E-leadership ecosystem in higher education: Building and sustaining an effective educational environment

Abstract

The article regards the concept of e-leadership and its components, connections, conditions, approaches and issues, within an ecosystem applied to the higher education environment. The information examined by this article is built on the base of the selected references, some existing recommendations and initiatives from European institutions and governments pertinent to the development of e-leadership skills and the theoretical research regarding the contextual vision of e-leadership ecosystem in education. In order to propose an up-to-date scenery of approaches for an effective e-leadership ecosystem in higher education, the paper pays particular attention to the combination of leadership strategies, pedagogical insights and supporting and enhancing conditions for teaching and learning through technology, which can be beneficial in ensuring e-leadership success and most its effects. As highlights, an e-leadership ecosystem encloses a group of components that influence an environment. In the case of an educational e-leadership ecosystem, these components could be split up as human resources on one hand and all other resources that affect the functional and transformational changes of the entire ecosystem on the other hand. Defining a clear understanding of educational change through the practice of e-leadership applied to educational technology, the article providesempirical results based on literature relevant case studies and research questions in case survey. The key results from the presented experiences and empirical studies ensures that e-leadership ecosystem needs new competences and innovative capacity in order to deal with technological advances that rapidly influence systemic changes of higher education. The paper suggests that, as a component of the instructional, shared, and technology-mediated environment, today more attention requires to befocused on the development and sustain of the e-leadership ecosystem in higher education. The authors bring out the lack of research of e-leadership applied to educational technology in the Republic of Moldova and propose a paradigm, that blends conclusive, selective, strategic e-leadership principles within an ecosystem.