Abstract:
Generally, education is considered as a factor which moulds an individual to a professional. Conventional education refers to long-established customs that society traditionally used in educational institutes. In Sri Lanka, education for both secondary and tertiary education still depends on routine physical attendance of students in classroom activities. When considering the higher education in Sri Lanka, in most of the situations, working professionals face various constraints in continuing their further studies. As a result of this issue, a knowledge gap is created. However, with the passage of the time and with transformation of the teaching and learning methods in education, technology received a high demand in the educational sector. Moreover, in the contemporary world, there is a trend for online programs which can fill the aforementioned gap. This research study examines the necessity of implementing online programs in Sri Lankan higher educational institutes. As the targeted population is considerably high sample has been selected from National Institute of Business Management and has been narrowed down to the students graduated from School of Computing and School of Business in the year of 2018. Due to complexity of studying, the sampling has been limited to 250 graduates. A questionnaire was circulated among randomly selected 50 (25 each) graduated-working professionals of National Institute of Business Management and using random sampling method. They are asked to recirculate the provided questionnaire among five colleagues in the same organization from different higher educational institutes in Sri Lanka. The data analysis method used in the research study is regression analysis. The results of the research study revealed that the demand for the online programs among the working professionals is high due to many advantages that they can fulfill. Moreover, the findings indicate the factors (independent variables); self-efficacy, social influence, user satisfaction, quality of information and academic relevance. Based on the factors the findings indicate that there is a strong effect on the demand for online programs in multi-disciplines
