E-learning platforms and security mechanisms used by educational institutions in Kampala, Uganda

COVID-19 pandemic accelerated consumptions of e-services in the Ugandan education sector. This study aims at establishing the type of e-learning platforms adopted by educational institutions in Kampala and evaluate the appropriateness of their security mechanisms for online academic progression assessments. The researcher’s adopted a mixed-method research approach for data collection and analysis. Respondents were identified using purposive stratified random sampling technique from educational institutions accredited by the Ugandan Ministry of Education and Sports to run ‘open distance e-learning’. A total of 400 responded including e-learning experts, teachers and lecturers, and students. The results show that the most popular e-learning platforms were Zoom (87.5%) at primary, Google meet (84.1%) at secondary, WhatsApp (79.7) at secondary and Moodle (98.7%) at university. The e-learning platforms were mainly used for posting learning materials and facilitating teacher-student interactions (97.9%), but less on managing assessment for academic progression [universities (73.9%), secondary (50.7%) and primary (41.7%)].