An Approach for Evaluating gaps between IT Alignment and E-Governance for Virtual Learning Services in Universities With a Combination approach (Case study: Shahid Beheshti University)

Nowadays, using strategic alignment and IT governance can be an effective strategy to gain the initiative to help organizations allow efficient utilization of information technology and gain competitive advantage. The present article examines the gap between strategic alignment and IT governance maturity level of services in the field of virtual learning. To collect information and views of experts and thus to evaluate the alignment of IT and business on the field of virtual learning services, a questionnaire with 63 questions has been designed by integrating some expert-selected factors of Luftman and Cobit models.
Introduction While the study of strategic IT alignment has made significant progress in the last quarter century since the work of Henderson, Venkatraman, and others first emerged, there remains several important research questions that are still relatively unexplored. A lot can happen in 25 years. The fact that IT alignment is a perpetual priority for CIOs confirms that alignment is difficult but it also shows that alignment is a moving target. We see a continuing need for researchers to adapt and extend our knowledge of what it means for IT to be aligned with business. This will require fresh thinking as the extant IT alignment paradigms are a product of a simpler time when IT was less complicated and business strategy was more stable. To reflect the reality of IT and business strategy in modern society, a new approach is needed to account for the ways that businesses are increasingly attempting to exploit synergies between corporate, strategic business unit, and functional-level activity (Coltman et al., 2015).
Further investigation into IT governance structural relationship to IT strategic alignment may contribute to existing knowledge as well as add practical know-how to managers and executives planning and developing IT governance is an effort to achieve IT strategic alignment (Hosseinbeik et al., 2011).
In summary, the present research is aimed to find the answer for the following questions: What is the relationship between strategic alignment and IT governance structures in E-learning services? What are the effects of IT governance structures on e-learning services based on a combined selective strategic alignment model?
Case study Since the field of research is very large, and since the objective of this study is to provide a way to assess the relationship between alignment of IT and IT governance in the field of e-learning services, we selected virtual leaning department of Shahid Beheshti University as a case study in a specified range with similar characteristics with other universities.
E-learning domain has three key elements: Teacher, Student and expert personnel, so we asked our questions from these selected experts. The sample of 28 professors, experts, assistants, professors and graduate students (PhD) were asked to answer our questions as expert panel.
Materials and Methods This study is quantitatively trying to explore IT/business alignment and the gap between as-is status with to-be status of e-learning services at universities.
Conclusion Survey results indicate that proper use of information technology to successfully reach the goals with mean of 3.33 and design and implementation of appropriate basic systems with the mean of 3.16 show the most important influence, and in contrast failure to use an integrated enterprise architecture for virtual learning processes with the mean of 1.27, and lack of attention to risk factors of IT and non-implementation of a framework of internal control with the mean of 1.38, has been the most weakness factors. Thus, it is clear over and over that to promote strategic alignment and IT governance in virtual learning, require more effort in enterprise architecture and other areas that have low scores.