Students' Perception Towards the E-Learning at The GOTEVOT and the Arab Open University in Riyadh

E-learning is among the most recent types of education systems that has attracted the attention of the educators in the world. E-learning programs have appeared recently in couple of higher institutions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. To my knowledge, no study has been conducted to evaluate these programs. The objective of this study is to understand the students' perception in the e-learning programs at the Arab Open University in Riyadh (AOU) and the General Organization for Technical Education and Vocational Training (GOTEVOT) as one of the e-learning programs in Saudi Arabia. The goals of this study were to know at what extent the students interact with the e-learning system, at what extent the e-learning can be applied in the students' perception, at what degree the students can gain a self-learning, and at what level they can't be independent from their instructors during the e-learning, and what are the obstacles to the successfulness of the e-learning in their perceptions. The study results have shown that, the students' interaction has suffered from the ambiguity of the e-learning system to many of them. Also, the applicability of the e-learning depends on many factors such as the students' knowledge of computers and technology, and the age of the students. The results, also, has shown that, a large fraction of the study sample need the instructor to understand the materials as well as to follow the course plan, which indicates the weakness of the students' self-learning. Finally, the study has shown that, most of the students consider the high cost of the Internet connection and the unavailability of the instructor when needed among the obstacles of the successfulness of the E-learning