Abstract:

Service Science is a new approach to the ICT. Since it has started as the idea, coming from the business field (the author of Service Science, Jim Spohrer, works for IBM), it had direct influence to the ICT education only by reflecting the fact that ICT experts (and ICT students as well) must have multidisciplinary education.

But the Service Science is something more than only simple change the structure the study program from the I-concept (expert in one concrete branch only) to T-shape (expert in one branch with base knowledge from the other). It is (or can be) completely new approach to the education process, that can be introduced as the service system.

All people feel that education is a kind of service. But it is also service according to the point of view of Service Science? What is the difference of today’s approach and what should be changed? Are the changes really necessary or it is only the game with the buzz words?
Well, the first step is the definition of service system. It consists from three main elements – provider, customer and target. Service provider can be the institution or concrete person – teacher, lecturer etc. Service customer is also clear – students, everyone who wants to be educated. But what is the target? The main definition of the target is: The reality to be transformed or operated on by the provider, for sake of the customer. It is obvious the answer “the education” would be too simple. For more, there is also the main condition of the relationship between provider and the customer, because only those two parties together can provide the value of the target – they are both the co-creators of the target’s value. This only condition puts a new attitude to the education, when we realize in many countries students are still the knowledge recipients.

It is necessary to define and describe all relations in the service system and then the role of service science in education process will be clear. For more, the generalization of those ideas leads into different, better approach to the educational process, reflecting all new trends and challenges in the new service economy. Service science itself grows from ICT background into independent study field with the influence to the all parts of the life.
The main target of the article is to define the main features of the service economy and then to describe the education as the Service System. There will be made a list of concrete consequences and examples of the practical changes in the educational process, focused to ICT area with the possibilities of overlaps to the general education process. The main ambition is to show the Service Science is not only the new approach in the business, but in the complete way of thinking about our reality and can help to improve the present ways of education.

Keywords:

Service Science, Multifdisciplinarity, Service System.