Abstract

CERPA, Narciso et al. EVALUATION OF THE INTERNET ADOPTION LEVEL IN CHILEAN UNIVERSITIES BASED ON THE eMICA MODEL. Ingeniare. Rev. chil. ing. [online]. 2007, vol.15, n.3, pp. 270-282. ISSN 0718-3305.  doi: 10.4067/S0718-33052007000300007.

The main objective of this study is to investigate the degree of Internet technologies adoption in by chilean universities. These universities use the Web as a promotion system and for the coordination of their operational activities, highlighting the role of this technology in the effective communication between the different social actors that interact with the university, namely, enterprises, institutions, people and potential students. This Web-based platform plays also an important role in daily communication among administrative staff, faculty, and students. This study analyses all the chilean universities' websites, applying the Extended Model of Internet Commerce Adoption (eMICA) [3]. The results from this study show that in general, the universities make a wide use of Internet technologies, which allows most of these institutions (98.3%), to do their promotion and also provide information with a high degree of sophistication and interactivity (stage 2, level 3 of the eMICA model). A large percentage (75%) of the Chilean universities show a high degree of Internet technologies adoption, since they have application systems (administrative, academic, promotional, etc.), that support the execution of transactions via the Web, therefore, they are in the highest stage of the eMICA model, transaction processing.

Keywords : eMICA; higher education; universities' websites; Web development; e-Commerce adoption; Internet technology; adoption models.