Human and social factors affecting the decision of students to accept e-learning

ABSTRACT

It is significant to highlight that educational technologies cannot improve academic performance if they are not widely accepted and used. Unfortunately, the decision not to accept e-learning continues to be a fundamental issue. The current research provided an alternative lens to view a decision to accept and use technology in a developing country landscape. Accordingly, the present study focused on the impact of human and social factors on the decision to accept e-learning. The undergraduate students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) formed the contextual setting. The theoretical framework employed was a modified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. Accordingly, a survey questionnaire was used to employ a dataset of 204 and 15 students in April 2015 for quantitative and qualitative data. Overall, the principal findings show that social influence, attitude and perceived usefulness, stress, satisfaction and fatigue are critical to behavioural intention to accept e-learning. Meanwhile, strong correlations between perceived usefulness and social influence; previous e-learning experience and average time spent using e-learning; previous e-learning experience and behavioural intention demonstrate how the human and social factors influence the e-learning acceptance culture. Ultimately, the contribution provided valuable insights on how to speed up the process of adoption, the use and continuance of e-learning by an understanding of human and social factors. Moreover, recognising human, social and cultural components make it possible to improve e-learning experiences of users. The implications suggest that a better integration of human and social factors to e-learning may help reduce forms of e-learning challenges and shed new insights for theory.

KEYWORDS:

• Human factors
• social factors
• e-learning
• UTAUT
• developing countries
• South Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Gbolahan Olasina is a senior lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Information Science at the University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa, 2014–2016. Also, he has taught at leading African universities in the last 12 years. His research interests include Digital Life, e-learning, research methodologies, and the e-society. He is the author of several articles in reputable international journals. Finally, he is a member of the Rotary Club.

ORCID

Gbolahan Olasina http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5732-110X