NAME TITLE

Khalil Elmaniani Issues related to the adoption of eLearning within Higher Education Institutions in Morocco: Students and lecturers intention and HEIs readiness to adopt eLearning.

KEYWORDS

Technology adoption, Higher Education in Morocco, eLearning readiness, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

DISSERTATION ABSTRACT In response to the current poor form of learning and teaching practices related to education at the Higher Education (HE) in the Kingdom of Morocco, an alternative form of pedagogy can create a paradigm shift away from these poor methods of delivery for significant educational and pedagogical outcomes. ELearning is the option with the potential to transform the current practices into an enhanced teaching and learning paradigm throughout HE sector in Morocco however, its implementation and adoption in the current educational settings are still lag behind. While there is a great focus on developing the traditional version of teaching in the country, the scope of eLearning integration at HEIs seem difficult to achieve in practice, reasons are explored in this research. This research seeks to address issues concerned with the impact of the adoption of eLearning culture at four Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Morocco. More precisely, this research aimed at defining the factors influencing the human aspect (students and lecturers) intention and the preparedness of HEI for a successful eLearning adoption. This research has adopted a multiple methodology in which both quantitative and qualitative approaches are adopted for the collection and analysis of the data. The student sample and lecturer sample were drawn from four HEIs in Morocco. Based on the theory of the Technology Acceptance (TAM) and the readiness model for eLearning, the research postulated a conceptual model that fits with the local context and demographics of this study as it proposes Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease Of Use (PEOU) as determinants of students and lecturers intention to adopt eLearning while readiness factors for eLearning namely Educational Policy, Equipment and Management readiness as determinants of the readiness of HEI in adopting eLearning. Furthermore, it was concluded that the proposed model was significant in explaining the human intention and HEI readiness to adopt eLearning however the explanatory power of the conceptual model and the hypotheses were weak in terms of the overtness therefore this requests for the need of further and future studies to be conduct on the subject matter in Morocco in order to select variables that better address the adoption of eLearning than the proposed ones.

Chapter One

INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUND In recent years, learning technology is gaining a tremendous interest and motivation from various fields in the business industry and its impact on education has expanded swiftly (Smedley, 2011). Many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) worldwide have invested a considerable amount of time, money and effort (Chtouki et al, 2010) in technological projects, aiming to diffuse and introduce new innovative models to their traditional learning and teaching practices, in order to retain and extent their competitive edge and to sustain the spike of the technological evolution (Ahmedpour and Mirdamadi, 2010). In Morocco, there have been a number of government reports and committees in the recent past concerning the adoption of national strategies such as eMorocco 2010 and Numeric Morocco 2013, which are aimed to consider the necessity of the information technologies as the main pillar of various fields including education (Magharebia, 2009; MNEHEET, 2010). The Ministry of Higher Education and Executive Training (MHEET, 2010) has actively started its actions by investing a substantial amount of time and effort in the development of eLearning initiatives at Higher Education level (Sawahel, 2009). The implementation of eLearning in HE level is expected to have a positive impact on the quality of education however this implementation may encounter unwanted attitudes from potential users who may not probably be ready for this change therefore the outcomes of this implementation are heavily dependent on users changing their working habits, use and reaction towards eLearning (Fetzner and Freitas, 2011). The understanding of the critical factors involved in the implementation of eLearning can have a positive influence on the successful integration eLearning in HEIs (Siritongthaworn et al, 2006). This research addresses the adoption of eLearning at HE level in Morocco, particularly amongst HE students (undergraduate and postgraduate) and lecturers. It investigates into the factors that influence the students and lecturers intention and the eLearning readiness of HEI by proposing a conceptual model towards the objective of adopting eLearning as a tool to support face to-face learning.