CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS IN E-LEARNING FOR PROJECT-BASED COURSES

During the last years, e-learning has become an established technology platform for higher education. However, in Sweden - in general - and at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) - specifically - this has not been a top priority, until lately. Besides e-learning, other alternative approaches (i.e. to the traditional lecture as a learning instrument), such as project assignments have become more common, especially in the later stages of master education at KTH. This report presents a study on critical success factors in e-learning for project based courses. In a first phase, the current literature was studied, analyzed, and the findings were summarized. This phase allowed us to realize that there is a clear gap in educational research based on e-learning when it comes to project-based courses. We chose to examine the available frameworks for critical success factors. Based on these, a series of interviews with teachers using e-learning were conducted with the aim to fill the gap of project-based focus. As a final stage we used these results to suggest future changes to a project-based course given at KTH.