Postgraduate Students’ Perceived E-Learning Acceptance: Model Validation

E-learning is a method of delivering knowledge using information technology and electronic media for the remote users. The advantages of e-learning method can be fully achieved with the postgraduate studies as majority of the postgraduate students are engaged in learning while they are working and also geographically dispersed due to the family and work life thus physically appearing for the lecture sessions are difficult to them. This paper attempts to develop a framework to measure the postgraduate students’ perceived technology acceptance by developing a modified version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) which replaces perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use in the original model of TAM with relative advantage and complexity and incorporate other variables of trialability, observability, compatibility, psychological wellbeing and social influence of the students. The developed model is validated using 30 postgraduate students from Sri Lanka and thus this model can be used in future researchers to measure the perceived e-learning acceptance of postgraduate students.