AN ANALYSIS OF THE DIFFUSION OF INFORMATION

TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION

Towards Europe’s Information Society

Laura Asandului, Ciprian Ceobanu and Alina Ionescu

“Al. I. Cuza” University, Iasi, Romania

Keywords: Information society, Information technology, Education, e-Learning.

Abstract: The accelerated development of the information and communication technologies determined educational

institutions and companies to implement alternatives to the traditional teaching methods. The new literacy

determines the e-learning competencies. The paper concerns an analysis concerning the expenditure for

information technologies, the use of computer and of Internet, computer and Internet skills, and also e-

learning in the EU countries. The results showed that there are disparities among EU member states

regarding the extent and the perspectives for the developing of e-learning.

1 INTRODUCTION

In the last decade, the tremendous increase in the

amount of available information was possible

through the enhancement of the access to computers

and to Internet. The information era make possible

the enlargement of the information’ accessibility by

tools more sophisticated. Education is facing many

challenges to become more relevant for the

information society. In this society the citizens have

to be life-long learners, the workers are expected to

acquire independently knowledge and skills and to

be able to communicate in a variety of contexts. This

requires an important transformation of education

and ICT can be the means to realize this

transformation (Fredriksson, Jedeskog, Plomp,

2007).

Thus, one of the goals of the educational system

should be to prepare students for taking an

independent and responsible role in the information

society. Furthermore, this goal will be achieved only

if the students acquire the necessary skills for

working with large amounts of information from a

wide range of sources (Barzilai, Zohar, 2007; Land,

Greene, 2000; Salomon, 2000). ICT mediated

learning became an integral component of education

and training systems. Moreover, with the rise of ICT

era, new competencies became vital. Digital literacy,

the ability to use ICT, is one of the most important.

E-learning has emerged as an imperative tool to

deliver knowledge in the academic as well as

corporate sectors. Backed by several favourable

trends, the world e-learning market is projected to

exceed US$52.6 billion by 2010 (http://www.

strategyr.com/pressMCP-4107.asp

). The US retains

its dominance in the corporate e-learning market

with a share of over 60%. Europe is the second

largest market with a share of less than 15%.

Despite its obvious advantages in terms of

reduced costs, simplified training programs and

flexibility, the e-learning is not always the miracle

solution. Conceived as a powerful educational tool,

e-learning was destined to change the face of

learning. But unfortunately this change wasn’t

exactly the one it was intended. In Europe,

corporations face the problem of poor utilization of

the eLearning solution and the corporate e-learning

has real problems in all stages as follows:

a. Initial Design Issues (lack of identification of real

needs; poor strategic design decisions regarding: the

structure of the course, methods and media to be

used, course management and evaluation).

b. Instructional Design and Development Issues

(lack of detailed instructional design; failure to

develop instructional design elements-authoring or

graphic design; lack of evaluation and revision of

the instructional design).

c. Dissemination and Implementation Issues

(problems in production, reproduction and

distribution; poor implementation and use of the e-

186

Asandului L., Ceobanu C. and Ionescu A. (2009).

AN ANALYSIS OF THE DIFFUSION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION - Towards Europe’s Information Society.

In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Human-Computer Interaction, pages 186-189

DOI: 10.5220/0002001701860189

 SciTePress

learning; long term management and evaluation).

(Romiszowski, 2004).

If we take into account these problems we can

state that a lot of corporate e-learning initiatives are

failures; we mean that the intended learning did not

really take place. Technologies such as Learning

Management Systems (LMS) and Learning Content

Management Systems (LCMS) are widely spread

but these do not lead to the intended learning. All

the technologies without effective online instruction

will not produce any significant learning results.

There are some explanations for these (Woodill,

2004): (i) the rush to launch on the market the new

educational courseware and educational technology

without a proper testing; (ii) focus on new

technology, not on instructional design; (iii) lack of

understanding of learning and teaching and of the

unique teaching advantages of electronic media.

In these circumstances there are lessons to be

learned by the software providers. Both, the

technology-obsessed course developers who create

highly interactive, very spectacular and very

expensive multimedia courseware that are not very

efficient and the courseware creators that offers

numerous simple programs, a kind of page-turners

that are little more than PowerPoint presentations,

need to take into account solid quality standards for

e-learning and need to be based on sound

educational principles.

2 DATA AND METHOD

The information society can be characterized by

certain indicators, among which we used 15

variables regarding computer and Internet, clustered

in 5 groups as follows:

a. Information Technology Expenditure, which

contains Information Technology Expenditure as a

percentage of GDP (inf_techn_inGDP) and GDP per

capita, EU27=100 (GDP_capita)

b. Level of Internet access and Internet and

computer use with: percentage of individuals who

used a computer within the last year (i_clt12);

Percentage of households having access to the

Internet at home) (h_iacc); Percentage of individuals

regularly using the Internet (who accessed Internet,

on average, at least once a week) (i_iuse)

c. Individuals' level of computer skills: Percentage

of individuals who have carried out 1 or 2 of the

computer related activities ( i_csk_lo); Percentage of

individuals who have carried out 3 or 4 of the

computer related activities (i_csk_me); Percentage of

individuals who have carried out 5 or 6 of the

computer related activities (i_csk_hi)

d. Individuals' level of Internet skills: Percentage

of individuals who have carried out 1 or 2 of the

Internet related activities (i_isk_lo); Percentage of

individuals who have carried out 3 or 4 of the

Internet related activities (i_isk_me); Percentage of

individuals who have carried out 5 or 6 of the

Internet related activities (i_isk_hi)

e. Indicators regarding e-learning: Percentage of

individuals who used Internet, in the last 3 months,

for formalized educational activities (school,

university, etc) (i_iedu); Percentage of individuals

who used Internet, in the last 3 months, for other

educational courses related specifically to

employment opportunities (i_ieduot); Percentage of

individuals who used Internet, in the last 3 months,

for post educational courses (i_iedupt); Percentage

of enterprises using e-learning applications for

training and education of employees (e_iedu)

Data values are registered at country level for the

27 EU member states, the reference year being 2006.

We used data from Eurostat and also from E-

communications Household Survey carried out in

November-December 2007. The interviews were

conducted among over 26000 EU citizens in the 27

Member States of the European Union. Among the

topics addressed was one named Computers and

Internet.

In order to explore the data set and to identify

and characterize the EU countries e-learning

characteristics as well as the existent resources for

developing of e-learning, we used principal

components analysis (PCA). The value of Barlett’s

test of sphericity and the value of the indicator MSA

of KMO indicate that the considered variables are

adequate for a PCA. We also performed a cluster

analysis in order to identify the groups of

homogenous countries concerning certain ICT

indicators.

3 RESULTS

The results obtained from the analysis of the E-

communications Household Survey revealed that

57% of European households have at least one

computer. There is a significant difference in

household computer ownership between the

European Union’s old and new member states. The

lowest computer penetration rates are found in the

European Union’s newest Member States: Romania

– 35% and Bulgaria – 27%. Regarding the Internet

access, we notice that 49% of households within EU

AN ANALYSIS OF THE DIFFUSION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION - Towards Europe's

Information Society

187

27 have Internet access (Special Eurobarometer

293). In 25 % of countries, the Internet penetration

rate is below 35%. The highest rates were registered

in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, and less

than 25 % of households in Romania, Bulgaria and

Greece had Internet access. If we correlate these two

indicators, the computer rate and Internet rate, we

can say that the lack of a computer is an obstacle to

Internet access.

Factorial solution indicates variables’ grouping

in 4 principal components which have an explicative

power of 82.696% of the total variance. As the

variance the first two factorial axis account for is

64.799% of the total variance, we will analyze

below the characteristics of e-learning and e-

learning resources in EU countries according to the

positions of variables and of cases in the factorial

plane determined by this first two component.

It can be noticed that good economical results

create a basis for supporting the development of e-

learning, while the investments in information

technology are directly correlated with population

access to Internet and with individuals’ computer

skills and Internet skills.

We can identify some characteristics of e-

learning in EU countries (Figure 1). Thus, it can be

noticed that countries that were integrated in the

latest wave (Romania and Bulgaria) lay on the left

side of the plane, being characterized through lack of

or low resources for e-learning development: low

access to Internet, reduced investments in

information technology and small percentages of

individuals with computer skills and Internet skills.

Greece, Italy and Ireland have similar characteristics

to these two groups of countries, while Slovenia and

Estonia are exceptions as the profiles of their e-

learning are closed to that of the most developed EU

states, although Estonia is the EU country with the

lowest interest in e-learning activities. The old EU

countries are characterized by significant resources

for e-learning development supported by good

economical results and important investments in

information technology and show a relatively high

interest in using Internet for educational purposes.

It can be seen that the e-learning is not very

developed in Spain and Portugal, the two countries

finding themselves in the quarter of the factorial

plane which express the lowest interest in e-learning

activities and the poorest basis for e-learning

development. Romania is also positioned in this area

of the factorial plane having e-learning

characteristics similar to Greece and Bulgaria. It

owns the poorest resources for e-learning

development as it presents the smallest score on the

first factorial axis. Individuals’ and enterprises’

interest in e-learning activities is still a reduced one

comparing with the other EU members.

Figure 1: Countries’ position on the first two factorial

axes.

Analysis of countries’ positions on the factorial

map allows us to identify the countries where the e-

learning has the greatest extent or the most

favourable environment for its development or those

that present the lowest interest in or the lesser

developed basis for e-learning activities, using the

rule of the 3σ on each factorial axis (Jaba 2007). The

axis of peoples’ and enterprises’ interest in e-

learning activities identifies Germany over the limit

x , as having the highest percentages of

individuals and companies that are using Internet for

educational purposes. This country is followed by

UK and Lithuania near the limit of

2+x interval,

all the three countries being positioned at a

significant distance from the other EU members

according to the second axis. The lowest interest in

educational services via Internet is met in Estonia,

Bulgaria, Portugal and Poland, which exceed the

limit

−

x on the first axis. According to the first

axis, the most important resources, expressed in the

level of internet access, individuals’ computer and

Internet skills and economical support, are specific

to Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, Luxembourg and

Finland, which are situated at the right side of

x interval. They are followed by Germany and

UK, at the limit of interval. An explanation of this

pattern of diffusion is that in the education and

training systems in these countries the English

language is dominant. At the opposite side we find

Romania, Bulgaria and Greece, at the left side of

x interval, where the poor resources limit the

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perspectives for the development of e-learning. In

these countries people and enterprises confront

themselves in a greater extent with the lack of

Internet access or adequate skills together with a

poor economic support for developing educational

activities using Internet.

United Kingd

Sweden

Spain

Slovenia

Slovakia

Romania

Portugal

Poland

Netherlands

Malta

Luxembourg

Lithuania

Latvia

Italy

Ireland

Hungary

Greece

Germany

France

Finland

Estonia

Denmark

Czech Republ

Cyprus

Bulgaria

Belgium

Austria

country

Figure 2: Percentage of enterprises using e-learning

applications for training and education of employees, by

country, in 2006.

Concerning corporate eLearning, the data from

Eurostat revealed that the highest percentages of

enterprises using e-learning applications for training

and education of employees are registered in

Lithuania, Slovenia, and Greece (Figure 2). This can

be explained by the size, the number and the profile

of the companies using e-learning tools for

employees training.

If we group the countries by the indicators

regarding Information Technology expenditure,

Internet access, and computer use one can notice 5

groups as follows: 1. Italy, Portugal, Czech

Republic, Poland, Lithuania; 2. Spain, Hungary,

Ireland, Slovenia, Latvia, Slovakia; 3. Bulgaria,

Romania, Greece; 4. Denmark, Sweden,

Netherlands, Finland; 5. Germany, United Kingdom,

Belgium, Austria, Estonia. The highest percentages

(averages) concerning the above indicators are

registered in group 4 and the lowest, in group 2.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Despite the similarities among the countries from

each cluster concerning the indicators on

Information Technology expenditure, Internet

access, and computer use, there are significant

differences among the 5 groups of countries. The

explanations are different from country to country.

E-learning was seen having a tremendous

potential to respond to the challenges of the

knowledge society, to improve the quality of

learning, to address special needs, and to bring about

more effective and efficient learning and training at

the workplace (Ruttenbur et al. 2000). But the reality

is pretty different from what, not long time ago, the

enthusiasts foreseen. E-learning, in generally and

corporate e-learning, in particularly, does not

represent the revolution within corporate training

(Cross, 2007) and the direction of e-learning’s

evolution does not prove to be the appropriate one.

In these circumstances, the differences among

European countries regarding the use of corporate e-

learning may turn out into an advantage for the

group of “ITC underdeveloped”. Bridging the ITC

gap does not mean for these countries to embrace in

a non-critical manner e-learning strategies and tools.

Starting from the positive and negative experiences

within this field, following the instructional design

principles, general e-learning strategies and

corporate training must be reconsidered within the

new global realities.

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Information Society

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