Abstract:

The social, economical and technological environments are rapidly changing by creating opportunities as well as threats for education systems. Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) have the responsibility to provide high quality education experience to their students in order to meet the requirements in this continuously changing and competitive environment. Lecturers in the HEIs therefore need to be well educated and use of effective teaching and learning (T&L) process to make the quality graduates that the society expects.

With substantial growth in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), the potential of getting support of ICT on education is inevitable. Usage of ICT is now becoming a critical success factor for effective T&L process in the University education. Lecturers can get the support of ICT to gain the accessibility of high quality concurrent information and the effective communication of information. It leverages and extends the traditional T&L activities through the blended teaching and learning.

Today, organizations seek people who can lead their organizations while achieving organizational objectives and customer expectations. Through the Management Education, university students gain knowledge, skills and attitudes that need to face the challenges successfully in this business world and to meet requirements of the organizations. Students may not understand unique business situations that require special solutions by just confining to textbooks. To achieve above needs presence of effective T&L process is essential. Therefore it is important to pay attention on how to improve the effectiveness of the T&L process. According to the findings of the other researchers, usage of ICT facilitates the lecturers to obtain the desired effectiveness of the T&L process.

This research is based on the study the usage of ICT by the university lecturers in the Management Education in Sri Lanka. The researchers has selected the Faculty of Management Studies and Commerce (FMSC), University of Sri Jayewardenepura which is the pioneer in providing courses of study in the Management field in the government University system in Sri Lanka. The students with very best results at the G.C.E (A/L) commerce stream examination are seeking admission to this Faculty. The Faculty has 12 Departments which offer 12 internal degree programs in different disciplines in Management. Its internal student population is nearly 6,000 and the Faculty is now regarded as the largest Faculty in the country in any discipline concerned. The Faculty has qualified and committed academic staff with total of nearly 150 including professors, associate professors, senior lecturers, lecturers, and probationary lecturers. Therefore the FMSC can be considered as the best representative of all the Management Faculties in Sri Lanka.

The main aim of the research includes studying the Sri Lankan university system in order to identify the current condition of the academic activities, how the lecturers use ICT for their academic activities and what are the other possible areas that can get support of ICT. Finally, based on the findings hope to make recommendations for the effective T&L process of university education.

Keywords:

Management Education, Information and Communication Technologies, Teaching and Learning Process, Academic Activities.