Determining factors of the use of e-learning environments by university teachers

E-learning environments increasingly serve as important infrastructural features of universities that enable teachers to provide students with different representations of knowledge and to enhance interaction between teachers and students and amongst students themselves. This study was designed to identify factors that can explain teachers’ use of e-learning environments in higher education. A questionnaire was completed by 178 teachers from a wide variety of departments at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. We found that 43% of the total variance in teacher use of e-learning environments could be explained by their opinions about web-based activities and their opinions about computer-assisted learning (predictors) and the perceived added value of e-learning environments (mediating variable). In other words, teachers’ use of e-learning environments can be explained to a high extent by their perceptions of the added value of these environments, which in turn are substantially influenced by their opinions about web-based activities and computer-assisted learning.