AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
CONCEPT PROPOSAL FOR INTERACTIVE COLLECTIVE DECISION MAKING INTEGRATED
BY MOBILE ICT
a
MICHAL GREGUŠ,
b
SOŇA DÁVIDEKOVÁ
Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Management,
Comenius University in Bratislava, Odbojárov 10, Bratislava,
Slovak Republic
email:
a
michal.gregus@fm.uniba.sk,
b
sona.davidekova@fm.uni
ba.sk
This work was supported by the Faculty of Management, Comenius University in
Bratislava, Slovakia. This publication is the result of the project implementation
BiDaC: Big Data Industrial Research and Development Center project, ITMS2014 +
[project number 313011B814] supported by the Operational Programme Research and
Innovation funded by the ERDF.
Abstract: Through the affordability, huge usability and ubiquitous connectivity,
information and communication technology (ICT) tools spread among population
across the planet and became omnipresent. Smart phones allow unexploited
possibilities and new innovative activities to enhance educational process practiced by
academic institutions. This paper proposes a simple interactive concept model using
ICT that provides benefits to soft skills development of participating users. It focuses
on a greater participation of students in assessment of their peers and decision-making
in a chosen lecture course during their academic study and exemplifies the use of it in
a model situation in a course class. The proposed concept can be used analogically in
decision-making during team discussions and negotiations in a business company too.
Keywords: mobile information and communication technology, group decision-
making, management study, innovating educational processes, smart technology in
education, student centered university, interactive education, learning.
1
Introduction
With the emergence of digital technology, the information and
communication technology (ICT) was developed that
irreversibly revolutionized our lives (Dávideková & Greguš,
2016) by allowing real-time communication and collaboration
across any distance (Dávideková & Hvorecký, 2017). It changed
every facet of our lives: the way people work, communicate,
learn, spend time, and interact (Jorgenson & Wu, 2016). No
other former technology has had such an immense global impact
on our lives as ICT (Al-Rodhan, 2011). It has allowed increasing
the output per worker through enabling to quickly find and
distribute information (Ogbomo & Ogbomo, 2008) and immense
processing speed and so it has relatively a high contributory
power on long-term sustainable economic growth (Kumar,
Stauvermann and Samitas, 2015).
In 1909 Nicola Tesla developed the first concept of a device
combining the technology of computing and telephony (Lim,
2010) nowadays called smart phone. Since then a combination of
many technological advances has made modern smart phones the
enormous success they are today (Mallinson, 2015). It integrates
several technologies into one small device that can accompany
us everywhere thanks to its tiny dimensions and lightweight
(Dávideková & Greguš, 2016). Through the enormous
established and well-developed infrastructure of mobile wireless
technology, the connectivity to the Internet became ubiquitous
enabling more and more functionalities to be bundled into small
mobile devices.
Smart phones represent flexible mobile phone technologies that
provide possibilities and constraints for our lives (Wellman &
Rainie, 2013). Through their flexibility, small dimensions,
versatile usability and omnipresent connectivity smart phones
gained popularity all over the world (Lee, Ahn, Choi & Choi,
2014). These powerful devices can be used in many innovative
ways (Guenaga et al., 2012) and their versatility found many
applications in several activities of our everyday life (Wang,
Xiang & Fesenmaier, 2014). They are considered handheld
computers rather than traditional phones (Ahn, Wijaya &
Esmero, 2014) as they allow far more processing possibilities
and not only telephony. Yet if compared with computers,
smartphones are far smaller and by integrating, many individual
appliances including GPS and two cameras smart phones allow
far more versatile and sophisticated utilization than a notebook
or a desktop computer. In contrast to computers, smart phones
are more user friendly through their more intuitive usability
provided by touch screen and simple operation that is accessible
also for younger and older generations.
Smart phones spread among students and young generations by
an immense speed. If compared to traditional telephony where
Alexander Graham Bell constructed the first telephone in 1875
(Coe, 1995) and its spread to 81% coverage of UK households in
1985 took more than a century (Statista, 2014), the smart phone
firstly constructed by IBM in 1994 (Buxton, 2011) achieved a
spread of 66% coverage of UK households in 2015 (Ofcom,
2015) where the cell phone coverage of households achieved
80% of UK households already in 2006 (Statista, 2016).
A smart phone provides the comfort of being online anywhere at
any time (Agger, 2011) and becomes an integral part of students’
life (Hurlen, 2013) on that way. Students are using it to
communicate with their peers, taking photos, recording audio
and video records, for calculations, as e-book readers etc. Smart
phones alternated the way we used to stay connected with
friends and share our experiences on instant through video,
audio, pictures, location and/or text.
This paper proposes an innovative integration of smart phones
into educational process during academic lectures and classes
studied at university. This concept is based on the belief, that the
widespread ICTs will improve the quality of life, as well as
active participatio
n (Veselý, Karovič & Karovič, 2016) of
students on educational process and may enrich their
professional development and education. It aims to increase the
interactivity through innovative use of omnipresent ICT means,
to enhance the quality of academic study by active participation
of students in assessment process during their education and to
equip future managers with valuable experiences through the
training and development of their soft skills that are essential for
professionals in managerial positions in business organizations.
As the availability of skills has become the key to achieving
innovation (Volná et al., 2015) and assurance of sustainable
successful existence of business entities, this concept proposal
focuses on development, deepening and training of expertise and
skills of future managers already at time of their studies to allow
their future employers’ further fruitful exploitation and
utilization.
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 provides a brief
description of proposed concept model for collective decision
making that can be implemented by means of mobile ICT. This
particular section demonstrates its use through a possible
scenario of a standard use case during the managerial academic
study at the same time. The conclusion summarizes the
motivation of the proposal as well as opportunities offered by the
integration of presented concept model that may provide a
benefit in form of priceless valuable experiences to students that
may foster their professional development.
2
Concept Proposal
For the convenience of the reader, this section provides a visual
presentation of proposed concept with a description of the
process depicted in it. It also describes a scenario of a use case.
The purpose of presented proposal is to enable interactive
collective participation in decision making with instant
evaluation allowed by means of available mobile ICT. It
combines affordable and available technology into a system that
allows group decision making in real time. The proposed
concept model will be described in terms of uses in a university
lecture of a study subject in a managerial study program as such
a use represents the main targeted utilization in this paper. IT
represents an innovative enhancement for management and
business oriented studies that is possible to implement in lecture
courses and that provides added value for students. It may lead
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