An Empirical Assessment of the Strategic Roles of e-Learning Center in the Community of Local Universities

지역 대학 e-Learning 센터의 전략적 역할분석에 관한 연구

Today, many universities are confronted with the changing education paradigm such as e-learning, Distance Education, Virtual University, This IT-based teaming paradigm shift is certainly a new opportunity or a threat to our universities. To overcome this problem the universities should think e-Learning as strategic weapon, such as many firms created competitive weapons from the information systems at the 1980s. So, e-Learning system can be a SIS(Strategic Information System) which supports university's future education strategies. To build a e-Learning system, not only many H/W and S/W resources but also expert personnels are required. An organization such as local university who is week at financial status can't himself plan the system. The Local University Community e-Learning Centers that support the demand of e-learning for their community are recommended. In order to operate these centers efficiently, the strategic roles of the e-Learning center should first be defined. To define the strategic roles, We classified the strategic roles of the e-Learning center into four dimensions, (1) to improve management efficiency, (2) to enhance educational service, (3) to acquire competitive advantages, (4) to build new education infrastructure, and each dimension has 5 or 6 measurement items. As result, to enhance the educational service was considered as the most significant factor among the four dimensions of strategic roles, and the infrastructure building was the next. We also tried to find the difference for each factor by the characteristics of responsor. The data showed that there was litter difference between the groups in evaluating the significance of strategic roles of e-learning centers. Through the strategic roles definition and analysis of expected role ratings, we could have recommended the direction and operation policies of the e-Loaming centers.