ADVANCEMENT OF ELEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE CASE OF KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

Kazakhstan is a country with a very high level of literacy in which international standards have been implemented for higher education. Through the last decades, the Republic of Kazakhstan has taken severe steps to implement electronic technology and virtual training to diversify elearning. Thus, IT specialists and experts in developing virtual research laboratories at the university level need to be included in this process. Every year there is an increase in the number of citizens who are willing to build their "digital" culture, and many people from Kazakhstan are ready to acquire new knowledge via elearning at universities and in the workplace. This study noted readiness six factors that propel the adoption of elearning: technological, human resources, content, leadership, educational, and cultural readiness-- with technological readiness and content readiness being the most important. It also examined several challenges to elearning implementation and further noted that there is a lack of adequate time to manage a large number of students online in elearning lessons, but this is the least of challenges for advancing elearning. Elearning is further affected by time constraints to create course content. Additionally, this study concluded that a heavy workload was the major challenge that marred the advancement of elearning and thus rankedfirst among the challenges.