Critical Success Factors Affecting E-learning Quality for Management Students in Delhi-NCR
Pragya Jayaswal
Assistant Professor, Delhi Institute of Advanced Studies, Delhi
ABSTRACT:
The urban population in India is projected to grow faster than its overall population by 2030. This rapid increase in population will create pressure on the economy as well as on the education system. With the changing time, psychology of students is also changing. Today, attending hours of face-to-face lectures in schools/colleges in today’s dynamic scenario is passé. And this can be suspected as a major reason of dropouts Government schools. Time has come. Teaching needs to be changed. There is a growing need for teachers to make their classes more dynamic as to suit the demand of today’s youth. Another problem which is faced in Indian education system is the shortage of education institutes and faculty. This limitation can be overcome if the learning resources can be provided on cloud and the relevant technology can be made accessible to everyone. Technology, therefore has the capability to address all these issues. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emphasis on the Digital India campaign aims to ensure better connectivity and maximize the potential of India’s youth. Growing penetration of internet and increasing smartphone penetration along with a strong thrust from the Government are accelerating the transformation of India’s education system. World is being digitized and therefore, the need of the hour is to make the youth of today, technology friendly. The key to success is in catching them young. In this paper, factors affecting the e-learning quality for Management students of Delhi NCR also derived. The exploratory factor analysis was conducted and five critical factors for the successful implementation of e-learning for management students were derived. These five critical factors were termed as Utilitarian factors, Facilitating conditions, Progress tracking, Content quality and Hedonic factors.
KEYWORDS: ICT, Technology, Digitization, Primary education.
INTRODUCTION:
Digital education means digital learning. A learning which is supported digitally. Through Digital education schools, colleges and on the other side students get a win-win opportunity. On one hand, schools and colleges have increased enrolments with added revenue and at the same time, students enjoy the process of learning through videos, audios and remote education. The problems that are commonly faced in Indian education system are the lack of infrastructure, lack of qualified trainers and distance.
These problems dwindle with the aid of digital learning. Animations, gamification and various audio-visual aids make teaching and learning an easy process.
Digital education is rapidly changing in India. The very traditional chalk and talk method has been bypassed by the smart classes. Today, teaching and learning is more about increased interactivity and participation. Digital learning therefore, guarantees more participation from students and today’s generation is more digital friendly with their laptops, I-pads, and smartphones. Today, in India, there are different private players in digital education industry like Educomp, Tata Class Edge, Pearson, and TeachNext who are continuously developing different interactive software to aid teachers in effective classroom teaching.
Digital education holds a promise of increasing the enrolment rates since it is accessible anytime, anywhere, is affordable and interactive and at the same time overcomes traditional challenges of Indian education system of lack of trainers and lack of infrastructure.
Future of Online Education in 2021
Technology and e-learning are now taking education away from the conventional mode to a digital-oriented app-based model. This will help India fight with shortages of teaching staff and lack of infrastructure for education and will also help in reaching out millions. India has now become an important source for e-learning content development and the concept of e-learning therefore is all set to change the face of the Indian education system completely.
There are various initiatives taken by the Government of India to boost the education system by integrating it with the Internet of Things:
1. Smart Classrooms:
Smart class is a new method of teaching currently in practice in schools of India. Today’s classrooms are in transition. Smart classrooms are found extensively in private schools in India but now the Department-related Parliament Standing Committee on Human Resource Development (HRD) has alsorecommended for smart classes in government schools to minimise the gap wherever states are standing differently in their educational status.
2. SWAYAM: Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds:
SWAYAM is an indigenous (Made in India) IT Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Platform which provides best quality education that can be accessed by anyone, anytime and anywhere using the IT system. The Concept of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) includes online delivery of interactive learning content related to several fields of study to large number of people simultaneously.
3. SWAYAM Prabha: The 32 Educational DTH Channels:
The SWAYAM PRABHA stands for telecasting high quality educational programmes through 32 DTH channels on 24X7 basis. These channels cover syllabus based contents on subjects of in higher education domain such as arts, science, commerce, arts, social sciences, engineering, law, medicine, agriculture etc.
4. National Digital Library (NDL):
National Digital Library of Indiaaims to collect, preserve and disseminate entire intellectual output of our country and provide online access from school level to post graduate level, including technical education. There are more than 72 lakh digital books available through the NDL. Currently, more than 15 lakh students have registered themselves in the NDL. It can be accessed through a mobile app also.
5. e-ShodhSindhu:
For higher educational institutions, more than 15,000 international electronic journals and e-books are made available through the e-shodhSindhu initiative which can be accessed through digital mode.
6. Virtual Labs:
The major cause of concerns in teaching exits in physical distances, lack of resourcesand lack of teaching faculty. And this results in the conduction of physical experiments very difficult. Web based experiments helps in learning through remote experimentation.
7. E-Basta App:
The e-BastaApp, runs on any Android tablet, proves to be of great advantage to both schools and students. For schools this app is a boon because it allows teachers to upload content according to their teaching preferences.
8. Campus Connectivity:
A total of 600 Universities have been connected through 1 Gbps Optical Fibre; 22026 Colleges have so far been connected with 10 Mbps bandwidth. On the lines of ‘Digital India’ initiative of the PMO, the MHRD has now decided that the campuses of Universities, (having 1 Gbps bandwidth) shall be made WiFi enabled campus. Already all the IITs, IIMs, and NITs have established WiFi campuses.
9. A CBSE Initiative, Saransh:
Saransh, an initiative by CBSE is used by CBSE schools and parents for comprehensive self-review and analysis. Saranshconnects schools, teachers and parents, so that they can easily monitor the progress of students and thereby help them improve their overall performance.
10. E-Pathshala by NCERT:
E-pathshala by NCERT provides all educational e-resources including audio, video, textbooks, and a variety of other materials through both website and mobile app. Students, teachers and parents can access these resources through mobile phones, and tablets and on web through laptops and desktops.
11. e-Vidwan:
The ‘Information and Library Network’ (INFLIBNET) Centre took the initiative called “Vidwan. It collects profiles of scientists, faculty and researchers working in leading academic and R and D organizations in both India and abroad. It then provides information about experts to research scholars and peers.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE:
Ingram, Biermann, Cannon (2000), Freund (1998) defined the key term critical success factor in their literature as “those things that must be done if a firm is to be successful" These critical success factors are very few in numbers and are measurable and controllable in nature. There are several research articles on e-learning and its adoption but very few papers address the issue of deriving key success factors for the success of e-learning with special emphasis on management students.
Zhang. L. et.al. (2018) in their paper investigated people’s perception and their attitude towards the adoption of e-learning and studies the factors affecting its adoption in China. The results derived that some important factors of perceived innovative attributes, such as quality, personal demands, cost etc. have more influence the adoption of e-learning.
Also, Alhabeeb et.al. (2018) in their work derived key factors that leads successful e-learning implementation in universities in Saudi Arabia. Their study shows that the perspective of teachers and students differ and the important factors that affects the adoption of e-learning for teachers are firstly student characteristics, then, ease of access, followed by instructor characteristics, and training Whereas, for students the order is instructor characteristics, followed by student characteristics, then support and training, and finally ease of access.
Franklin et.al. (2018) in their study in Saudi Arabia analysed the impact of electronic learning on academic performance. By using Structural equation modeling (SEM), the study confirmed that Acceptance for online teaching Technical competencyand Synchronous lectures have an indirect influence on Performance of Academic Staff. Whereas, Acceptance for online teaching and Technical competency have a direct impact on Performance of Academic Staff.
Sugant (2016) in his study on service quality parameters for E-learning identified three core factors namely system quality, information quality and experience quality leading to service quality. Also, the study derived the various factors contributing to these three dimensions like content and instructional design contributes to information quality; pedagogy and technology contributes to system quality; user interface and user experience contributes to experience quality.
Papp (2000) examined distance learning from a macro perspective and suggested some critical success factors that can assist faculty and universities in e-leaning environment development. Papp's e-learning critical success factors included intellectual property, suitability of the course for e-learning environment, e-learning course content, building the e-learning course, e-learning course maintenance, e-learning platform, and measuring the success of an e-learning course.
Papp (2000) suggested studying each one of these critical success factors in isolation and also as a composite to determine which factor(s) influence and impact e-learning success.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:
The objectives of the study are:
· To study the recent scenario and future of digital education in India
· To study the various initiatives taken by the Government of India for the growth of digital education.
· To identify factors that affect asynchronous e-learning quality for Management students of Delhi NCR
RESEARCH DESIGN:
The research design used for this study is Exploratory and Descriptive. 286 students of management courses were surveyed for the study. Out of 286 questionnaires received, 48 students were not familiar with the concept of E-learning, therefore 238 responses were only considered for the survey. The technique used for drawing sample from population is convenience sampling. A questionnaire was administered with a five-point Likert’s scale, with ‘strongly agree’ rated as 5 and ‘strongly disagree’ rated as 1. The collected data was coded in the SPSS 21. Exploratory Factor analysis was used for analysis.
DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION:
Demographic Profile
Table 1: Age
|
Categories |
% of Respondents |
|
18-20 years |
31.09 |
|
21-23 years |
45.79 |
|
24-26 years |
15.54 |
|
26 years and above |
7.56 |
Table 2: Gender
|
Categories |
% of Respondents |
|
Male |
54.20 |
|
Female |
45.79 |
Table 3: Area preferred for Online Courses
|
Categories |
% of Respondents |
|
Marketing |
30.25 |
|
Finance |
21.84 |
|
Human Resources |
26.05 |
|
General Management |
10.92 |
|
Communication Skills |
8.40 |
|
Any other |
2.52 |
Table 4: E-Learning portal Mostly Preferred
|
Categories |
% of Respondents |
|
NPTEL |
33.19 |
|
SWAYAM |
10.92 |
|
Coursera |
34.03 |
|
Khan Academy |
8.82 |
|
Udemy |
5.04 |
|
Alison |
3.78 |
|
Any other |
4.20 |
Table 5: Type of Course Enrolment Online
|
Categories |
% of Respondents |
|
Professional Course |
6.72 |
|
Certification Course |
80.25 |
|
Diploma Course |
13.02 |
Table 6: Expectations from Online Course
|
Categories |
% of Respondents |
|
Knowledge |
11.34 |
|
Certificate |
49.15 |
|
Credits |
1.68 |
|
Confidence Building |
13.44 |
|
Social Pressure |
17.22 |
|
Others |
7.14 |
Table 7: Computer Literacy
|
Categories |
% of Respondents |
|
Proficient |
42.85 |
|
Adequate |
63.02 |
|
Least |
20.16 |
Reliability Test:
To test the reliability of various constructs of the questionnaire, the Cronbach alpha (equivalent to the average of all the split half correlation coefficients) was used. It was found to be 0.934 which implies that the data is consistent in nature and can be relied upon.
Exploratory Factor Analysis:
Exploratory factor analysis was applied to develop a tool for measuring the perception of students to the factors leading to adoption of e-learning using SPSS V 21. For this pool of 24 items were subjected to exploratory factor analysis. Exploratory factor analysis reduced variable to five factors with Kaiser- Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy came out to be 0.887 which is above 0.65 (the acceptable level) as shown in Table 8. The factor analysis generated four components with eigenvalues above 1 with total variance explained 74.730%. The varimax rotation clubbed the items on five components as shown in Table 9.
The exploratory factor analysis derived five critical factors for the successful implementation of e-learning for management students. These five critical factors were Utilitarian factors, Facilitating conditions, Progress tracking, Content quality and Hedonic factors.
The first factor was termed as Utilitarian factor because it is derived from the items that indicates easy and fast accessibility, excellent support, easy understanding, and logical learning. Thereby, it defines the utility of the e-learning environment. The second factor was termed as Facilitating condition as it represents availability of resources for facilitating e-learning, availability of training manuals and modules for e-learning system.
The third factor derived was named Progress tracking as it is derived from the items indicating an efficient evaluation process, proper assessment, and easy tracking of progress. The fourth factor derived was Content quality. This factor denotes the quality of content provided by the e-learning portal, use of adequate simulations, videos and exercises to explain the concepts and the relevance of the topics and the content to the learner’s need and requirement. The final factor derived was coined as Hedonic factor. Hedonism talks about enjoyment, passion and appeal. This factor discusses the visual appeal of the content, use of interactive and attractive user interface like usage of pleasant colours, font styles in the user interface and how entertained the learner is while using the e-learning portal.
Table 8: KMO and Bartlett’s test of Sphericity
|
KMO and Bartlett's Test |
||
|
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. |
.887 |
|
|
Bartlett's Test of Sphericity |
Approx. Chi-Square |
7107.223 |
|
Df |
378 |
|
|
Sig. |
.000 |
|
Table 9: Rotated Component Matrix
CONCLUSION:
Technology will helpin revitalising India’s education system and therefore it will help ineradicating the huge learning crisis that India is currently facing.Though the government of India has taken several measures towards digitizing education,it has failed badly at the point of implementation, and that is due to the lack of a“comprehensive vision” that links the use of technology with the brick and mortar waysof teaching.
Also, there is a significant input in production of e-content such as digitised textbooksand online study material but all these initiatives are going in vain because they areovershadowed by the “desi” or old methods of pedagogy. Innovative technologies canonly give good results if proper training is provided to the teaching staff, parents andstudents.
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS:
The study covers only management students thereby limiting the generalizability of the findings. The future studies can deal with the psychographic factors and learning attitude towards the e-learning scenario.
REFERENCES:
1. Alhabeeb, A., and Rowley, J. (2018). E-learning critical success factors: Comparing perspectives from academic staff and students. Computers and Education, 127, 1-12.
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Received on 07.01.2019 Modified on 20.01.2019
Accepted on 19.02.2019 ©AandV Publications All right reserved
Res. J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2019; 10(2):346-350.
DOI: 10.5958/2321-5828.2019.00060.3