1.

Introduction

Globalization, once thought as a concept has become a sheer reality at the end of the twentieth centuary. This phenomenon coupled with the advancement in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has revolutionized the business as well as the educational organizations across the globe. More and more organizations are taking competitive advantages to get the edge over their competitors. The current globalization thrust to the World economy is being driven by the Internet technology. The swiftness and accessibility of the network have made the ubiquitous computing (24/7) as a milestone in globalization. This has further resulted in the emergance of an Internet based world of e-economy, e-business and e-education. Infact, educational sector is the one that has radically revised the teaching and learning strategies with the one aim to provide the better service to the learners and to develop the current capacity building of the nations through the intensive use of the ICT. The information technology in teaching and learning has created a need to transform how students from higher institutions learn by using more modern, efficient, effective and cost-effective alternatives in the form of e-learning.

The field of education, as noticed recently, has been affected by both revolutions of technology and communications. Therefore, many technological advancements (TAs) and communication tools or channels (CTC) such as computers, internet, multimedia, virtual reality, or virtual classroom and so on, up to the elearning as the most recent TA, has been introduced to the field of education in the recent years. Accordingly, TAs have been used by educators in teaching situations in both classroom sitting and in online teaching cases as shown in the literature, in order to enhance learning process at the final stage (e.g. Becker, 1991; Sandholtz, Ringstaff & Dwyer, 1994; Bates, 1995; Baylor & Ritchie, 2002; Crow, Cheek & Hartman, 2003; Jhosta, 2005; Abrami, Bernard, Borokhoski, Tamin, Surkes, & Zhang, 2006; Chen, & Jones, 2007; Hickey & Mercer, 2008; Stiffler. E-Learning, as one of those TAs, has also been introduced to the field of education and has been used in a teaching/learning setting, and associated with teaching methods and pedagogies, so that, they come along each other, and were influenced by each other as well.

Consequently, some expressions in question formats came out. For instance, should technology change pedagogy, or can pedagogy lead technology, or the other way around, (e.g. Webb, 2002; Webb, & Cox, 2004; and Jones, 2007). Accordingly, it is interesting to note that the focus of teaching / learning according to Saengsook (2006) has shifted from traditional methods to more dynamic ones with the assistance of new technologies which requires new theories and practices to be designed and developed in order to fit the new generation of technology in a digital e-world. Literature Review Consumer Attitudes Attitudes are positive or negative evaluations of object, people, or situation that predisposes us to feel and behave toward them in positive or negative ways (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980). The three basic components of attitudes are cognitive (opinions or beliefs segments), affective (emotional or feeling segment) and behavioural (an intention to behave in a certain way or direction) (Rosenberg and Hovland, 1960). Studying attitudes remained an important segment by several researchers of organizational behaviour, management sciences and ICT domains. It has been hypothesized that attitudes affect users behavioural intention which affect users actual use of the technology (Rainer and Miller, 1996). Significant relationships have been found between computer attitudes and users satisfaction with IS/IT, perceived performance and system usage in a number of studies (Compeau and Higgins, 1995; Rainer and Miller, 1996; Thompson et al. 1994). Social scientists such as Fishbein and Ajzen, (1975) in their Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) that postulates that belief about an object leads to an attitude and this further leads to behavioural intentions regarding the object and finally these intentions affect the actual behaviours toward the object of target. In other words, we can predict the behaviour from attitudes. Measuring attitudes has an important role in analyzing consumer behaviour because it is known the fact that there is a strong connection between attitude and behaviour. The two concepts are not similar; specialists have discovered that attitude

indicates in a certain degree the possibility of adopting certain behaviour. Talking about e-learning, a favourable attitude of students shows a greater probability that they will accept the new learning system. There are two models which measure attitude, one developed by Rosenberg and the other by Fishbein. The Rosenberg model is built on two variables: the perceived utility of the object and the value of importance, which refers to the extent to which is important for the consumer to obtain the advantages expected from using the object. Adapting the Rosenberg model to the case of students attitude towards elearning, we can acquire a full indicator of a probable behaviour using the utility perceived by the consumer in this situation the student using an e-learning system and the importance given by the consumer to this utility. The Fishbein model offers a different perspective, proposing an analysis of attitudes through the consumers beliefs and evaluations. The consumers beliefs refer to the probability accepted that the object has certain features, whereas evaluations stand for the extent to which these features are important or not. The perceived utility from the Rosenberg model corresponds to the consumer belief in the Fishbein model. Once the attitude measured, the connection with the behaviour can be identified using the Theory of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980): behaviour intention depends on the attitude towards behavior and on subjective norms. The attitude towards behaviour is a result of consumers beliefs and evaluations. The subjective norms represent the persons perception about the opinions of close social environment regarding the option of adopting or not a certain behaviour (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1975). An extension for this theory was proposed by Icek Azjen in 1985 and is known as The Theory of Planned Behavior. Azjens contribution consists of adding to the formula of TRA another concept the perceived behavioural control which refers to an individuals perceived ease or difficulty of performing the particular behaviour. It is assumed that perceived behavioural control is determined by the total set accessible control beliefs an individuals beliefs about the presence of factors that may facilitate or impede performance of the behaviour (Ajzen, 1991, p.188).

E learning

E-learning is the use of telecommunication technology to deliver information for education and training. With the global communication and Internet connection speed, web content has grown richer and more interactive for users. It has certainly changed the way we acquire knowledge. Learning is no longer the same as before that limited to lessons in the classroom. E-learning is seen as a future application worldwide as it promotes life long learning by enabling learners to learn anytime and anywhere. This paper discusses the findings from a study investigating the factors that influence the utilization of E-learning. And E-learning platform is becoming a field of research that deserves the attention of the teaching and research community, so more and more universities have been invested a huge amount of resources to implement their elearning platform or environment . However, the traditional E-learning system, which is used to deliver and management contents and learning, can no longer provide the processes required to sustain the interest of a student as he learns. As a result many e-learning facilities ended up as merely file servers . Recently, blogs and personal pages have recently emerged as popular uses of the Internet for people to learn, share and interact with people from all walks of life across the world. And with the popularity of E-learning increasing among academic and training institution, learning and knowledge building have become a highly integrated and interactive global process. For this reason, integrated E-learning platform appears as a result of the efforts to make a step forward towards a more effective and quality. E-learning presents an opportunity to enhance learning as to create environments where students and teachers can share knowledge. It is very important to design an efficient E-learning platform for teaching, learning, resources, and administration. From the beginning of this century, various universities have established many web-course learning systems, teaching affairs management systems, roll management systems and digital library systems. But the E-learning environment has not been built up, because these systems related to E-learning are mutually independent with

inconvenient software. Teachers are more willing to build a network classroom based on a personal website with security risks for interaction with students.