Adoption of cloud computing for e-learning in higher education
Creators: name: Ewuzie, Isaiah
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024

description: Information Systems (IS) play a key role in modern business process and its adoption is critical for achieving competitive advantage. Technology and IS adoptions have been extensively researched and cloud computing has emerged as one of the major areas of research in recent years. That notwithstanding, research findings indicate that the rate of adoption and subsequent deployment within higher educational institutions (HEIs) is low when compared to other sectors. This low rate of adoption constitutes the key issue addressed by this research.The increasing cost of higher education even with less public funding has necessitated the HEIs to look for ways of being competitive in the global market while improving their modes and methods of delivery. Cloud computing is seen as a potential solution for the HEIs to improve their e-learning systems because it has the capability for end users to seamlessly access data and applications from multiple devices and platforms.The research therefore aimed to identify factors that could cause the problem and investigate how they could be used so as to achieve a high adoption for this important technology. To achieve this aim, a systematic secondary research was done and this revealed four key theoretical frameworks – Technology Adoption Model (TAM), Technology-OrganisationEnvironment (TOE), Diffusion of Innovation Theory (DOI) and Computer Self-Efficacy (CSE). These frameworks along with a pilot study produced constructs that were related using hypotheses to form a conceptual model for this research. In the process, two

The uniqueness of this research is that it studied adoption both from individual and organisational perspectives by combining variables from TAM, TOE, DOI and CSE. The study contributed by extending the TOE framework to include security (as one of the technology variables) and cost considerations. Findings indicate that both perspectives are important in relation to this study. The research combined the strength of TAM and TOE models to produce a hybrid model of adoption. If the research recommendations are well implemented, it will help institutions in their long term e-learning and IT strategy. Future studies on adoption of e-learning technologies should consider it from users’ perspective since this study was based on IT, teaching and management staff’s perspectives. new variables – cost and security - that were not part of the theoretical frameworks were added to the conceptual model.Taking mainly a quantitative approach, except at the exploratory pilot study, the model was operationalised into a 42-item survey questionnaire that used a 5-point-Likert scale. After being pilot tested, the questionnaire was administered to 625 respondents via emails. 99responded which resulted in the response rate of 15.8%. After correcting for item nonresponse and incomplete responses, the completed questionnaires were subjected to reliabilitytests before the actual data analysis. Data analysis indicates that while technology, DOI and CES have positive relationships with adoption, organisation and environment do not show relationships with adoption due to a number of factors. Findings indicate that technological factors of adoption are significant in adoption of cloud computing.