Use of E-Collaboration Technologies Among Students of Management

Nowadays technology is seen as an important tool for improving the educational methods at all levels. This has implications for both general and specific education such as management training. Some of the advantages identified in general education include no time limits or geographical barriers and the ability to teach more people without additional cost. In particular, in Europe digital literacy is emerging as a new key competency required by workers and citizens for the Knowledge Society (European Commission, 2005). Therefore, the integration of IT-supported learning could help workers acquire the necessary skills and knowledge for their job (European Commission, 2005) and if the student learns the use of technology before starting his/her job, this could be an advantage for both the future professional and the employer. Besides, the use of IT can improve the effectiveness of the learning process. Referring to specific education, technology is also proving valuable in higher education and in specialised areas such as management training (Ives & Jarvenpaa, 1996). Furthermore, in management education the learner (student) will in their future, work in an environment where technology (in particular information technology (IT) and, indeed, e-collaboration technologies) will have several applications. It is normally assumed that young people, particularly university students have a developed and sophisticated use of IT and the Internet. In fact, some are included in a new generation of people who are intensive users of technology, particularly for using IT for social contacts, music downloads and so on. Interestingly, almost all students use a lot of mobile phone technology but, normally, this type of technology is not covered in universities teaching. Taking this into account, management teaching should include the use of this type of IT to improve the learning process. But, to what extent is this true? Are management students advanced users of the Internet? Our own experience is that, students, contrary to the general perception, do not all react positively to an IT based process of teaching-learning management. Some prefer the traditional process. An understanding of the level of usage of IT by management students would contribute to explain this situation. Several differences exist between the use of IT by university students and the typical user of Internet-based technologies and these are possibly affecting the success of this learning strategy. Consequently, if the students are found not to be sophisticated users, the use of IT for management teaching-learning could be more an obstacle than and advantage. All in all, our objective in this article is to describe the e-collaboration usage by management students and to compare their profile with the profiles of the advanced user of the Internet. The article is organized as follows. After a literature review, the research design and data analysis are described. The discussion and implications, along with some limitations and preliminary conclusions conclude the article.