Evolution of situational factors in blended learning systems interfaces during COVID-19: An analytical study

Abstract

The world has been undergoing tremendous transformation since early 2020 with the occurrence of a global pandemic of COVID-19. While it will take several years of study and research to understand the true effect of this pandemic on society, it is worthy of noting that it has already transformed our methods of leading lives. One of the areas, highly impacted by a pandemic is education. In order to deliver education in a distance learning manner, more and more academic institutions have been acquiring IT systems to deliver education to the students in the confines and safety of their homes. Saudi Electronic University (SEU) has been pioneering the application of online systems for blended learning in not just Saudi Arabia but the whole middle east and north Africa region. The reliance on systems at SEU for maintaining education standards during pandemics has increased. This has provided the opportunity to researchers in various fields of IT and computing to study evolving role of such systems in traditional and blended models of education. Situational Factors (SFs) are key elements that affect the acceptability of systems by stakeholders. This paper describes the outcome of the study that was carried out to identify critical Situational Factors that play a major role in the acceptance or otherwise of systems in the academic sphere during pandemic times. The results have shown that knowledge, communication, and trust are the most important situational factors for blended learning applications. The case studies and findings are presented followed by a brief analysis of results.