Higher Education Students Perspective on Education Management Information Systems

As higher education evolves into a multifaceted and complex activity, the incorporation of education management information systems (EMIS) that allows for the production of relevant, organized and structured information, becomes a necessity for both institutions and students. Despite the recognition of this requirement, existing literature does not focus on how EMIS might trigger students' success. With this in mind, an initial proposal of a multi-perspective EMIS success model is presented and a validation on the possible existence of linear correlations between the model contexts is described. Moderate correlations have been detected between the majority of the model contexts and a very strong correlation has been detected between students' satisfaction and the arise of net benefits associated with the use of EMIS.

Finally,e-books,blogs,andvideosmaybeco-createdwithstudentsastechnologyhasopened upnewpossibilitiesforhighereducationandlearninginparticular,acrossboundaries.Indeed,itis hardtokeepupwithallofthetoolswhichnowexistinthedigitalworldthoughbenefitsfrombeing up-to-datemayhelpworkbecompletedfasterandbetter,intimesofacceleratedchange (Guy,2012). Does the use of EMIS contribute positively to the success of the management of the academic career of the students of higher education?

Figure 1. Proposed education management information systems success model
WiththeaboveinmindwebelievethatEMISconsideredtobeofthehighestqualitywillbe bettersuitedforbeingusedbystudents,hencethefollowinghypothesis: H3:IncreasedlevelsofqualityassociatedwithEMISwillhaveapositiveimpactonthesystemuse. H4: Increased levels of quality associated with EMIS will have a positive impact on the students'satisfaction. H5:IncreasedlevelsofqualityassociatedwithEMISwillhaveapositiveimpactontheariseofnetbenefits.
Despite throughout the existing literature one can identify the existence of various research projectsfocusedonstudyingeducationmanagementinformationsystems,toourknowledgethere isnoresearchdirectedatunderstandinghowEMISimpactstheperformanceandsuccessofhigher educationstudents.
With the current research we aimed at presenting an initial validation of an EMIS success conceptualmodel,theoreticallydrawnfromDeloneandMcLean (2003) The performed initial and simplistic statistical analysis, typical of early stages of a research project,tothepossibilityofexistingpositivelinearcorrelationsbetweentheproposedconceptual model variables, allowed to understand that most of existing relations are relatively strong, thus allowing to prospect positive results on a future empirical validation of the referred model with increasedsamplenumbers.

Frederico Branco is Assistant Professor at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro and Senior
Research of INESC TEC research center. He has published over 50 articles in journals and event proceedings. He is also involved in several academic works, as dissertation and thesis supervisor and degree projects responsible, and is continuously participating in several research projects. His professional career is also directly related with the industry, with particular focus in various planning and implementation projects of Information Systems, with particular attention on agri-food and services sectors. Currently holds several functions of senior management in the areas of Operations, Information Systems and Quality Management.