Strategic development of information technology services in a provincial higher education institute

This paper describes a research project on the introduction of information technology (IT) services to a higher education institution in north eastern Thailand. The project considered the literature on the processes involved in the introduction of IT services to educational institutions in various parts of the world and attempted to understand the issues that institutions had to deal with in introducing and productively using IT services in teaching, scholarship and administration. It then analyses the nature of the process at the case study institution, through a range of quantitative and qualitative measures designed to draw data from staff, students and senior institutional managers. A number of similarities and differences were identified between what was found in the literature and what had occurred at the case study institution and analysis of them led to the development of a model to attempt to explain the attitudinal and practical stages through which an institution goes in adopting a technical innovation. The impact of cultural and contextual factors upon the acceptance of an innovation is stressed.