Abstract:

The undergraduate Business Administration degree is a generalist course that aims to train people to work in a corporation or to become an entrepreneur. In that course, the discipline of Information Technology - IT - should focus on the role and importance of technology in the day-to-day operation and management of the company. It should not endeavor to enter into technical aspects. IT is increasingly present in our private, social and professional lives. This is especially true for graduate students, who are mostly people of Generation Y, or millenials, the so-called 'digital natives', who have a natural ability to use digital technology. The objective of the study is to see how the use of IT tools can help teach about IT itself to Business Administration students. The use of technology in education is becoming more pervasive, and it is the object of several studies in the field of education. A case study details the author's experience in a Brazilian university using tools like Moodle, Skype, YouTube and Facebook in some activities as seminars and written papers done by group of students, and individual tests. In a survey, the students assessed the experience as a positive one. Some conclusions can be found in the article: the interaction with the plurality of content on the network in itself leads to new connections and knowledge; IT speeds up exponentially the sharing of content and as well as the critique and feedback by of one or many more people; when the students express their knowledge (in texts or videos) they develop a better understanding of the subject at hand and the same occurs when they interact with their colleagues; the online test simulates a professional task, on a matter which one does not have deep knowledge of, but requires expression of an opinion; the online seminar is an example of how technology used for entertainment in the case of video posting can be used for other purposes in the corporate environment, such as the presentation of a new product to various subsidiaries of the same company, or in a distance, or online training session; the control of an "online attendance" as opposed to controlling the attendance and demeanor in the classroom is an example of the difference between an e-commerce site versus a physical or brick-and-mortar store (as far as getting to know the customers’ shopping behavior), and it also raises questions about the privacy of individual data; the production of “Wikis” or wiki documents, tracking and postings is becoming common practice in various establishments for project development by teams.

Keywords:

Information technology, Education, Business administration.