Institutionalizing Synergy: Empowering the Learning Community through ICT
William Brent Carper, Samy El Akabawy, Dan Tschirgi, MARK A. PETERSON, Jonathan Hill

Abstract
The acceleration of change in our time has become an elemental force. This accelerative thrust has personal, psychological and sociological consequences. Unless people quickly learn to control the rate of change in their personal and professional affairs, as well as society at large, mankind is doomed to a massive adaptational breakdown.1 Empowering the learning community within the academy through Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is certainly a classic example! Thus, the authors attempt to address some of the salient issues including: (1) early synergies and the inevitable "bureaucratic creep" of ICT; (2) the ICT system including administrators, technophobes, and users frequently comprised of technophiles and self-proclaimed informed users; (3) ICT system encumbrances and the need for periodic reality checks; and (4) institutionalizing synergy within the learning community of the academy through ICT. The article is the outgrowth of a recent multi-year collaborative interdisciplinary research project by the authors, all of whom were posted at The American University of Cairo at the time.

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