Quantifiable characteristics of opportunities and prospects of eLearning in Higher Education Institutions in Pakistan

Abstract

Both opportunities and prospects are sometimes used interchangeably, however, in this paper, opportunity
refers to the ‘availability of eLearning resources and service’ while prospects denote ‘futuristic expectations
about the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Higher Education Institutions
(HEIs)’. The empirical findings suggest that people score lower on opportunities but score significantly
higher on the prospects showing that they are not quite happy with the facilities and services available (due
to the development, implementation and use problems – or simply management problems of eLearning). But
they can clearly foresee the significant role of ICTs or Education Technologies (ETs) in future in the context
of developing countries like Pakistan. Furthermore, these differences are attributed to the demographic
diversities of the respondents, meaning that the demographic variation changes the power and direction of
the user-attitudes towards e-Learning. This paper uses stepwise regression to gradually glean-out the most
significant predictors of opportunities and prospects from a group of eight demographics