Critical success factors for the adoption of eLearning in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia educational institutions

In recent years, Electronic Learning (eLearning) has gained interest and has been widely adopted and acknowledged; it is integrated in many institutions' educational systems. Owing to the major transformation of traditional educational system in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), most of higher educational institutions are currently switching to eLearning system and the rest are expected to switch in the near future. Nowadays there is a universal need to investigate such Critical Success Factors (CSFs) that have significant impact on the adoption of eLearning. The aim of this paper is to identify and prioritise, in order of their importance, the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for the adoption of eLearning in educational institutions of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Therefore, the chosen area of research for this paper holds importance in terms of considering the CSFs before and during the adoption of eLearning process especially at this time when KSA is ready to prepare for this educational reform. Although the significance of eLearning cannot be denied and its impact on the improvement of the traditional educational system is well-recognised, there are still gaps reported in the literature for the adoption of eLearning. In order to fully realise the potential of eLearning and understand the challenges in its adoption, it is imperative to identify the CSFs that affect the adoption of eLearning in KSA educational institutions. In order to do so, this paper identifies key success factors that affect the adoption of eLearning through extensive analyses of case studies and the existing literature. For the case study analysis, five KSA educational institutions are investigated through interviews and questionnaires; for the purpose of literature review, data is collected from different resources such as journals, books, conferences papers, newspaper articles, magazines, etc. The research gap is identified so as to highlight the importance of this research. Additionally, the features and benefits of eLearning are discussed and the CSFs for eLearning adoption are identified and presented in a table with respective categorisations. The interpretive, qualitative data analysis methods are used, and findings are presented in tables and figures. Findings show that of the total 52 CSFs identified, 25% were highlighted only through interviews and survey questionnaires and were not found in the existing literature