Critical research using focus group interviews: An approach to elicit critical success factors in e-Learning

This paper presents and discusses the research methodology adopted for a critical study aiming at eliciting CSFs for e-Learning. The underlying assumption for the research is that social reality in HE institutions is historically constituted and that it is produced and reproduced by the people who engage with the human activity systems that form these institutions. Thus, this social reality is shaped, influenced and changed by practice, experience and emergent theoretical assumptions and theories. Furthermore, the researchers assume that although educational practitioners, administrators and managers can consciously act to change their professional and social circumstances, their ability to do so is constrained by various forms of traditional, social, cultural and political factors inherent to the HE sector. Therefore, the main task of critical research in eliciting CSFs is seen as being one of professional critique, whereby the restrictive and alienating conditions of the educational status quo are questioned.