IT Management Issues for E-Learning in Colleges

This report discusses the case study of e-learning for a college and provides recommendations for integrating social media and customer support applications with e-learning platforms. It also provides recommendations for interactive enrolment and time tabling systems and virtual assistant services. The report outlines the importance of information technology in managing resources and the growing industry of e-learning.

Running head: IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
IT Management Issues
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary......................................................................................................2
Introduction...................................................................................................................3
Discussion....................................................................................................................3
Case Study................................................................................................................3
Integration of Social Media into E Learning Platform...............................................4
Identification of Tools and Applications for Providing Customer Support................6
Recommendations for Interactive Enrolment and Time Tabling System.................7
Recommendations for Integration of Virtual Assistant Service into e Learning
Platform.....................................................................................................................8
Conclusion....................................................................................................................9
References.................................................................................................................10

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Executive Summary
The main aim of this report is to understand the case study of e learning for a
college. The management of information technology is the specific discipline in which
all the resources of information technology of any particular firm are being managed
in accordance with the priorities and requirements. All of these resources of
information technology might involve the tangible investments such as software,
hardware, networks, data and even the facilities of data centres. The respective
responsibility in the organization helps to entail the company about most of the basic
management functionalities such as change management, organization, controlling,
budgeting and various other features, which are unique for the technology. One of
the major advancement of this technology is e learning or electronic learning. This
electronic learning is the cognitive science technology of using electronic educational
technologies for providing education to students in schools and colleges. The e
learning is the rapidly growing industry, in which the effects could be traced easily.
The various solutions of e learning eventually exist in both the internet and
computers and it takes a good technique and tool of e learning for education that
should be facilitated virtually from any part of the world. The technology has become
much advanced for reducing the geographical gap with the help of tools for making
the student feel that he or she is sitting inside the classroom. This technology of e
learning even offers the capability for sharing materials in every possible format like
videos, documents and many more. This report has clearly explained the integration
of social media and customer support application with this technology. Proper
recommendations are also provided for new systems.

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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

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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References
Allen, M. W. (2016). Michael Allen's guide to e-learning: Building interactive, fun, and
effective learning programs for any company. John Wiley & Sons.
Castillo-Merino, D., & Serradell-López, E. (2014). An analysis of the determinants of
students’ performance in e-learning. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, 476-
484.
Cheung, R., & Vogel, D. (2013). Predicting user acceptance of collaborative
technologies: An extension of the technology acceptance model for e-
learning. Computers & Education, 63, 160-175.
Chung, C. H., Pasquini, L. A., & Koh, C. E. (2013). Web-based learning
management system considerations for higher education. Learning and
Performance Quarterly, 1(4), 24-37.
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). E-learning and the science of instruction: Proven
guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning. John Wiley &
Sons.
Ellis, R., & Goodyear, P. (2013). Students' experiences of e-learning in higher
education: the ecology of sustainable innovation. Routledge.
Feng, J. Y., Chang, Y. T., Chang, H. Y., Erdley, W. S., Lin, C. H., & Chang, Y. J.
(2013). Systematic review of effectiveness of situated e‐learning on medical
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Gallagher, S., & Sixsmith, A. (2014). Engaging IT undergraduates in non-IT content:
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King, E., & Boyatt, R. (2015). Exploring factors that influence adoption of e‐learning
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Liaw, S. S., & Huang, H. M. (2013). Perceived satisfaction, perceived usefulness and
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Rennie, F., & Morrison, T. (2013). E-learning and social networking handbook:
Resources for higher education. Routledge.
Tayebinik, M., & Puteh, M. (2013). Blended Learning or E-learning?.
Urh, M., Vukovic, G., & Jereb, E. (2015). The model for introduction of gamification
into e-learning in higher education. Procedia-Social and Behavioral
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