integrated virtual assistant service could provide the required resources and information at all the critical moments, wherever, they are required and allows them for responding efficiently and effectively.

These above mentioned recommendations could be extremely important and vital for the e learning platform of the college and they would obtain better success in this new advancement of educational technology.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that information technology is the proper usage of all systems, computers, networking devices and storages for the successful creation, processing, storing, securing and even exchanging each and every form if electronic data. The commercial utilization of information technology mainly includes both telephony and computer technology. This information technology comprises of various layers of software applications, operating systems, automation tools or management and virtualization and physical equipment. These above mentioned several software and hardware equipment are utilized for performing the major functionalities. The use and storage of the data is also referred in this information technology. The several business applications that involve the databases such as SQL servers, CRM or customer relationship management system, ERP or enterprise resource planning system, web servers, email servers and many more. The architecture of information technology also involve cloud computing and virtualization, in which the physical resources are being abstracted as well as pooled within various configurations for meeting the requirements of the applications. The above report has properly outlined the entire case study of the e learning developers in a particular college. Few relevant and important recommendations are provided in the report with proper details.

References

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