Abstract EN:

Ιn the new era of education, the globalization, the openness and the universality of the Internet, the Web 2.0 and the Information Communication Technology (ICT) applications have important implications in the teaching process as well as in the traditional research functions within universities, such as: the redefinition of the participants’ roles in the "teaching-learning" process, the change in the way knowledge is shaped, shared and assessed, the evolution of teacher professionalization and the transformation of the role, the mission and the way universities operate in general.All of these changes are related to a great extent to the issue of the introduction and integration of educational ICT in education and teaching. Within the context of educational globalization and industrialization, ICT plays an important role in the structure and the interaction of the three university levels (micro-level, medium-organizational level, and macro-level), raising at the same time, considerable concerns about the management of new emerging administrative and communication challenges.Thus, the approaches that attempt to explain the interdependence among the three levels of a techno-pedagogical system within universities vary, including: techno-deterministic, social, and pedagogical approaches. Every debate on the issue of ICT applications in the educational environment tends to focus on the general concern about the relationship between the commercial and/or industrial rationalization of the universities, whereby the latter are regarded as ‘organizations’.Within this frame, the present research is based on a communicative approach, which is characterized by the organizational communication, aiming to investigate and interpret the information and communication issues that intersect with the three university levels and derive from the involvement of ICT in the “teaching-learning” process in higher education in Europe, in the name of the modernization of the educational services and products. The main research questions concern the extent to which educational ICT constitutes the main instrument for the commercialization of higher education in Europe, as well as the role of educational ICT not only in the operation and the communication of universities as public organizations in the digital age, but also in the possible reformation of the participants’ pedagogical and communication activities.Under this perspective, the investigation focuses on the considerations of key actors-participants (mainly those being responsible for managing information and communication systems within universities and the teaching staff) about the processes and consequences of technology, information and communication mediations, which influence the learning process in higher education in Europe. In particular, the study is conducted in France and Greece, taking into account the general neo-liberal socio-economic context.