Developing and Validating an Instrument to Assess the E-learning Environment at a Public Higher Education Institution in Malaysia

As Knowledge, Communication and Technology (KCT) plays crucial role in the restructuring of the educational system in this new millennium, e-Learning is seen as an effective means to stimulate this process, especially on the teaching and learning aspect. The introduction of e-Learning has become an important factor in reshaping the educational environment, particularly in the Higher Education System (De Boer et al, 2002). In order for e-learning systems to take advantage of these technologies so as to be successful, effective and of a quality comparable with the well received traditional learning systems, the e-learning systems must be designed and constructed with care, using a thoroughly scrutinized approach which embraces well-designed procedures and techniques (Colette, 2001).This paper describes the development and validation of the instrument to assess the e-learning environment at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). The blueprint of the e-Learning project was thoroughly studied to ensure that the instrument is comprehensive in assessing the e-learning environment. This is complemented with a series of focus group interviews with students. The instrument was answered by a total of 226 randomly selected students from USM. Factor analysis, both exploratory and confirmatory, was performed on the data and the result indicate that in assessing the E-Learning environment there are six distinct factors: technology, course content, teaching and learning material, teaching and learning environment, learning strategies, and support. The psychometric properties of the instruments are as follows; GFI=0.88, AGF=0.87, RMSEA = 0.061, NFI = 0.88, CFI=0.89, PNFI = 0.77, and PGFI =0.84. (Authors' abstract