Designing an E-learning Readiness Assessment Model for Iraqi Universities Employing Fuzzy Delphi Method.

Abstract

The assessment process of readiness for adoption an educational system considers the lifeblood of the e-learning system in a particular educational organization and the ability to assess the organization's readiness among the main factors which contributes to the success and progress. The readiness models are instruments that assist educational organizations in measuring their capability level and identifying the gaps to develop a strategy for implementing and adopting e-learning system. Due to the sudden chaos that Iraqi educational institutions have been exposed to the Covid-19 epidemic since the beginning of 2020, the e-learning system has been adopted as a quick alternative educational system for the continuation of the educational process without taking into consideration the readiness of the basic components of the educational process, which comprises the readiness of the infrastructure, human and educational organization to adopt such systems. Despite increased attention by stakeholders and the government with the readiness assessment process recently, there is no comprehensive model for assessing e-learning readiness in Iraqi higher education institutions, the purpose of this study is to design a model of an e-learning readiness assessment for Iraqi universities based on the comparative studies and the experts' views. It is worth to mention that the proposed model has objectively designed according to particular features and local characteristics country. The fuzzy delphi method was utilized for the validation process of the proposed model. The main dimensions and all factors of the proposed model reached the experts' agreement except a number of measures that did not achieve the assessment requirements. The final analysis result indicates that the e-learning readiness assessment model includes 3 main dimensions and 13 factors with 86 measures. Iraqi higher educational institutions can employ the designed model to assess their readiness and identify the areas that need improvement and reduce the gaps failures in e-learning adoption.