A LITERATURE REVIEW OF THE INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS REQUIRED FOR IMPLEMENTING E-LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The aim of this paper is to show a set of categories and characteristics obtained from a literature review based on studies of implementation of e-learning in higher education, in order to identify the institutional requirements needed for implementing e-learning in a university. Some previous works have reported about the usage or the effect after of an implementation of a learning platform, barriers, issues and critical success factors affecting e-learning adoption. But there are few papers describing the aspects required to implement an e-learning solution and how evaluate it. Thus, the research question proposed was: Which are the institutional characteristics taken into account for implementing e-learning worldwide? We used benchmarking methods and documentary analysis for extracting characteristics of studies of the implementation of e-learning based on systematic literature review. This work was done through 3 stages: i) Selecting papers - taking into account title, abstract and keywords, article fully available and aligned with the topic of institutional characteristics and assessment in the implementation of e-learning, ii) Extracting characteristics of selected papers - here it was selecting the main characteristics of each study, and iii) Benchmarking and grouping of characteristics in categories - this stage was performed through a benchmarking of the extracted features and later classified them in the emerging categories. The findings show that the main emerging categories are: communication, evaluation, functional and structural aspects, financial resources, management, planning, quality, technical support and training. The identified characteristics from literature review were: structure of organization, economic and financial resources, leadership, politics, standards and procedures, organizational culture, organizational change, quality assurance, selection of a technological platform, quality evaluation of platform, planning, design, production, presentation, availability and evaluation of e-learning project. Finally, these results provided the main institutional characteristics identified in several academic works and supply a practical framework easy to consult for the implementation of e-learning in higher education.