E-learning software acquisition for blended learning: The case of higher institutions in Uganda with limited budgets

Abstract

With the rapid growth of information technology together with the growing demand for educational services in developing countries, the blending of face-to-face learning with e-learning is no longer a luxury. The question that remains is how to support institutions of learning in developing countries like Uganda with limited budgets in blending their face-to-face courses with e-learning using low cost resources. The major concerns in blended learning implementation are the blend ratio determination and the technology used to run the e-learning activities in the blend and specifically the e-learning software. The current methods for e-learning software acquisition present a number of challenges which may not favour higher institutions of learning with limited budgets in blended learning implementation.Therefore, this research has proposed a method that higher institutions of learning in Uganda can use to acquire e-learning software for their blended learning environments as one of the ways of reducing on the initial costs of blended learning implementation. The proposed method has been validated and the validation results indicate the method is able to averagely support such higher institutions of learning in Uganda implementing blended learning with limited budgets in acquiring e-learning software with less initial costs.