ICT as an education support system quantitative content analysis based on articles published in EMI

These days the European Union is forced to contend with a serious shortage of info-communication experts. According to the prediction of the European Commission in 2015 this sector will be lacking 900 000 professionals. While annually more than 100 000 jobs or employment opportunities are created by the ICT industry, there is a lag in relevant professionals.” (Nemzetközi összefogás az it-s szakemberhiány ellen, 2013) Moreover, this trend is not only impacting Europe as in 2006 58 000 work visas were available in America for ICT professionals. (McCormack, 2010) Although it has become clear that only education can provide an effective answer to the problem of the lack of professional experts, only business firms offer IT and ICT related training opportunities and higher education institutions do not provide programs aiming to meet relevant employer demands. Consequently, any improvement of the present situation requires a familiarity with the concept of ICT along with an overview of is history and continually increasing role in the education process. Thus the present effort aims to answer the following questions: As a direct connection can be established between ICT and Information Technology, since when can ICT be considered as an educational tool? What did the conceptual system of ICT replace? How did ICT supersede the concept of Educational Technology? Can ICT be merely viewed as an all-round education tool, or there is more to its application? “Educational tools or devices are objects, materials, instruments and technological equipment, facilitating the realization of pedagogical goals and vigorously promoting the school-based learning process, specific knowledge acquisition efforts and the direct (in some cases indirect) familiarization with reality via their capability of transmitting, recording, and storing information in an effective way.” (Fodor, 2008) Since when has ICT fulfilled such roles in the education process? “The application of information and communication technology in education primarily manifests itself in a cybernetic, system in addition to a communication theory based planning and organization strategy of the learning and information acquisition process guaranteeing the optimalization of the accessibility and the reception of information with the use of modern information carriers, methodologies, and technologies.” (Kis-Tóth, 2008. p.3.) The present research effort focused on the total spectrum of articles published in full textual form between 2000 and 2010 in the periodical titled Educational Media International. Frequency analysis or computerized content analysis, a branch of quantitative content analysis was the main research method. The main goal of the inquiry was not to perform a statistical analysis on the totality of expressions, rather an examination of the occurrence of such terms as ”Information and Communication Technology,” “Information Technology,” “IT,” and “ICT.” Consequently, the research samples consist of the words of the text, or “mutually independent components of the source language flow.” (Krippendorff, 1960, p.60) The research effort includes the investigation of the textual context of the aforementioned terms via the standard keyword in context (KWIC) method providing a report on the terms:”Information and Communication Technology,” ”Information Technology,” ”IT,” and ”ICT.” It is expected that the research will facilitate the determination of the proliferation time of the given expression, which due to the unique nature of the respective periodical can be dated from the time when education started to provide a response to the challenge of technological development. The exploration of particular terms' textual surroundings can help in determining the origin of the given concept along with revealing the relevant previous and contemporary contextual background.