The application of new education technologies and determining online education success (with relevance to Singapore Context)
INTRODUCTION Online education has generated tremendous excitement both inside and outside higher education, there is potential to provide learning to new audiences so as to transform learning delivery and the competitive landscape ( 1996). Among those institutions with better-defined reasons for embracing online education as Singapore may expand access to education in order to meet the education and training needs of state residents and companies and to educate under-served populations ( 1998). The expansion of the Internet as a potential course delivery platform, combined with the increasing interest in lifelong learning and budget restrictions, has created a significant incentive for universities to develop online programs. As the technology is now available and relatively user-friendly, those universities which do not embrace it will be left behind in the race for globalization and technological development. If we want universities to make the utmost use of the Internet, it is essential to identify and understand the critical success factors affecting the online delivery of education. Indeed, if Singapore is to implement conventional models borrowed from classroom-based or distance education focused on passive transmission, there can expect only marginal improvements and may well simply escalate costs.
Educational institutions worldwide are under constant pressure to demonstrate willingness and capacity to incorporate the latest developments in information and communications technology within their teaching. Technological sophistication creates a clear marketing edge, appealing to students and their parents as well as to employers, and to potential financial investors or supporters. The budgetary implications, however, are daunting to all but the best endowed institutions, and the pedagogical issues are complex. The shift in terminology that has occurred in recent years from “computing” through information technology (IT) to information and communications technologies (ICT) has profound implications for education. “Computing” is no longer specialized activity undertaken in isolation from the rest of the world’s interactions, and therefore able to be either embraced or rejected according to personal preference. The merging of two previously distinct technologies, computing and communications, and their increasingly ubiquitous presence in all aspects of our lives, means that “computers” in one form or another are central to the contexts in which most citizens of developed countries exist and function. As the boundaries between the technologies continue to blur, enabling us, for instance, to access the Internet through our telephones and to make telephones calls from our computers, we are increasingly being encouraged to extend the use we make of them, undertaking basic transactions such as banking through the electronic medium rather than face to face. Rejecting these technologies is barely an option for any of us, least of all for educators and their students.
DISCUSSION
Technology is at once the repository of the bulk of the information that underpins society’s major enterprises and concerns, and the medium of communication through which we interact with it and with one another. It is transforming our understandings and practices in relation to information and to communication, both of which lie at the heart of learning. Moreover, technology is changing what we learn. With the burgeoning of the Internet, the control exercised in the past by departments of education and by individual teachers over pedagogical content has diminished significantly. Through this new medium, resources of widely varying quality and provenance on virtually any topic are immediately available to students. The amount of material available from unaccredited sources is a cause of considerable concern to many educators, brought up themselves in a system where processes of differentiating between “legitimate” and other information and knowledge were well understood. It can be argued that, like it or not, we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in regard to what is accepted as “knowledge” and who is regarded as “knowledgeable”. Even within some academic disciplines there has already been a shift in the importance accorded to the traditional forms of published knowledge, refereed and refined through a well accepted but often painfully attenuated process. In such cases there has been a movement towards the more rapid electronic dissemination of findings and opinions albeit in a less polished form, depending more on the judgment of the individual reader than on the processes of the “Academy” for validation and verification. The strong implication for education is that skills in effective online searching and in discrimination should occupy a far more important place in the curriculum at all levels than has previously been the case. Indeed, it is important that educators engage seriously at both a personal and a professional level with the potentials of these new technologies. Apart from the apparent pedagogical benefits of ICT, it is critically important for the ongoing credibility of formal education that it be aligned with the means through which students access information and communicate about it within broader contexts. If this is not the case, students will increasingly resist engaging seriously with our education systems, and the learning that is important to them will take place elsewhere and in other ways.
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