Students Readiness for E-Learning: An Assessment on Hacettepe University Department of Information Management - Challenges of Information Management Beyond the Cloud - page 138

2 E-Learning Readiness Assessment

The readiness of teachers [3], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10] and learners [11], [12], [13],
[14], [15], [16] for e-learning had been discussed in several studies in the last decade.
The studies showed that results related to the different aspects of e-learning readiness
can vary over time, among institutions or instruments that were used for the
assessment.
The results of e-learning readiness assessments, applied to the academic staff of
Turkish higher education, reveal some different results similarly to the international
literature. For example, according to Akaslan and Law's study [7], teachers working
in the higher education institutes associated with the science of electricity in Turkey
have confidence and positive attitudes towards e-learning. On the contrary the
assessment which was carried out on the Faculty of Letters academic members
revealed that the majority of the departments in the Faculty were not ready for e-
learning except for the Department of Information Management [3]. 1 These results
point to the necessity of assessment studies in different disciplines and show that the
readiness level varies from institution to institution.
According to the related literature, readiness levels of students can also vary from
their grade-levels to the attitudes of teachers who develop and deliver online courses.
For example Hung, et. al's study [13] showed that higher grade college students were
significantly more ready than the lower grade students. The study also emphasized the
teachers' roles in helping to develop self-directed learning and learner-control skills
and attitudes among the students. Another study [14], that stressed the effect of
teachers in supporting students to adopt e-learning systems, presented the impact of
some constructions of Technology Acceptance Model (such as perceived usefulness,
perceived ease of use) on students' attitudes, which affected their intention to use e-
learning systems.
Akaslan and Law [11] conducted one of the most comprehensive studies on e-
learning readiness of university students in Turkey, which was targeted a specific
group: students studying electricity-related disciplines. Their model was based on
their previous study [7], in which they assessed the readiness of teachers from several
Turkish Universities working in the above mentioned discipline, with some added
factors that can be viewed as specific for the students (Fig. 1).
Their assessment was conducted with a 78-item questionnaire based on three main
factors; readiness, acceptance and training. The results showed that students were
“sufficiently ready” for e-learning [11].

1 In this study [3], e-learning readiness of Hacettepe University Faculty of Letters (HUFL)
academic staff was tested with a questionnaire of 37 items that measures the perceptions of
the participants in terms of Readiness, Acceptance and Training. It was found out that for
most of the items there were statistically significant differences among the mean scores of the
departments, and the majority of the departments in the Faculty were not ready for e-learning
except for the Department of Information Management.