EXPLORING FACULTY MEMBERS’ VIEWS ON ADOPTION OF CLOUD COMPUTING IN EDUCATION

The aim of the study is to investigate university faculty members’ views towards adoption of cloud computing in higher education. The current status of the faculty on cloud computing usage in education and regional differences were discussed. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) and Technology, Organization, Environment (TOE) frameworks were integrated. The data was collected through an adopted questionnaire based on these frameworks and demographic information were answered by 300 faculty members from north parts of Cyprus and Iraq. This study is exploratory and causal comparative which descriptive statistics with independent t-test were used to analyse data. The results showed that faculty members agreed mostly on the opportunities which followed by awareness of potential threats and weaknesses and lastly they accept the strengths of adopting cloud computing in education. They are highly in consensus on technological availability followed by organizational aspects and lastly on environment related regulations. Regional difference exists in the sub-dimension of TOE. Faculty members from north part of Cyprus agreed more upon the relative advantage of using cloud computing as compared to their counterparts. The study brought light on the comprehension of faculty members’ views from comparative and integrated framework perspectives