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The dropout rates of open e-learning platforms are often cited as high as 97%, with many users discontinuing their use after initial acceptance. This study aims to explore this anomaly through the lens of affordances theory, revealing design–reality gaps between users' diverse goals and the possibilities for action provided by an open IT artefact.

A six-month case study was undertaken to investigate the design implications of user-perceived affordances in an EU sustainability project which developed an open e-learning platform for citizens to improve their household energy efficiency. Thematic analysis was used to reveal the challenges of user continuance behaviour based on how an open IT artefact supports users in achieving individual goals (e.g. reducing energy consumption in the home) and collective goals (lessening the carbon footprint of society).

Based on the findings, the authors inductively reveal seven affordances related to open e-learning platforms: informing, assessment, synthesis, emphasis, clarity, learning pathway and goal-planning. The findings centre on users' perception of these affordances, and the extent to which the open IT artefact catered to the goals and constraints of diverse user groups. Open IT platform development is further discussed from an iterative and collaborative perspective in order to explore different possibilities for action.

The study contributes towards research on open IT artefact design by presenting key learnings on how the designers of e-learning platforms can bridge design–reality gaps through exploring affordance personalisation for diverse user groups. This can inform the design of open IT artefacts to help ensure that system features match the expectations and contextual constraints of users through clear action-oriented possibilities.

As educational institutes began to address the challenges posed by COVID-19, e-learning came to the foreground as the best bet left. This study is in quest of revealing engineering student's perceptions of the available e-learning platforms, thus surfacing the underlying bottlenecks. Further, it aims at providing solutions that would help enhance the e-learning experience not only in pandemic times but also in the long run.

This holistic research begins with a comprehensive comparative study about the available e-learning platforms, followed by a primary data analysis through an online survey of 364 engineering students from various colleges and branches. The collected data was analyzed to detect bottlenecks in online learning and suggestions are given for solving some challenges.

On a five-point Likert scale, the available e-learning platforms garnered ratings ranging from 2.81 to 3.46. Google meet was the most preferred platform. However, with a net promoter score (NPS) of 30.36, Microsoft Teams emerged as the most satisfying platform. Technical shortcomings clubbed with psychological and biological factors were found to be taking a toll on e-learning.

This innovative research is based on the perceptions of engineering students hailing majorly from Indian cities, and hence, it may be having educational stream bias and geographical bias. The research could be further extended to cover rural areas and global trends in e-learning.

The research offers a thorough analysis of e-learning platforms, as seen through the lens of engineering students. Furthermore, the analysis does not constrain itself to the technicalities and thus proves to be an all-encompassing one, potent enough to surface critical issues marring the e-learning experience.

Public libraries play a pivotal role in supporting education and literacy. They provide numerous services, activities, collections and resources for education and leisure. Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) is an international renowned public library that provides numerous services for different users worldwide. E-learning is an emergent and promising method for teaching and learning different subjects such as the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The e-learning educational system is quite novel in Africa and the Middle East; hence, this paper presents the whole concept to the reader. In addition, it demonstrates number of e-courses tackling different domains provided by different educational institutions, national and public libraries worldwide.

In 2017, the BA inaugurated its e-learning services to cope with the new educational trend and to consolidate the lifelong learning concept in the community. The author showed special interest to the case of e-learning in the BA, as it is a regional public library. The main idea of this paper is to attract attention toward public libraries as a promising venue for e-learning implementation for general knowledge, library information sciences, soft skills, elementary and informal STEM education. The paper discusses in details e-learning and its characteristics.

In addition, the paper compares traditional education (face-to-face) with e-learning education, mentions both their pros and cons and recommends blending the two educational methods as they complement each other. Furthermore, the author has selected a sample of different STEM e-courses (203 different e-courses). These e-courses were selected to assert the possibility of presenting STEM topics in the form of e-courses.

This study would be one of the emergent research studies that connect e-learning to both STEM disciplines and public libraries. Additionally, this research highlights the importance of public libraries and all the services they provide. In the mean time, it shed light on the important and unique role of specialized librarians. Briefly, public libraries with all their resources, services and expert librarians could provide an exceptional e-learning experience to their community and be of great help to educational institutions and organizations.

The purpose of this study is to explore the role individual innovativeness along with e-learning self-efficacy play in predicting the e-learning readiness of first- and second-year students of an open and distance education institutions in an African context.

Therefore, building on previous related research in this area, a quantitative approach was adopted to address the research questions and to establish whether a statistically significant relationship existed between individual innovativeness, e-learning self-efficacy, the independent variables; and e-learning readiness, the dependent variable. In total, 476 first- and second-years students of the university participated in the four-Likert-type scale survey. The research instrument which comprises 74 survey items was completed by 217 of the students. Statistical tools used for analysing data included both Pearson Product Moment Correlation coefficients and t-tests.

It was discovered that a strong positive and significant relationship was observed between individual innovativeness and e-learning readiness of first- and second-year students of the Yenagoa Study Centre of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN); a statistically significant relationship was also found between e-learning self-efficacy scores and the e-learning readiness of the first- and second-year students of the Yenagoa Study Centre of NOUN; there was a statistically significant joint relationship between the three variables under investigation; findings equally revealed that male respondents had higher e-learning readiness than their female counterparts.

Like every other study of this nature, this one also suffers some limitations. First, NOUN is a very large university with over half a million students spread across almost 78 study centres. This means that observation from just one study centre amounts to a very small sample size. This according to Schweighofer, Weitlaner, Ebner and Rothe (2019) jeopardises the generalisability and validity of study results. The authors also maintain that empirical data generated from surveys that usually rely participants' abilities to read and select responses without further interpretation by the researchers suffer from cognitive biases like social desirability. To address the above limitations, detailed studies involving all studies centres of NOUN be undertaken and other qualitative and or mixed research methodologies be adopted in the future.

The implications for this study are that people who are innately innovative will willingly accept technology and by extension, learning in technology-rich environments like those found in like NOUN whose mode of study is blended learning inherently found in open and distance learning (ODL) institution. Therefore, this study is significant as it will provide relevant information to the management and administrators of NOUN, policymakers and regulatory institutions for the development, deployment and implementation of e-learning strategies. Findings will also benefit e-learning initiatives undertaken by similar institutions that adopt the ODL mode of education in Nigeria and other developing countries.

Even though, studies on the antecedents of e-learning readiness have been widely conducted across diverse contexts, studies exploring the associations between individual innovativeness, e-learning self-efficacy and e-learning readiness are relatively hard to come by. The above two variables as predicting the e-learning readiness in the study context are comparatively new. This study thus focuses on the relationships between the individual innovativeness levels, e-learning self-efficacy beliefs of students and their e-learning readiness which ultimately determines their ability to sustain studies in an ODL institution.

This paper aims to analyze the financial implications associated with Ugandan universities employing e-learning techniques and to suggest sound policy solutions to the problems the investigation found.

To illustrate how e-learning is used in Uganda, the study used a descriptive research design. The study used a quantitative methodology to highlight the various experiences associated with utilizing e-learning platforms from various universities. A questionnaire survey was distributed to university students, and the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics in order to understand the usage of e-learning and Persons correlation to understand the degree of the relationship between the study variables.

The study findings reveal that e-learning approaches in universities are favorably correlated with their financial implications (r = 0.598; p-value 0.05). It was excruciatingly difficult to access online learning resources and platforms, and there was a severe lack of power. Some academic staff members lacked adequate e-learning platform training, and students noted that e-learning eased communication between students and lecturers, whereas Internet subscription and acquisition of mobile devices were expensive.

The research was limited to three districts in western Uganda, and thus, it may not be possible to extrapolate the results to the entire nation.

Universities are open to these changes since the digital world is moving more quickly, overall, and this trend has crept into education as well. Policymakers and other universities may utilize the study's findings to inform their decisions.

The study offers useful insights into how e-learning systems have altered university teaching methods.

This article aims to study the determinants of e-learning acceptability by university students based on their experiences with distance learning during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

A questionnaire was used to collect data from 448 students enrolled in a Moroccan business school's fourth and fifth years. The technology acceptance model (TAM) was the primary framework used for this analysis, into which variables from the expectation confirmation model were injected, namely facilitating conditions, social influence, expectation confirmation and satisfaction. The proposed conceptual model was tested and evaluated using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. Then the authors have offered an in-depth analysis by employing the importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) approach.

The investigation suggested that the proposed measurement scale effectively assesses the factors impacting students' decision to continue using e-learning in the future. This study’s results show that e-learning acceptance depends significantly on the students' satisfaction, perceived ease of use (PEU) and perceived usefulness (PU). In contrast, the facilitating conditions are not a valid measurement scale to determine students' attitudes toward e-learning.

This is one of the first studies in the Moroccan context to evaluate e-learning acceptability by management students after COVID-19 using a unique research model.

The purpose of this paper is to report the design and evaluation of an inter-university collaborative project entitled “Blended learning for building student-teachers’ capacity to learn and teach science-related interdisciplinary subjects.” The project is a response of the science education faculty of three Hong Kong tertiary institutes to the challenge of catering to the diversity of academic backgrounds among student-teachers.

E-learning modules have been produced covering four content domains of science. These modules are designed based on the 5E learning model and are delivered to students using the learning management system provided by Moodle. The design of the modules is iterative, based on the evaluation of three consecutive rounds of trials through student surveys, and focus group interviews with students and course lecturers.

The evaluation findings indicate positive outcomes for certain attributes such as conceptual understanding, eagerness and confidence in learning science, and metacognitive reflection on students’ own learning. There are challenges to be met in relation to instructional design to cater for the diversity of student abilities, and enhance motivation in self-directed learning.

The project indicates the ways to develop students’ basic science knowledge in a mixed-ability setting through the design of self-directed e-learning modules blended with their major courses and possible measures to address the limitations of such design.

The study represents a conscious effort for the science teacher education faculty of different universities to pull together to tackle a perennial teaching and learning problem. The findings provide important insights into possible ways to blend e-learning with face-to-face learning approaches to better cater to the needs of science learners with mixed abilities to prepare them for interdisciplinary teaching.

The extreme measures that have been taken by governments across the globe to minimize the spread of COVID-19 have had significant impacts on almost all the public sectors, especially on the economy and education. This study aims to address the approaches and prospective of online-based training and e-learning for employee learning and development during this COVID-19 crisis.

With an emphasis on the qualitative approach and considering the complex COVID-19 emergency, required data were collected from in-depth interviews to interpret the experiences of the respondents.

The findings suggested that the digital learning ecosystem offered flexibility of time, place and pace, which provided essential convenience during the COVID-19 crisis. From the human resource (HR) perspective, the e-learning culture has enabled the organizations to quickly adopt the new normal, secure sustainable continuity of organizational development and ensure decent work and growth within and across organizations. The adoption of e-learning and flexible working conditions following the setback has enabled the organizations to quickly cope up with the new normal, causing a significant paradigm shift in the organizational culture and corporate sector of Bangladesh.

The study will assist the HR of any organization to contemplate e-learning systems as effective alternative training methods. Also, the study will be suggestive to traverse new dimensions and skillsets for the pedagogues.

This study offers new evidential scenarios regarding the emergence of effective e-learning initiatives and online-based learning programs for developing the workforce to be efficient and productive even in distressful and inconvenient COVID-19 situations.

This study aims to explore and identify potential challenges and prospects for conducting the professional shariah audit training programme via an e-learning approach during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Questionnaires were administered to 296 participants who were enrolled in the professional shariah audit training programme via e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020. These participants were final-year students from selected Malaysian public universities.

Findings show that several main challenges are faced in adopting an e-learning approach for conducting the professional shariah audit training programme such as the inability to do more hands-on, group and physical activities, different understandings based on academic backgrounds, difficulty in learning practical and technical topics, technical issues and problems during e-learning sessions. These lead to the unsuitability of conducting professional training via the e-learning approach. In terms of prospects of knowledge learnt via the e-learning approach, participants showed that they are able to master all six modules covered in the professional shariah audit training programme via the e-learning approach. These include (1) shariah principles; (2) shariah governance; (3) Islamic financial transactions; (4) shariah risk management; (5) shariah audit planning and programme; and (6) shariah audit fieldwork and communication.

Based on the findings, it is suggested to have more time spent and earlier preparation on the learning contents and sessions, more discussion on actual contents and practical exercises and competency of the trainers in delivering e-learning sessions.

This study is believed to be one among the pioneering studies on the potential challenges and prospects in adopting e-learning for conducting the professional shariah audit training programme due to COVID-19.

With the advent of the COVID-19 and increased access to Internet technologies, students tend to use e-learning technologies for improved academic results, and since then, improving student engagement in a virtual space became a difficult task for educational institutions globally. The present study aims to examine the effect of key e-learning factors (i.e. perception, hedonic motivation (HM), usefulness, empowerment and attitude) on student engagement among open and distance learners (ODLs) of the central region of India.

Simple random sampling was applied to collect data from ODLs of Chhattisgarh. ODLs who are using e-learning platforms for at least one year were chosen to be the participant in the study. The authors collected 1,137 responses using both online and offline modes of collection.

The test results indicated that usefulness, HM and attitude factors were found to have a significant relationship with student engagement in e-learning, while perception and empowerment variables did not contribute to the engagement of students.

The present study is novel in its approach. It clarifies the key factors to student engagement which might increase the students' level of involvement in e-learning technologies, if these factors are addressed tactfully by the educational institutions or concerned administration.