Research in Learning Technology

ALT's Open Access Journal

<journal-id>ZRLT</journal-id>

<journal-id>zrlt20</journal-id>

<journal-title-group> </journal-title-group>

<issn>2156-7069</issn>

<issn>2156-7077</issn>

<publisher> </publisher>

<article-id>1270579</article-id>

<article-id>10.1080/21567069.2017.1270579</article-id>

<article-categories> </article-categories>

<title-group> </title-group>

<contrib-group> </contrib-group>

<author-notes> </author-notes>

<pub-date></pub-date>

<pub-date></pub-date>

<volume>25</volume>

<issue>1</issue>

<elocation-id>1270579</elocation-id>

<history> Received 23 February 2016 Revised 24 October 2016 Accepted 3 December 2016 </history>

<permissions> </permissions>

<self-uri></self-uri>

<abstract> </abstract>

<kwd-group> </kwd-group>

<counts> </counts>

<p> Carmen Álvarez Álvarez, University of Cantabria, Spain</p>

<label>1.</label>

<title>Introduction</title>

<p>In the information and communication society that we live in, it has been internalised that the Internet provides the answer to almost all of our questions (Castells, ). Schools therefore face the challenge of satisfying the curiosity of online visitors through their institutional website (Du Preez, ; Hartshorne, Friedman, Algozzine, & Isibor, ; Hartshorne, Friedman, Algozzine, & Kaur, ; Honiges, ; Hu & Soong, ; Poock, ; Stewart, Jacob, & Jensen, ; Tamatea, Hardy, & Ninnes, ; Tubin & Klein, ).</p>

<p>International studies have shown that school websites are gaining more and more interest, although further research into the subject is required (Hartshorne et al., ; Hu & Soong, ; Tubin & Klein, ). School websites are being visited ever-more frequently, and in the future this trend will increase due to the greater levels of Internet connectivity of stakeholders in education processes and society as a whole (Hartshorne et al., , ; Hu & Soong, ; Tubin & Klein, ).</p>

<p>The person responsible for the school website is the information and communication technology (ICT) coordinator (Balas, Mirea, & Mirea, ; McGarr & McDonagh, ; Rodríguez-Miranda, Pozuelos-Estrada, & León-Jariego, ). In the coordinator’s absence, that responsibility may be taken on by a member of the management team, whose main task is to ensure the use of the new technologies in the school. A study in Ireland conducted by McGarr and McDonagh () showed that the ICT coordinator plays an important role in tasks such as the implementation of ICT in the curriculum and the maintenance of computer equipment within the school. A study carried out in Spain by Rodríguez-Miranda et al. (), based on 101 ICT coordinators in the Andalusia region, revealed that their main roles are working with and guiding teachers in the use of ICT, and enabling the use of digital content in the school, with the administration of the school website being their least important function. Perhaps this explains why management of the school website has been the least researched of all the tasks performed by ICT coordinators.</p>

<p>However, this website management is an important task, as the site is visited both by stakeholders who are internal to the school (staff, families and students) and by those who are external (potential education professionals, potential families and students, and society in general), and it serves as the school’s showcase. In fact, a study by Honiges () on the image of schools in their communities showed that one of the strategies that promoted a positive image of these centres was the school website. The reason was that it enabled visitors to see if the school used technology in an innovative way, if it had a two-way relationship with the community, if it had links with social networks, and if it engaged in educational marketing. Before families choose a school for their children, they are increasingly researching the different institutions, communicating with other families or teachers, and accessing the schools’ official websites. They consider the websites to be the most objective comparison tool between schools (Cucchiara & Horvat, ). In addition, if the sites are regularly updated, members of the school community regularly visit them, because they are useful tools for obtaining information on events, downloading forms, dealing with administrative procedures, answering questions, getting insights into teachers’ work on a regular basis, finding out about specific school events, etc. (Hu & Soong, ).</p>

<p>While school websites have to achieve an undetermined range of roles and objectives (Tubin & Klein, ), they all have the challenge of providing truthful, useful, comprehensive, relevant and up-to-date information (Du Preez, ) for all kinds of people, including those with disabilities, in order to prevent informational exclusion (LOMCE, ). This challenge falls at the feet of the ICT coordinator. However, as revealed by a study by Rodrigo Rodrigo, Chacón Peirats, San Martín Alonso, and Gallardo Fernández (), there is often a lack of prior training and poor recognition of the ICT coordinator’s work, and they have little support from the management team and teachers in the school. In fact, for the design, development, implementation and evaluation of the website to be of high quality, the ICT coordinator’s work should be based on leadership, trust and the distribution of responsibilities (De Paula Rodríguez & Pozuelos Estrada, ). Updating and constantly improving a website can be an arduous task if it falls to a single person, especially if there is no feedback to help identify ways of improving it.</p>

<p>Today there are three major trends in official school sites: (1) a greater focus on the content, and a desire for thoroughness; (2) a focus on marketing, with the downside that a biased image of the school is sometimes provided (Honiges, ; Tamatea et al., ); and (3) a greater focus on communicating with visitors, which is the least developed trend so far (Du Preez, ; Hartshorne et al., ; Hu & Soong, ).</p>

<p>The ideal site should provide accurate, useful, comprehensive, relevant and up-to-date information to potential visitors, both internal and external to the school (Du Preez, ; Hu & Soong, ); facilitate communication with them to the greatest extent through the Web; and not overindulge in marketing.</p>

<p>In the Cantabria region, all publicly funded schools have at least one official Web portal (generated by the Educantabria platform, which is under the aegis of the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports), and sometimes another portal on a proprietary domain, or a blog that is managed independently. This illustrates the importance given by them to the Internet: the schools in the region are in the process of opening up to society as a whole through their web presence. However, there are notable differences between the websites of the schools in the region. This study seeks to explore how these sites are being managed by schools and public authorities today.</p>

<label>2.</label>

<title>Method</title>

<p>This paper describes a study on the management of websites of primary education schools supported by public funding in the Cantabria region (known in Spanish as or Autonomous Community).</p>

<p>The objective was to obtain first-hand knowledge as to how websites were managed on a day-to-day basis by schools in the Cantabria region, in order to ascertain the importance accorded to them. It seemed appropriate to design a study to become acquainted with some of the people responsible for managing school websites on a regular basis. This was intended to meet the overall objective of the study, as well as to discover what their training was, what importance they gave to websites as a means of communication, how they assessed the website in their particular school, and the resources provided by the .</p>

<p>The lack of any prior qualitative studies of this kind served as an incentive to choose a methodology based on in-depth interviews conducted with key informants – that is, ICT school coordinators and managers of Educantabria, the educational portal whereby the regional authority provides virtual support to, and maintenance of, the official websites of schools that want to use it. Potential participants were identified, contacted and asked to take part in, and consent to, a personal interview. All of the websites in the region were analysed (which resulted in another study still pending publication) and a number of relevant schools were identified and contacted. Basically, this study consisted in identifying all of the websites (202 schools) in order to analyse their layout, organisation of information, content, usefulness and the role given to the educational community. The purpose was to see whether it was possible to assess the schools’ teaching methods and internal dynamics.</p>

<p>As noted by Hernández (), interview-based studies can be crucial to obtain further knowledge about issues on which little previous research has been conducted, such as the present one. The results obtained from interviews (shown in the next section) can contribute to generate academic knowledge, and are in line with the basic principles of grounded theory (Charmaz, ).</p>

<p>An emergent design was employed in the study. Initially, six schools were selected as potential participants (and later contacted), with three requirements being taken into account: (1) that both public and publicly funded private () schools – primary and infant education – were represented; (2) that they served urban, rural and semi-urban/rural environments, in order to better understand the role played by the management of school websites in all types of schools in Cantabria; and (3) that their school websites were diverse, in terms of both their quality and the extent to which they were kept up to date, so that various ICT coordinators with different degrees of involvement in the development of their school website could be contacted. The researchers believed that six interviews would be sufficient to encompass all the issues of interest and have a highly diverse range of participants. Some of the schools did not respond to our request for collaboration and therefore another school with the same characteristics was found to replace the one originally selected.</p>

<p>Once this data collection stage was completed, additional ICT coordinators were contacted in order to provide further triangulation and saturation of data. In-depth interviews were therefore ultimately held with nine ICT coordinators or managers and two managers of the Educantabria portal. The ICT coordinators and managers interviewed were distributed as follows: four worked in public schools (two urban, one semi-urban/rural and one rural) and five in publicly funded private schools () (two urban, two semi-urban/rural, 1 rural). The following abbreviations are used to distinguish between them: (P) public, (PFP) publicly funded private schools (); (U) urban, (S) semi-urban/rural; (R) rural. Information related to the identity of the participants and their respective schools cannot be disclosed in the study for ethical reasons, as this was a commitment made to the respondents. Key codes were used to identify participants.</p>

<p>The themes dealt with in the interviews were: </p>

<p>In-depth interviews were carried out to exhaust all the themes under discussion. Each of the interviews lasted approximately one hour, and consequently each of the relevant aspects was investigated to a considerable extent. All the interviews were recorded, and later transcribed and analysed using content analysis procedures to ensure that the participants’ statements would be accurately represented and achieve a high level of rigour. All the participants were informed of the ethical considerations of the study, in particular regarding the anonymous use of their data in both the analysis and dissemination stages of the study.</p>

<p>The results were largely consistent from the first to the last interview. Therefore, triangulation of statements, individuals and schools was achieved. Once the first six interviews had been conducted, the results started to become repetitive. It was decided that three additional interviews would be carried out to ensure the consistency and reliability of the results and provide saturated data. After the nine interviews had been completed, it was considered that no additional ones were required. The transcripts were analysed using content analysis procedures. An original system of categories was thus created, based on the four major questions asked in the interviews.</p>

<label>3.</label>

<title>Results</title>

<p>The data collected shows that there are significant differences in the management of school websites in Cantabria. In order to account for the situation, the data was organised around the following themes: (1) , who deal with the different situations concerning the website management as noted by the ICT coordinators; (2) , focusing on their development and, particularly, their current status; and (3) the , with an emphasis on the main challenges faced by schools in optimising their websites.</p>

<sec> </sec>

<sec> </sec>

<sec> </sec>

<label>4.</label>

<title>Conclusions</title>

<p>The results lead to the following conclusions about managers of school websites, the general development of websites and the challenges of school websites.</p>

<p>First, it was found that the vary greatly in their levels of involvement, which has an impact on their quality. Overall, participants expressed a slightly higher interest in the use of websites in publicly funded private urban schools, as websites are deemed to be used for informative and marketing purposes, and play a part in attracting new students (Honiges, ). All of the collected statements showed that managing a school website today is easy and does not require specific sophisticated training, although it does take time and dedication. A barrier in the development of this tool could be the very identity of ICT coordinators, who see themselves more as support for their colleagues in the implementation of the ICT curriculum than as the institution’s website managers, with the latter task taking second place (Rodríguez-Miranda et al., ).</p>

<p>Additionally, very different management practices were found depending on the people who were responsible for the website; that is, whether there was a single leader, several leaders, collaboration with a company, dependence on a larger home website such as that of a religious congregation, etc. All of this suggests that for a website to remain up to date and thorough, and provide useful information, the collaboration and cooperation of everyone in the school’s educational community is needed; that is, the management team, teaching staff, parents’ association, partner organisations, etc. It is very difficult to maintain an up-to-date and comprehensive website if a single individual is responsible for it (ICT coordinator or manager). In this sense, it is necessary to give more recognition to the work of ICT coordinators and encourage schools not to entrust management of the website to a single individual (Rodrigo Rodrigo et al., ). It would also be useful for schools to increase the hours spent on developing their website and coordinating the ICT curriculum.</p>

<p>It must be noted that the has been mainly positive. The initial stages were hard: there was large dependence on computer experts and the resulting websites were static. However, today’s websites are much easier to create and maintain and the educational authority – with its Educantabria format – provides technological and training support. This does not mean that managers of the websites do not need to continue working to ensure that the websites are thorough and fully up to date, but that the current situation, compared with the past, is highly positive (Du Preez, ). The various public administrations, therefore, need to continue to generate systems for the training and support of schools.</p>

<p>Schools are benefiting from the information and marketing opportunities offered by websites, but they should also begin to explore becoming more interactive, for which forums or social networks could be of help. At present there are few schools that use these networks; however, it is becoming increasingly common for citizens to have social networking profiles and to look at them daily. The use of these tools could contribute greatly to the improvement of communication in schools, not only with the educational community, but also with others who are connected to the Internet. Some pioneering schools have already created profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which they use to post up-to-date information about school life, and their number of followers increases on a daily basis. Additionally, as website managers themselves have said, when they create these profiles, or update their websites, they gather new followers, which motivates ICT coordinators to further improve their Web tools and implement new ideas and content, creating a positive feedback loop that benefits all users.</p>

<p>It can be concluded that the management of school websites is fraught with and opportunities for improvement, namely giving full information about the school’s activities in order to fulfil the information needs of all users; providing services to users beyond the merely informative purposes; providing regular updates; generating new avenues of communication with the community of visitors, etc. From all these challenges, one seems particularly problematic and relevant: conducting further research on school websites in Spain. The lack of national reference points, and the difficulty in accessing international models, which are often in English, leave little room for schools and ICT coordinators to professionally improve this tool, which means they miss out on opportunities for enhancement, leaving them over-reliant on intuition and improvisation. The current information society demands that schools deliver quality not only academically, but also on their Web portals.</p>

<p>In the future, it would be of interest to carry out research specifically on the best websites in our region, by selecting 10–20 of them and conducting interviews with ICT coordinators to identify how they managed to create high-quality websites.</p>

<title>Disclosure statement</title>

<p>No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.</p>

<title>Note</title>

<fn> </fn>

<title>References</title>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>

<ref></ref>