The objectives of the study were to show the basic differences between Distance, Blended and Online learning, and establish their common challenges from literature. Approximately 35 categories/sets of research results or findings from more than 65 publications were reviewed and used for this work. Articles were obtained from sources such as Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Google Search Engine, and Elsevier. The key themes used for the search are Distance education, Distance learning, Online learning, Blended learning, Differences between face-to-face and online learning, and the use of the internet for learning. The differences between Distance, Blended, and Online Learning (DBOL) modes were summarized, and 11 challenges of DBOL were realized. These 11 challenges were summarized into six themes namely, lack of infrastructure, low or no IT skills, self-disciplinary problems, content issues, policy issues, and social issues. It was strongly advised that, for effective DBOL implementation and operation, there must be in place a solid DBOL policy, adequate infrastructure, and constant training of stakeholders on the use of learning management systems and the development of related IT skills in general.

The objectives of this study was to bring out the understanding of the concept of agile IT project management; what it is and what it is not. It was also aimed at comparing the pros and cons of both agile and traditional methods of IT project management in a typical industry setting; the challenges of going purely agile, and so on. It is purely a review of literature of peer reviewed papers sourced mainly from Google Scholar. It was revealed that agile outweigh the traditional methods in terms of benefits, but its implementation poses a lot of challenges due to a number of issues, paramount among them being organizational culture and empowerment of the project team. This has resulted in a number of industries sticking to the traditional methods despite the overwhelming benefits of agile. In another school of thought, the combination of the two paradigms is the way forward.

No abstract

No abstract

The productivity and profitability paradox in IT investments literature have made the work of IT managers very difficult in justifying for IT investments. Another difficult issue to grapple with by IT managers is how to measure or evaluate intangible benefits. These problems have led to the proposition of many IT evaluation frameworks/models and methods by researchers. This works aims to review a number of these frameworks/models and methods to see the way forward in this business of IT investments justification. About 40 categories/sets of research outputs or articles out of more than 50 articles reviewed were used for this work. The results showed that tangible benefits are not enough to justify for IT investments as they mostly point to corporate benefits which are short term, and that the justification of intangible benefits which are more strategic, must be included to make the justification process complete no matter how difficult it is. Again, no evaluation framework/model with its associated methods of evaluation is a panacea to the evaluation problem; evaluation depends on so many factors, and so is contextual. Also, the firm must factor into the evaluation process its corporate and strategic objectives. Lastly, in most cases, IT evaluation is seen as a must do, and therefore does not require that justification is done.