Discussion of critical success factors in is-enabled dynamic education webs

A recent investigation of the further education market showed increasing numbers of temporary partnerships between public and private partners. These partnerships, called dynamic education webs, are based on fragmented, unaligned provider initiatives. Dynamic education webs affect both public and private further education suppliers, focusing on sustainable lifelong learning concepts. The usage of information systems (IS) addresses end-users’ individual learning needs and requires curricula with modular and reusable e-learning content, for example. This paper focuses on the core research questions: What are critical success factors for IS-enabled dynamic education webs? This question is answered by research into literature and market research, followed by a survey with 47 experts from public and private further education providers. All in all, IS maturity level demonstrates to be one core critical success factor within dynamic education webs. Our findings demonstrate that behavioral aspects, such as reputation and trust, are also core critical success factors. We also outline unexpected findings of previously undocumented reasons for failure. The relevance of the results is demonstrated using two case studies. The practice-oriented transfer aims at critical success factors and recommendations for public and private further education suppliers. The outlook of the future role of IS within our research focus concludes the paper.