Confronting challenges to e-learning in Higher Education Institutions (original) (raw)
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Conquering the barriers to learning in higher education through e-learning
International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 2009
ICTs have brought benefits to business as well as to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), where an unprecedented demand for tertiary education has seen students enrolling for courses, some doing so through distance education. This has made the internet a very significant and indispensable teaching/learning, communication, and marketing tool for information dissemination for both education purposes and business transactions. The Internet possesses the propensity to change not only the way society retains and accesses knowledge but also to transform and restructure traditional models of higher education, particularly the delivery and interaction in and with course materials and associated resources. Universities have been faced with the daunting task of having to grapple with the inevitable change by readjusting and re-organising themselves in preparation for the incorporation of e-learning within their institutions. Institutional leaders have also been faced with the challenge of having to align their institutional objectives to meet the needs and demands of the elearning demand. This article explores the central theme of attempts by HEIs in the South African context: to exert "attitudinal" changes in current "traditional" educational delivery practices by universities in order to fully utilize e-learning strategies for improved delivery of courses for its students.
e-Learning and the Reconfiguration of Higher Education - Disruptive, Innovative and Inevitable
2015
This first part of this paper gives a concise overview of how e-learning ‘works’. The second part suggests the inevitability of more and more teaching and learning taking place in the e-learning context. It touches on some of the communication challenges academics face in moving from the lecture format to the online format and describes some of the challenges that lecturers, tutors and managers face in implementing e-learning successfully.
Center for Studies in Higher Education, 2003
The new information and communication technologies (ICT) affect currently most spheres of life, including all educational levels. Their effects are most likely to grow in the future. However, many predictions in the last few years as to the sweeping impact of the ICT on restructuring the teaching/learning practices at universities and their high profit prospects have not been materialized; and several large ventures of e-learning undertaken by the corporate world, new for-profit organizations and some leading universities failed to yield the expected results. This paper examines eight inherent paradoxes and dilemmas in the implementation process of the ICT in various higher education settings worldwide. The paradoxes and dilemmas relate to: the differential infrastructure and readiness of different-type higher education institutions to utilize the ICTs' potential; the extent to which the "old" distance education technologies and the new ICT replace teaching/learning pr...
IF THERE BE CHANGE NO CHANGE I SEE": THE EFFECT OF E- LEARNING ON TODAY'S HIGHER EDUCATION
This paper addresses some of the important changes that the arrival of e-learning is bringing about in Higher Education today while also posing, and to a certain extent answering, the question as to how much Higher Education can effect the way that e-learning itself is changing. As such the paper is essentially about the confluence of two very different traditions, the first of which is very new and the other which is really extremely old. Few of us in fact, except perhaps those who work in Europe's ancient ivy-covered cloistered universities, realise just how very old our notions of higher education actually are, how unchanged they've remained since medieval times and, or indeed, perhaps beyond that, since the time of the Greek-Alexandrian university. Europe's oldest university, the University of Bologna, founded in 1088, to take a concrete example, continues to offer courses supported by a generic structures of faculties, deans, rectors, chancellors etc 1 in much the same way as it has for over 900 years.
Paradoxes and dilemmas in managing e-learning in higher education
UC Berkeley: Center for Studies in Higher …
The new information and communication technologies (ICT) affect currently most spheres of life, including all educational levels. Their effects are most likely to grow in the future. However, many predictions in the last few years as to the sweeping impact of the ICT on restructuring the teaching/learning practices at universities and their high profit prospects have not been materialized; and several large ventures of e-learning undertaken by the corporate world, new for-profit organizations and some leading universities failed to yield the expected results. This paper examines eight inherent paradoxes and dilemmas in the implementation process of the ICT in various higher education settings worldwide. The paradoxes and dilemmas relate to: the differential infrastructure and readiness of different-type higher education institutions to utilize the ICTs' potential; the extent to which the "old" distance education technologies and the
Development of E-learning in higher education and future directions
Teachers and students in higher education are coming to realize that to become competent practitioners there is need to take advantage of up-to-date digital technologies and learning practices. Learning process requires measurement and evaluation of students behaviour. In the case of e-learning, evidence is sought for improvements resulting from the use of online tools and processes desired to achieve a given set of learning outcomes. In this 21st century, knowledge is fast becoming a powerful engine in life. The visions, innovations, and inventions are the building blocks of developing knowledgeable and sustainable society. E-learning has facilitated the use of a plethora of internet and web-based applications as the method of communication with a distributed audience. Therefore, institutions of higher learning are constantly venturing into new and innovative methods and are radically changing the educational practice making it competitive. This paper examines how emerging technologies and e-learning are being used in education to create a major shift in the educational service paradigm that promises major advantages over the traditional distance learning and face-to-face systems. The authors present developments in distance education and e-learning whilst clarifying the similarities and differences between them. We identify factors affecting development of e-learning systems and examine the implementation of some systems in pervasive distributed computing environments. For everyone everywhere, the present developments in e-learning spells more access for learners, cautionary expansion for universities, and accelerated learning and influences for the future. The future directions is such that the higher educational system of the future and especially in Europe must aim to meet human development needs with elearning playing some major parts through promotion of access and widening participation in knowledge and skills acquisition. In order to support learning in evolving dynamic environments, several factors must be taken into consideration. These range from policies, strategies, the current education environments and business needs as well as the specific discipline being studied. Since the advent of e-learning and its eventual implementation in higher education, the world of learning for both the advanced nations and emerging economies have witnessed an upsurge in the number and types of students who are now engaged in pursuit of studies at institutions of higher learning. This paper reports on issues relating to expectations of the university of the future and the future of universities.
British Journal of Educational Technology, 2007
Computer technology has been harnessed for education in UK universities ever since the first computers for research were installed at ten selected sites in 1957. Subsequently real costs have fallen dramatically. Processing power has increased; network and communications infrastructure has proliferated; and information has become unimaginably accessible through the Internet and the World Wide Web. However, perhaps because higher education institutions are resistant to change, educational technology in universities has not managed to match the ubiquity of technology in everyday life. The reasons for differences between everyday experiences and those higher education and may lie in higher education practice. Higher education practice reflects the wider agendas of institutions manifested through their organisation, structure, culture and climate. These factors may particularly impact upon the potential for higher education to embrace and manage change in its educational activities; especially technology enhanced learning such as blended learning and e-learning. This paper briefly reviews the progress of educational technology, then identifies critical success factors for e-learning through an organisational perspective derived from studies of six UK higher education institutions.