A comparative study on maturity models for information systems in higher education institutions

Abstract

In the last decades the Higher Education Institutions (HEI) have been faced with new challenges, requiring profound changes in their internal and external processes. The HEI have handled this new reality by means of the dematerialization of those processes. Thus, capable Information Systems (IS) are required to support such complex processes. Another aspect is related with the lack of standardization in the HEI’ academic management processes, each HEI works according to its own internal regulations, putting a strong barrier for the adoption of standard packages of software, as happens in enterprises with the ERP. These two factors combined, turns the work of IT managers very difficult in terms of management and knowing how really the IS is capable of support those HEI’s processes. In the education sector, the Maturity Models (MM) have been used to evaluate HEI in several dimensions, such as ICT, management, process management, course curricula, course/HEI accreditation, e/m-learning, online courses and pedagogical strategies. Based on the guidelines of a methodology for a systematic literature review, the MM of different subareas of education were identified and categorized in a previous paper. In the present paper, we perform a comparative study of those MM previously identified in the scope of our research, the HEI.