Jean Claude Byungura has been awarded an outstanding paper prize following his presentation in US top conference known as SITE one of the top conferences in the area of Information Technology and Teacher Education. His paper presentation focused on his research study titled Development and validation of a holistic IT-institutional alignment model for higher education institutional performance.
The main purpose of the study is to develop and validate a contextual model for IT institutional alignment for the university performance. Byungura identified various alignment practices that higher learning institutions should harness which would trigger a positive effect on the academic institutional performance. He mentioned among others alignments related to communication, structure and Governance, competence measurement, technology scope, skills and partnership.
Byungura study suggests that, for improving the institutional performance through the integration of IT in service delivery, decision makers and the university managers can primarily prioritize these alignments practices with a significant greater positive influence. According to him, the integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education are seen as a potential prominence for improving the institutional performance.
He recommends IT acquisition to be preceded by setting up an environment conducive for effective IT adoption and use of clear institutional structure, clear IT governance framework, put relevant digital skills and competencies in place to mention but a few.
Besides, he adds that alignment practices are negotiated from both social-technical dimensions: Hardware and Software should be contextualized within a particular institutional setting.
SITE is the premiere international conference that annually attracts more than 1,300 leaders in the field from over 60 countries. There are over 800 presentations in 25 major topic areas. Initially, four Papers were nominated for the award and Byungura’s emerged the winner in this conference that has a strong scientific level from several rankings worldwide.
Byungura is a University of Rwanda academic and PhD student at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is supported by the Swedish International Development cooperation Agency-Sida under the coordination of UR-Sweden Programme.
By Darius Murangwa
Communications Officer
