Prioritizing eLearning Platform Requirements Using AHP

Abstract

The distinctive growth in the use of eLearning during the COVID-19 pandemic motivated the higher education institutions to search the appropriate platform to ensure the quality of their teaching and learning process during and post-pandemic period. This paper aims to rank the features of the eLearning platform and assign a relative weight for each feature as per the stakeholders’ preference. The stakeholders interested in the eLearning platform include the students, Instructors, ICT experts, and senior management of higher education institutions. The set of eighteen features related to the eLearning platform was the subject of pairwise comparison to achieve the objective of the study. Four sets of questionnaires have been used to collect data from the stakeholders in higher education institutions in Bahrain. This study collected 140 responses from the different stakeholders. The AHP approach has been used to rank the features as per the stakeholders’ preferences. Based on the experts’ judgment, the findings illustrate the importance of three features, namely: security, ease of use, and friendly interface of the platform. The relative weight of these features is around 35%. For further studies, the extension of this research to cover the features of the blended learning approach which could be the new model of teaching in higher education post-COVID-19.