Current State of Cloud-Based E-learning Adoption: Results from Gulf Cooperation Council's Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Many Higher Education Institutions are shifting to Cloud-Based E-Iearning (CBEL) due to its benefits. These benefits include reduced costs of accessing IT services, pooling of resources, scalability, and mobility as well as consumer satisfaction among others. However, some institutions especially in developing countries in general and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in particular still reluctant to adopt CBEL due to many factors. There is necessity to find out the factors that drive the adoption of CBEL in higher education institutions. This study was carried out to find out the factors that determine whether these institutions in GCC would adopt the CBEL or not. The study involved a group of respondents from the GCC who provided with an On-line survey sent to identify the factors they thought played a role in determining whether institutions would adopt the CBEL or not. The base for this study was TOE and DOI adoption theories. The following factors were recommended by researchers; Technological Factors such as Relative advantage, Complexity, Compatibility which derived from DOI theory and Organizational factors such as Fit, Decision maker, Cost reduction, and IT readiness which derived from TOE framework, and Information culture behavioral such as Information Integrity, Information Formality, Information Control and Information Pro-activeness which derived from Information culture factors.