Modeling Inter-Organizational Behavior in IT Distance Education: Going Beyond Instructor-Student Interactions

摘要

Today's technology-enabled distance education (DE) has moved beyond simple interaction of a student and a tutor or instructor. Not only must these two primary components of DE be included in understanding behavior in this educational environment, but the organizational context in which they exist must also be considered. This context can include multiple organizations. Over time individual students and instructors may participate with many organizations. Increasingly there are networks of cooperation among related institutions. The Instructional Telecommunications Council (2001) already maintains a list of 50 such networks. In particular it behooves the academic community in information technology (IT) to determine if actually teaching and learning about the underpinning technology itself differentially facilitates or even hinders the IT community's actual use of IT for DE. To study the complexity of these relations a comprehensive three-part model is proposed with potential behaviours among the individuals and organizations involved. The behaviours perceived so far (based on personal experience and an initial review of the literature) suggest testable hypotheses. Verifying or disconfirming these will further the understanding of the use of IT as an enabler of DE. The purpose of this paper is to Present this model with suggested hypotheses to further research. Some issues involved in these relationships have already been considered in a fictional case study (Newsted, 2000) - albeit without any special attention to use by the IT community. Nonetheless this is still research in'vprogress at the very early stages of model creation and refinement.