ABC college specializes in providing higher education offerings to post-matric students, mainly certificate and diploma programmes. Its business model allows it to provide affordable programmes at locations in towns and villages outside of the main cities, mainly at rural campuses in Mpumalanga and Limpopo. The college has about 200 employees, most of which are contractors who present various modules for the courses on offer and approximately 5 000 students are registered for its services.

The college has a small IT department, with a CIO, who manages the various servers, client related services (students and staff) and other IT-related functions. There are various information systems in the college that are also technically supported by the IT department. These include the normal support systems (finances, HR, procurement) as well as a Learning Management System (LMS), which is mostly used for posting lecture notes online. Since 2019 the college has also decided to switch to online submission of assignments for all courses, which is also managed via the LMS. The college website has in the past mainly provided information on the college, its employees and the various certificate and diploma courses on offer at the college.

The Covid-19 pandemic has hit the college quite badly, as no students could access any of the campuses, and the college had to scramble to provide an interim service to students, mainly using social media via the students’ mobile phones and submissions of student assignments via the LMS.

ABC college management has however seen an opportunity arising from this situation. It now has a vision to transform into a fully functional online college. The opportunities that management sees in all of this are the following:

1) Through being a fully online college, it hopes to attract more students from across South Africa who want to study but can only do so online. Management is hoping to attract up to 50 000 students in this way. For the first time students will be able to apply for studies, register and make payments online.

2) Classes will be presented via the Learning Management System, in addition to making study materials available for students in this way.

3) Management hopes to save significantly on rental costs, as it intends to terminate rental contracts for all campuses and retain only a small head office in Pretoria. The intention is to set up all permanent staff and contractors to work from home as far as possible.

4) Management wishes to make certificates and diplomas available in a secure electronic format that students can use for electronic job applications.

5) Management sees the situation to for the first time ever consolidate its Information and Knowledge operations and do these in an integrated way, rather than in silos as it has been in the past.

6) Management also has the intention of starting an electronic store linked to the college website that will sell items to college alumni (e.g. branded clothing, other items and diploma frames).

Management realizes that achieving all of this in an effective and efficient way may be challenging, and therefore they have appointed you as their Information and Knowledge Consultant, with a brief to advise them on various matters that they are concerned about. For all questions below indicate any assumptions that you are making about ABC college quite clearly in your answer

Question 1
Develop an information strategy for ABC college that will clearly indicate to management strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that they need to consider when moving towards becoming a fully online college. Drawing on at least five recent literature sources (such as the papers suggested in your study letter, and other papers available electronically online via the Unisa library) write a scholarly essay of four pages, in which you use an appropriate strategy framework (e.g. Porter) and apply it to ABC college’s situation. You also need to clearly indicate issues that management must consider, as reported on in the scholarly papers that you consulted. Use Harvard referencing and citation format.

Question 2 [25 marks]
ABC college management has realized that setting up all employees and contractors to work from home may result in challenges related to knowledge exchanges between workers, which under normal circumstances would have happened in the offices and other physical spaces in the college. At the same time management is wondering what the most effective way would be for technology to support effective knowledge management in a remote working set-up. Drawing on at least five recent literature sources (such as the papers suggested in your study letter, and other papers available electronically online via the Unisa library) write a scholarly essay of four pages, in which you indicate Knowledge Management issues that management has to consider and propose a Knowledge Management Framework that would allow ABC college to establish an effective Knowledge Management capacity, taking into account the intended online nature of the college in future and the fact that employees and contractors will be working remotely in future. Use Harvard referencing and citation format.

Question 3 [25 marks]
Management are wondering whether some of the new technologies related to the fourth Industrial Revolution may benefit the college if adopted for use in its operations. The college is specifically interested in (1) the use of blockchain to secure the intended electronic certificates it wants to issue, (2) use of Big Data to improve their teaching offerings to students, and (3) whether to migrate its systems to a cloud system such as Office 365 or similar. Drawing on at least five recent literature sources (such as the papers suggested in your study letter, and other papers available electronically online via the Unisa library) write a scholarly essay of four pages, in which you indicate the advantages and disadvantages (from a manager’s perspective) of blockchain, big data and cloud computing that are reported on in literature. Then indicate the implications for the use of these specifically for ABC college and make a recommendation on whether ABC college should implement blockchain, big data and cloud computing, or not. Use Harvard referencing and citation format.

Question 4 [25 marks]
The online alumni shop is a new venture for the college, as they have not previously done any trading online. Drawing on at least five recent literature sources (such as the papers suggested in your study letter, and other papers available electronically online via the Unisa library) write a scholarly essay of four pages, in which you indicate the challenges and pitfalls of e-commerce that are reported on in scholarly literature. For each pitfall and/or challenge that you identify discuss the specific implications in the context of ABC college and suggest on how the college should deal with each pitfall/challenge. Use Harvard referencing and citation format.