ARE PEERLESS E-RESOURCES ANY BETTER TOOLS FOR SUPPORTING STUDENTS IN OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS THAN THE MORE TRADITIONAL TOOLS? THE CASE OF MZUZU UNIVERSITY, MALAWI

E-resources have gradually been introduced and accepted into the academia around the globe over recent years. Accordingly, a variety of novelty learning technologies have been developed to serve students both for open and distance learning (ODL) and Face to Face residential delivery modes (F2F). To serve our ODL Bachelor of Education students well, Mzuzu University decided to develop e-modules, based on blending PowerPoint slides, audio and videos as complementary initiatives to printed-based materials. The aim of this study was to explore students ' perceptions of e-resources as learning tools compared with other more traditional tools used in the 8th, 9th and 10th semester arts, humanities and science courses. The study employed qualitative and quantitative research design and the data were collected using questionnaires, observations and related case-studies. We established that while our anticipation was that modern students would very much prefer e-resources to printed materials, the results came out differently. For example, students in the sciences programme mostly preferred e-resources, lecturers, study-circles and print-based materials but not podcasts and slides. Conversely, students in the arts and humanities mostly preferred print-based materials, lectures and study-circles but not the e-resources, podcasts and slides. The results demonstrated that while e-resources were generally perceived as ideal learning tools against other learning tools, some sections of students based on the programme of study, age and priori experience had serious issues with the e-resources and WhatsApp. We also noted that culture, attitude, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and adaptability were some of the major factors that influenced students' rate of adoption of novelty technologies such as our peerless e-resources. The paper therefore recommended that e-resources must, at least for now, be used as supplementary materials along with other traditional media.