Information Technology Utilization in Environmentally Friendly

Higher Education

Leon Andretti Abdillah

, Arif Ainur Rofiq

, and Dian Eka Indriani

Department of Information Systems, Universitas Bina Darma, Jalan Ahmad Yani, Palembang, Indonesia

Department of Islam Guidance and Counseling, UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya, Jalan Ahmad Yani, Surabaya, Indonesia

Pancasila and Civic Culture Education, STKIP PGRI Bangkalan, Jalan Soekarno Hatta, Bangkalan, Indonesia

Keywords: DropBox, Higher Education, Information Technology, WordPress

Abstract: The awareness of an environmentally friendly learning process has been of concern lately. IT offers some

applications that are able to provide better green education environments in higher education sectors. This

research involves top social information technology applications, DropBox and WordPress. DropBox is the

most popular cloud storage in the world. Meanwhile, WordPress is a top content management systems at the

moment. This research examines the utilization of those two applications in student assignments and

presentations. The study observed 150 sophomore students in computer science faculty. The results show that

the use of DropBox and WordPress in higher education learning activities is able to significantly reduce paper

and ink usage. The combination of those two applications create a very handy and comfortable environment

for students in higer education. This strategy reduces the consumption of papers and inks and is accepted well

by most of the students.

1 INTRODUCTION

The development of information technology (IT) can

be used for various purposes. In the field of

government, IT has been used to cut bureaucracy and

complicated procedures. In the business field, IT has

been widely used as a virtual media for sellers and

buyers to conduct online transactions or online

shopping. The trend of using information technology

such as the internet has also experienced a significant

increase in transportation sector, such as online ride

sharing. From those examples, the authors would like

to define the term of “IT utilization” as involving IT

applications in daily activities. In this article, we

involved some IT applications for education field.

According to the Internet World Stats, Asia

continent is a region that has the biggest number of

internet users (Internet World Stats, 2018b) followed

by Europe, Africa, Latin America/Carribean, North

America, Middle East, and Oceania/Australia. In

Asia, 48.7% of the population are internet users

(Table 1) or almost half of the population.

From those data, Indonesia ranks number 5 after

China, India, the United States, and Brazil.

Indonesian internet users per December 2017 (Table

2) are 143,260,000 users (Internet World Stats,

2018a).

Table 1: World Internet Usage and Population Statistics.

World Regions

Internet Users

Internet

Users

Africa

453,329,534

10.9 %

Asia

2,023,630,194

48.7 %

Europe

704,833,752

17.0 %

Latin America / Caribbean

437,001,277

10.5 %

Middle East

164,037,259

3.9 %

North America

345,660,847

8.3 %

Oceania / Australia

28,439,277

0.7 %

WORLD TOTAL

4,156,932,140

100.0

In the early 2018 period, it was known that

internet users in all over the world reached more than

4 (four) billion people (Kemp, 2018) or equal to 53%

(more than half world population). The number of

university students enrolled in Kemenristekdikti in

2017 totaled 6,924,511 students (Ristekdikti, 2018).

Learning activities at college campus that have been

carried out conventionally involve the provision of

teaching materials, daily examinations, midterms,

350

Abdillah, L., Roﬁq, A. and Indriani, D.

Information Technology Utilization in Environmentally Friendly Higher Education.

DOI: 10.5220/0008908303500355

In Proceedings of the Built Environment, Science and Technology International Conference (BEST ICON 2018), pages 350-355

ISBN: 978-989-758-414-5

semester exams, and work assignments (both

individual and group assignments). With that number

of students, a significant amount of paper and ink are

used for the printing needs of these student

assignments.

Table 2: Top 20 Countries With Highest Number of Internet

Users - December 31, 2017.

Country or Region

Internet Users 31

Dec 2017

China

772,000,000

India

462,124,989

United States

312,322,257

Brazil

149,057,635

Indonesia

143,260,000

Japan

118,626,672

Russia

109,552,842

Nigeria

98,391,456

Mexico

85,000,000

Bangladesh

80,483,000

Germany

79,127,551

Philippines

67,000,000

Vietnam

64,000,000

United Kingdom

63,061,419

France

60,421,689

Thailand

57,000,000

Iran

56,700,000

Turkey

56,000,000

Italy

54,798,299

Egypt

48,211,493

Furthermore, people will continue the trend of

reducing their need to rely on costly hardware and

infrastructure by placing files and applications in the

cloud (Drake, 2018). Cloud storage will reduce the

cost for investment in hardware and infrastructure.

Cloud computing is viewed as a method for achieving

efficiency and cost saving through the use of IT

infrastructures (Waddington et al., 2013).

This paper discusses the role of IT in supporting

environmentaly friendly higher education.

Environmentally friendly higher education is

everyday behavior that is applied or carried out at a

university that has a positive impact on the

environment and does not damage the environment.

The involvement of popular social information

technology in lectures gained a very good response

from the learners (Abdillah et al., 2018). The

researcher involved 2 (two) famous applications.

Those applications are DropBox and WordPress.

One of the most popular cloud repository is

DropBox. Research showed that DropBox is

currently the most popular provider (Drago et al.,

2012) of cloud-based storage systems. The second

application is WordPress. WordPress is a free

installation resource which has many useful plug-ins,

comment spam-fighting features, and user-friendly

interface (Hong, 2008). Furthermore, bloggers can

customize WordPress template and script according

to their interest.

The combination of those two applications creates

a very handy and comfortable enrivonment for

students in higher education. With the use of no cost,

high level of popularity, and ease of use, the two top

applications can represent the use of IT or “IT

utilization”, especially in higher education.

Some previous studies have been reported in the

fields of IT and higher education, such as: 1) Social

network in blended learning (de Jorge Moreno, 2012,

Abdillah, 2016a), 2) Students learning center and

course management system (Dougiamas and Taylor,

2003, Abdillah, 2013), 3) Managing information and

knowledge sharing (Abdillah, 2014), 3) Enriching

course materials by using innovative learning

resource for college students (Burke and Snyder,

2008, Abdillah, 2017).

The next section of this paper is research method

(section II) followed by results and discussions

(section III). The last section is conclusion, which is

section IV.

2 RESEARCH METHODS

In the research method section, the authors describe

the college students participants, the course subject,

and the learning activities.

2.1 College Students Respondents

The respondents of this study were students at level 3

(three), fifth and sixth semester students.Those

students were those who have taken elective courses.

The elective courses taken will be the basic material

for student research activities which then become the

main theme or topic of their thesis. Total students

participating in the study were 150 students who took

three courses.

From a number of elective courses available, the

subjects that get the highest grades will be prioritized

as the student thesis research theme. If there are

several elective courses that get the same grades, then

the students will consult more closely with their

academic advisers.

2.2 Course Subjects

The author involved 3 (tree) subjects in information

systems study program. Those course subjects are: 1)

Information Technology Utilization in Environmentally Friendly Higher Education

351

Customer Relationship Management (CRM), 2)

Supply Chain Management (SCM), and 3) Systems

Analysis and Design (SA&D). All courses are taught

for 16 (sixteen) meetings in about 4 (four) months.

CRM and SCM courses have a weight of 2 (two)

credits while SA&D courses have a weight of 4 (four)

credits.

The content of CRM (Anderson and Kerr, 2002,

Lindstrand et al., 2006, Buttle, 2009, Abdillah,

2018a) is as follows: 1) Introduction, 2) Basic

Concept of CRM, 3) The Customer Service/Sales

Profile, 4) Managing Your Customer Service/Sales

Profile, 5) Choosing Your CRM Strategy, 6)

Managing and Sharing Customer Data, 7) Tools for

Capturing Customer Information, 8) Service-Level

Agreements, 9) E-Commerce: Customer

Relationships on the Internet, 10) Managing

Relationships Through Conflict, 11) Fighting

Complacency: The “Seven-Year Itch” in Customer

Relationships, 12) Resetting Your CRM Strategy, 13)

Presentations, and 14) Final Exam.

SCM course consists of (Simchi-Levi et al., 1999,

Firdaus et al., 2015, Abdillah, 2018b): 1)

Introduction, 2) Basic Concepts, 3) The Role of

Purchasing in an Organization, 4) Creating &

Managing Supplier Relationships, 5) Strategic

Sourcing For Successful SCM, 6) Demand

Forecasting & Collaborative Planning, Forecasting,

& Replenishment, 7) Inventory Management, 8)

Transportation Management, 9) Vendor

Management, 10) Warehouse Management, 11)

Cross Docking, 12) Third Party Logistics (3PLs), 13)

IT in Supply Chain, 14) Presentations, and 15) Final

Exam.

Meanwhile, for SA&D (Whitten and Bentley,

2007, Kendall and Kendall, 2011, Dennis et al.,

2012a, Dennis et al., 2012b, Abdillah, 2016b), the

lessons are: 1) Part One Planning Phase (The Systems

Analyst and Information Systems Development,

Project Selection and Management), 2) Part Two

Analysis Phase (Requirements Determination, Use

Case Analysis, Process Modeling, Data Modeling), 3)

Part Three Design Phase (Moving Into Design,

Architecture Design, User Interface Design, Program

Design, Data Storage Design), and 4) Part Four

Implementation Phase (Moving Into Implementation,

Transition To The New System, The Movement To

Objects).

2.3 Learning Activities

This study applies a blended learning approach that

combines the process of conventional learning (face

to face) activities with electronic based learning.

Out of sixteen meetings, more than half were

face-to-face meetings. There are 2 (two) meetings

that are indeed allocated for e-learning activities. if

there is a lecture schedule during the national holiday

period, then the schedule will be held with an e-

learning approach.

In conventional learning, students will study

together with students in certain classes (around 20-

40 students). In each class, a number of groups will

be created. Each group will consist of 4 (four) to 8

(eight) students who will discuss a particular theme.

The theme will be given in the early conventional

meeting by the lecturer.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The results and discussion section explain the results

obtained after the research was completed. This

section consists of 1) Characteristics of student

respondents, 2) Use of blogs, 3) Use of cloud

repositories, 4) Evaluation of blog usage, and 5)

Evaluation of cloud repository usage

3.1 College Students Characateristics

From the 150 students, 47.33% of them were taking

CRM course subject, 40% are taking SCM course

subject, and the rest of them or equal to 12.7% are

taking SA&D course subject.

Figure 1: Lecturer Blog Page.

Meanwhile, most of the college participants were

dominated by male students by 56% or 84 students,

while female students amounted to 44% or 66

students.

BEST ICON 2018 - Built Environment, Science and Technology International Conference 2018

352

Figure 2: Lecturer Blog Page.

3.2 Blog

The use of blogs in learning provides alternatives that

are cheap and fast. Blogs are generally offered free or

without fees. Blogs also have templates that can be

selected according to the needs and desires of the

lecturers or students. Furthermore, blogs can be

combined with both social media and the cloud

repository.

Figure 3: Lecturer Course List Blog Page.

Lecturers can utilize blog media for lecture

materials, group lists, as well as a list of students who

take certain courses. If needed, the lecturer can also

add links that are considered useful or related to the

course.

Meanwhile, students will work on weekly group

assignments. Each task will be made into a post on

the blog or in cloud storage. Every student who joined

a flow group posted the assignment on their

respective blogs.

3.3 Cloud Repository

During the lecture, there were a number of

assignments given to students. In the conventional

lecture system, these tasks will be collected in the

form of volumes of papers. In this study, the authors

utilized cloud storage media. Placing files in the cloud

has many benefits (Mitroff, 2016). Almost all popular

cloud repositories at the moment provide some free

storage, paying for extra space, and the most

important thing is the ability to synchronize between

devices. Files stored in the cloud can be accessed

anywhere and anytime as long as there is an internet

connection.

In weekly assignment, some of the assignments

will be posted in the blog, and some others will be

stored in the cloud repository and the URL will be

linked into blog. Cloud services provide 3 (three)

main services (Fikri et al., 2015): 1) Software as a

Service (SaaS), 2) Platform as a Service (PaaS), and

3) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). This study

employing DropBox is close to SaaS.

3.4 Blog Usage Evaluation

During the exam, the lecturer will provide a

questionnaire regarding the involvement of blogs and

cloud repositories. Lecturers can use blogs as a

medium to place lecture materials that will be given

to students. Based on the questionnaires distributed,

it is known that most of the students really like and

like to get lecture materials through blogs (figure 4).

Figure 4: Student responses in getting lecture material

through a blog.

Blogs can also be used to view the tasks from the

group assignments. Each assignment will be grouped

together and collected individually in the form of a

blog post. Based on the questionnaires distributed, it

is known that the majority of students are very fond

and like to work on lecture assignments through blogs

(figure 5).

Figure 5: The response of students working on college

assignments through blogs.

Information Technology Utilization in Environmentally Friendly Higher Education

353

3.5 Evaluation DropBox Usage

Cloud repository is also used by students to store

lecture tasks. A number of operating systems have

provided cloud storage service. Apple has an iOS

platform providing iCloud, Google with Android has

Google Drive, and Microsoft Windows provides

OneDrive.

Figure 6: Students responses in storing their assignment in

DropBox.

All cloud repositories must be accessed with an

email affiliated with them. For this study, the authors

prefer to use DropBox which can run on all platforms.

DropBox provides huge storage media up to 10 (ten)

TB for free. Based on the questionnaires distributed,

it is known that most of the students really like and

like keeping their college assignments using

DropBox (figure 6). In addition, it is known that most

students also like and like to receive lecture materials

from lecturers through DropBox (figure 7).

Figure 7: Students responses in getting their lecture

materials by using DropBox.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Based on the results of the research. The following

conclusions can be drawn: 1) The application used is

an application that is free or does not require specific

costs, such as software costs, hardware costs, and

maintenance fees, 2) The use of WordPress and

DropBox in the learning process greatly minimizes

the use of paper and ink, and 3) Most students really

like to receive lecture materials and work on their

lecture tasks through Blog (WordPress) and Cloud

Repository (DropBox).

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