Presenting a Paradigmatic Pattern of Cloud Computing Adoption in Educational Institutions by Expanding the Technology Readiness Theory with a Grounded Qualitative Approach

The Covid-19 outbreak has effect almost all aspects of life including education and technology has almost completely replaced the traditional face-to-face teaching and learning environment. The cloud computing is widely used in education, especially in higher education, for online access and sharing of educational resources, educational information, notes, lectures and academic assessments. Therefore, this study investigated the paradigmatic pattern of cloud computing adoption in educational institutions by expanding the technology readiness theory.

This research is of a qualitative type that was conducted by applying the grounded theory. The scope of the study was Golestan province's education department and the statistical population of the research were experts in the field of research, which sampling from them was done in a purposive and snowball sampling methods. The data collection tool in this research was a semi-structured interview that after 13 interviews reached theoretical saturation. To determine the validity, the acceptability criterion was used and to determine the reliability was used the internal agreement method with a value of 76.4%. The data were analyzed through three stages of open, axial and selective coding.

The findings showed that 55 subcategories were identified in 8 main categories with a grounded theory approach; So that for the causal conditions was identified one main category of empowering education managers and teachers, for the background conditions was identified two main categories of strengthening cloud learning infrastructures in organizational education and forming support learning associations, for intervening conditions was identified two main categories of security and trust, for central phenomenon was identified one main category of educational management system, for strategies was identified two main categories of curriculum system development and use of cloud service technology in the field of e-learning and for the consequences was identified on main category of consequences. Finally, the paradigmatic pattern of cloud computing adoption in educational institutions by expanding the technology readiness theory with a grounded qualitative approach was drawn.

The paradigmatic pattern of cloud computing adoption in educational institutions by expanding the technology readiness can help specialists and planners of educational systems in improving educational conditions.