Adoption of e-learning and its impact on students’ academic performance: case study of Makerere University.

Abstract

Blended learning is one of the modern methods of learning to help in solving knowledge explosion problems. According to UNESCO, the growing demand for education and the problems associated with overcrowding in class coupled with limited manpower (lecturers and teachers), could be minimized if learning is modified to be for distance learning, expanding the acceptance opportunities in education, and be able to train the users of this new technology, and motivate workers then the SDG 4, quality education could be attained, increase enrolment level and completion rate hence reducing illiteracy rates. In 2019, the outbreak of the global pandemic COVID-19 offered an opportunity for the University to resort to the use of BL because many residential and non-residential students of the education fraternity were banned from contacting physical/ traditional lectures. Blended learning (BL) has been increasing in popularity and demand and has developed as a common practice in institutions of higher learning. Therefore, this study analyses the impact of blended learning on the performance of students of Makerere University. This study constituted student sample respondents who were selected from at least 6 colleges of Makerere students CoBAMs, CoNAS, CEDAT, CoCIS, CHUSS, and CEES from at least second year and above. This study population of years two and above was selected from the respective colleges because they were exposed to both the physical and blended or online learning model. Indeed this was justified by the significant proportion (98.86%) of respondents who acknowledged having been exposed to blended studying model. This proved that the study population was 100% aware of the study topic and it further constituted 61.93% male students and 38.07% female students. In conclusion, the average CGPA of students when exposed to blended learning (Mean = 3.7048) was statistically significantly different from the average CGPA of the students when exposed to face to face (Mean =3.5906) model of learning. Also the technological factors associated with blended learning as well the demographic characteristics of students had no significant impact on the CGPA. I therefore recommend that the university administration focus more on training students and staff on how to use the different online learning platforms since most students and lecturers were not acquainted with such technology and this in turn affected students’ performance. Furthermore, the sites used for online sessions and platforms such as MUELE should be improved to enable easy accessibility and reliability to increase on the attendance.