Adoption Of E-Learning And Usability Challenges In E-Learning Applications In Kenya: Case Of Elimu Digital E-Learning Prototype Application

The study aimed at establishing the factors promoting adoption of E-Learning and determining the usability challenges in E-Learning applications in Kenya. Consequently, an E-learning educational prototype application was developed to address the usability challenges. The prototype application dubbed “Elimu Digital” was designed to complement physical classroom teaching by providing an online representation of course content. 

Both quantitative and qualitative analysis were employed in this study. For qualitative analysis a review and analysis of various literature was done. This enabled the research to collect information on factors that influence adoption of E-Learning in Kenya. For quantitative analysis the researcher used questionnaires as the instrument of data collection.

The study used a descriptive research design. The target population was made up of lecturers, students and technical administrators. Primary and secondary data was collected from a sample size of 68 respondents. The collected data was coded in Microsoft Excel and later imported into SPSS a software package used for statistical analysis. Descriptive statistics was used to show, describe and summarize the collected data into meaningful ways whereby patterns were identified and interpreted in relation to the research objectives.

Post analysis, it was found that growth in the use of smart devices and continuous growth of the telecommunication infrastructure promoted adoption of E-Learning. It was further noted that users of E-Learning applications encountered several challenges such as adding content was not an easy process with the current E-Learning platforms as majority of the lecturers needed assistance from a technical person in order to upload content, some platforms lacked the capability of multimedia integration, some lacked the feature to have collaborations between lecturers and students directly in the platform and some platforms had interoperability issues with the different platforms and devices as they were not compatible on all devices or with all browsers.

Factors that promoted the adoption of E-Learning in Kenya were; Kenya has more service providers offering internet services at affordable costs and users choose the package depending on their pocket, E-Learning has been viewed as the cheaper alternative to attending physical classes, there is an increase in the use of smart mobile devices due to their affordability and which easily access the internet making it possible for the users to access and growth of mobile telecommunications infrastructure area coverage. The usability challenges in E-Learning applications were found to be more of technological issues and were greatly remedied by the study’s proposed solutions