The effectiveness of Moodle in promoting online learning in tertiary public institutions: the case of the University of Zambia.
Electronic learning has over the years transitioned from targeting only the working class and secondary school leavers who could not go to the university because of the distance and lack of places. The introduction of e-learning platforms is bridging the gap in the provision of education. The background of the research shows that e-learning was introduced to promote distance education through online learning. In addition, e-learning has the ability to reduce the cost of education. The general objective of this research is to examine the effectiveness of Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment in promoting online learning at the University of Zambia. Specifically, the research aims at examining the extent to which MOODLE has promoted education at the University of Zambia and to examine the extent to which MOODLE has reduced the cost of accessing education compared to the traditional method at the University of Zambia. This was an explanatory research and was a one-time case study. It made use of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect quantitative and qualitative data, which were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences and content analysis, respectively. The sample size was 104 comprising 60 students, 40 lecturers and four key informant, one from each of the four schools namely; school of Mines, school of Engineering, school of Veterinary Medicine and school of Agricultural Sciences. The four key informants were purposively selected while simple random sampling which combined lottery method and systematic sampling was used to select the lecturers and students. The findings shows that MOODLE is very effective in enhancing distance education in public universities such as UNZA. This is because most of the lecturers and students are able to use it. This is achieved through measurers put in place by the university management such as the creation of an online platform which allows lecturers to perform their work and training of lecturers on the use of MOODLE. Although management created online courses to enhance distance education, not all lecturers are able to deliver all courses online and not all students’ accesses lectures on the online platform due to various challenges. Furthermore, MOODLE is not very effective in reducing in cost of accessing university education in public universities such as UNZA. This is because there are some areas where students still incur costs to access education despite using MOODLE. These areas are accommodation, where 26.7% of the students experienced a reduction in the cost of accommodation when using MOODLE while 73.3% of the students did not. Transportation, where 46.7% of the students experienced a reduction in the cost of transportation when using MOODLE while the majority being 53.3% did not. Accessing lectures, where 26.7% of the students experienced a reduction in the cost of accessing lectures after the introduction of MOODLE while 73.3% did not.
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