TEACHERS' EXPECTATIONS OF THE IMPACT OF E-LEARNING ON KUWAIT'S PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

Social Behavior and Personality, 2006 by Aldhafeeri, Fayiz, Almulla, Mohammed, Alraqas, Bandar

RESEARCH QUESTION

The current study addressed the following main question: What is the impact of E-learning implementation on the public educational system of Kuwait?

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to:

1) highlight educational improvement areas that the K-12 system in Kuwait is able to support upon implementing E-learning;

2) assure stakeholders and decision makers of their investment in time, money, and intellectual capital, by highlighting the impact of implementing E-learning in schools;

3) address the effects of E-learning on some demographic variables such as school type, school gender, age, past experience with computer use, and so on;

4) enable stakeholders in K-12 to develop a national framework for educational uses of E-learning that facilitate educational reform.

RESEARCH HYPOTHESES

Due to the paucity of research in this area these researchers consider that this paper might be one of the earliest studies available, and as such posed the following research hypotheses:

1) E-learning does not have a statistically significant effect on making students competent in the area of basic operations and computer concepts.

2) E-learning does not have a statistically significant effect on making students competent in the area of the ethical and human issues of technology.

3) E-learning does not have a statistically significant effect on making students competent in the area of productivity tools.

4) E-learning does not have a statistically significant effect on making students competent in the area of research tools.

5) E-learning does not have a statistically significant effect on making students competent in the area of problem-solving and decision-making tools.

6) E-learning does not have a statistically significant effect on making students competent in the area of communication tools.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This study focused on the K-12 public school teachers from various educational stages in Kuwait, which is divided into three grade spans, namely: grades 1-5 (Elementary Stage), 6-9 (Intermediate Stage), and 10-12 (Secondary Stage).

INSTRUMENT

A questionnaire was developed in the form of a booklet, following the guidelines suggested by Keeves (1997). The questionnaire was made up of six sections. Each section contained a set of questions about a category of E-learning curriculum standard: basic operations and computer concepts; ethical and human issues; productivity tools; research tools; problem-solving and decision-making tools; and communication tools. The answers to the questions were based on a 1-5 Likert scale, where 1 indicates strongly disagree and 5 indicates strongly agree. One other section was added to the questionnaire in order to identify the respondent's demographic data.

Since the questionnaire was developed in Arabic, it is inappropriate to attach a copy of it. However, translation of the first section (Basic Operations and Computer Concepts) is addressed:

- E-learning should encourage understanding of the basic work of computers.

- One of the basic tasks of E-learning is turning on and off the computer.