Perceptions and use of cloud in academic activities: a study of a public university in Bangladesh
| Published date | 13 May 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/DLP-02-2019-0006 |
| Pages | 66-79 |
| Date | 13 May 2019 |
| Author | Md. Anwarul Islam |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,Library technology,Records management & preservation,Information repositories |
Perceptions and use of cloud in
academic activities: a study of a
public university in Bangladesh
Md. Anwarul Islam
Department of Information Science and Library Management,
University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to explore the initialunderstanding of what perceptions have the
facultymembers of Dhaka University and how they use cloud for academicactivities.
Design/methodology/approach –A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect responsesfrom
the faculty members of Dhaka University.An online questionnaire was sent out to the faculty members of
Dhaka University via e-mail. The questionnaire was both open and close-ended. Overall, 125 respondents
participated in this survey and conveniencesampling method was used. Mann–Whitney and chi-square test
were carried out to see the influence of demographic characteristics on cloud use for teaching and learning
activities.
Findings –The results showed thatfaculty members are generally aware of cloud computing, and they are
using some of the cloud applications for teaching and learning purposes. They use cloud for research,
collaboration,faculty-students engagement, student supportingactivities and sharing course materials. They
identifiedlimited wireless access or internet facilities, lack of ICT infrastructureand lack of cloud training and
knowledge as major constraints. However,these constraints are mainly related to the poor IT infrastructure
and limitedaccess to internet, which may also lead to other constraints.
Originality/value –This is the first time an attempt has been made to explorethe perception and use of
cloud among the faculty members in a public university, Bangladesh. The findingsof this study may shed
light to otheralign research areas of cloud computing in Bangladesh.
Keywords Cloud computing, Bangladesh, Developing country, Teaching and learning,
Faculty members, Dhaka University
Paper type Research paper
1. Background and introduction
Nowadays, cloud platform in business,service sectors and in education has stood the test of
time in most of the developed countries. Cloud computing (CC) has brought many
opportunities and offered plethora of noticeable features for facilitating research and
academic activities. Three platforms, namely, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-
as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) of CC, have been well explained in
many studies (Mell and Grance, 2011;Cho, 2011). Storage facilities, services, virtual
hardware, availability of networks and utility computing have led these platforms more
popular these days. Cloud features bring out the opportunities for the developing countries
to do which they could not do earlier with the computers andinternet (Goundar, 2018). With
this ubiquitous computing tooland a powerful platform, developing countries can use it for
teaching, learning and other educational purposes (Kshetri, 2010). Universities can use the
cloud platform like Software as a Service (SaaS) e.g. Google Apps that includes Gmail for
e-mail and Google Docs for research collaboration and presentations. Faculty members,
researchers and students in these countries can work on the same document at the same
DLP
35,2
66
Received21 February 2019
Revised10 April 2019
Accepted6 May 2019
DigitalLibrary Perspectives
Vol.35 No. 2, 2019
pp. 66-79
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2059-5816
DOI 10.1108/DLP-02-2019-0006
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
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