Developing a Microsoft Teams usability index in Higher Education Organizations: a Service-Dominant Logic orientation

Purpose – The Covid-19 pandemic amplified the need for Service-Dominant Logic scholars to investigate the adoption of technologies which enhance relation building, group interactions, knowledge sharing and creation across organizational and geographic boundaries. The social distances imposed by the current pandemic spurred, in fact, Higher Education Organizations (HEOs) to rethink their delivery and use services. E-learning has, therefore, become the vector of the relationship between the organization and the “consumers” of those services. This underlines the need to focus on essential service provision, and on the technological means to deliver them. Never as much as in this moment, it is necessary that e-learning tools know-how is balanced and shared by both the service provider (teacher) and user (student). Otherwise, asymmetrical interactions with elearning platforms could generate critical issue on judging both quality and contents of the service itself. Therefore, the aim of this study is to build a Microsoft Teams usability self-assessment index to be used in future quantitative researches. To provide the academy with an empirical tool on its use, the research proposes an in-depth exploration of Teams basic components, because of its current adoption within different HEOs for the service education use and delivery. Design/Methodology/approach – To generate a reliable index, authors will explore Microsoft Teams basic functions, investigating primary data resources, i.e. the official guide provided by the Microsoft support. Nevertheless, the index should be considered “relative” since is designed to measure individuals' skills and competences that belong to similar knowledge areas (i.e. same university departments) and that share the same basic background in both service delivery and use of Microsoft Teams in HE. Findings – The expected theoretical outcome allows to develop an Italian version of the measurement scale index of Microsoft Teams usability self-assessment in HEOs, to be used for future empirical measurements of students’ engagement in learning service co-creation. Research limitations – Due to the contemporaneity of the events and the lack of empirical studies, the index is not completely deducible from the literature and, therefore, requires a longer validation process, and a more practitioner-oriented approach. Furthermore, it cannot be universally conceived and applied to the whole totality of students and teachers within HEOs. Practical implications (if applicable) – The main practical outcome consists of setting up an selfassessment index to measure the perceived usability of Microsoft Teams in the education service delivery, which has a crucial impact in the co-design process together with students. Originality/value – Given the literature gap in measuring Microsoft Teams usability, this index will be tested - combined with other tools for assessing the utility perceived - for further empirical investigations into the HEOs ecosystem.