ASSESSING BUSINESS STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCES WITH E-LEARNING IN A GHANIAN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Though e-learning has gained root in most universities all over the world that has resulted in the change of doing the business of teaching and learning, there are others where this is not so. This paper sought to investigate the perception of students using a Moodle platform from a university where the use of e-learning platform to supplement classroom’s instructional delivery is not mandatory thus almost all courses do not use such platforms. Design: A purposive sampling questionnaire was used in this study to solicit the views of third year business students after using the platform for two courses taught by the author in both semesters of the 2016/17 academic year. A link from Google form that contains the questionnaire was inserted into the Moodle platform for all 414 students who enrolled for the two courses to fill. In all 349 students completely filled the questionnaire indicating a response rate of 84.3%, which was deemed adequate for the study. Results: It was observed that overwhelming majority of the respondents own computing devices spending more than half of each day using those devices. They also use computers for academic purposes (studying and researching) while using mobile devices for non-academic purposes (personal life and social networking). Finally, they have positive impression with studying with the Moodle LMS whiles they identified some challenges in using the said platform. Conclusions: Respondents are ready for e-learning take off since they own their devices, spend most of the time with them and are digital savvy. The identified issues with the existing Moodle platform should be addressed before it is made mandatory