E-learning, resilience and change in higher education

A case study of a College of Business

Abstract

What can e-learning offer in a crisis that closes the University campus? This paper presents the emerging findings in a case study of one College of Business impacted in 2011 by earthquakes in New Zealand. Analyses from interviews of nine staff and documents they recommended were used to describe processes of increasing resilience with e-learning over the worst seismic events. Increasing deployment of the University’s learning management system by staff and students plus audio recordings and video recordings of lectures enabled the College to continue its teaching. The Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1989) and the generic model of organisational resilience by Resilient Organisations (Resilient Organisations, 2012) will be used to evaluate the adoption and adaptation of e-learning when a crisis occurs.