The Use of Cloud Computing in Higher Education in Republic of North Macedonia

Abstract

The development of Information technologies has enabled Higher Education Institutions to improve their teaching and learning methods through the use of modern IT platforms and tools and thus completely change the environment for the implementation of the teaching and learning process. Cloud computing as a model of offering information resources has enabled Universities to use IT resources efficiently. Through the implementation of Cloud computing model in teaching process, every University can afford the use of relatively large amounts of information resources with relatively low costs for their use. It is especially important for developing countries such as the Republic of North Macedonia, which are not able to allocate large financial resources for the purchase of the latest expensive information technologies. Today, Cloud computing platforms for education (Google Suite for education, Microsoft education, Amazon cloud computing for education, Coursera, Blackboard, Evernote etc.) through the benefits they offer such as the availability of applications, cost effectiveness , flexibility, ease of use and security, enable Universities to transform traditional learning processes and thereby advance the overall higher education process. The main goal of this paper will be to present the level of use of Cloud computing platforms and tools in Higher Education Institutions in the Republic of North Macedonia. For this purpose, a questionnaire was created in which the largest number of Universities in the Republic of North Macedonia were included. This paper will present a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the results obtained from the survey. The questionnaire was created using Google Forms and was delivered to the academic staff from the most of Universities in Republic of North Macedonia. Also, through this paper, most of the challenges and benefits of using Cloud computing platforms/tools will be presented.