Identifying effective factors in the success of electronic training courses (mixed research)

Increasing advances in information and communication technology have affected all organizational activities including manpower training and have resulted in emergence and development of e-learning courses as a new educational technology. Success of e-learning courses depends on different factors and identifying these factors will significantly help in design and implementation of these courses. These factors can be related to the internal conditions of the courses or the external environment that influences it. This study aims to identify effective factors in success of e-learning courses.

We used exploratory mixed method design in this study. Qualitative part of the study was implemented using descriptive phenomenological method. The sample of study consisted of 16 experts selected by purposeful sampling. For data collection we used semi-structured interviews and for data analysis Colaizzi method was employed. Quantitative part of the study was carried out using survey method. Statistical population of the study were 212 employees of Hormozgan Province Gas Company and 136 individuals were selected through Morgan table. Research instrument was questionnaire and to test the research hypotheses we applied confirmatory factor analysis. Data were analyzed using SPSS and AMOS.

Qualitative findings were obtained in 9 sub-categories and 3 main categories. The main categories of organizational factors included categories of management commitment and supportive laws and regulations, the main categories of technical factors included the categories of desirable hardware and appropriate software facilities, and the main categories of educational factors included primary user training, comprehensive course planning, appropriate educational content, effective implementation of courses and feedback. Quantitative findings demonstrated that regarding organizational factors, management commitment component, regarding technical factors, hardware facilities factor and regarding educational factors, comprehensive courses planning with factor load of 0.956, 0.912, and 0.914, respectively had the most impact on success of e-learning courses.

Qualitative results showed that effective factors in success of e-learning courses are three main categories of organizational, technical and educational factors. The main categories of organizational factors include sub-categories of management commitment and supportive rules and regulations, the main categories of Technical factors include sub-categories of appropriate hardware facilities and desirable software facilities and educational factors include sub-categories of primary user education, comprehensive courses planning, appropriate training content, effective implementation of courses, and feedback; In the quantitative section, the results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the identified factors affect the success of e-learning courses and quantitative results confirmed qualitative results. The results of previous research were consistent with the results of this study. In order to use the results of this study, it is suggested that all the identified factors in the success of the electronic courses be taken into account prior to designing and implementing electronic training courses at Gas Company.