Online education

Issues and consequences for higher education

The delivery of university education has changed little in the printing age; the lectures, seminars, and tutorials characteristic of this period continue to predominate in the majority of universities. There is a growing consensus that the educational infrastructure and teaching methods are outdated and that today's educational infrastructure is no longer suited to the new information societies. and technology.

Technology created cyberspace and broke down local and national barriers. Today anyone with a computer, modem, and ISP can connect to the new world without borders and take advantage of its countless offers. Anyone can teach anyone can learn what they want, when and where they want. Given the rapid technological pace at which the world is changing and its impact on the transfer of knowledge and information both inside and outside the university, some educational leaders predict that the new sort of education is going to be fundamentally different from previous ones.

The cyberage has had as much an empowering effect on society as the days of print media, which pushed information into the lower layers of society. However, as has often been observed, higher education has been slow to come to terms with the idea of the global society. Many educators do not seem to be concerned that global forces outside the education sector - business circles, technological advances, and other government priorities - are determining the shape of the future electronic university. Access to cyberspace is taking on a hitherto unknown scale and is forcing higher education organizations to respond to the new situation. In some cases, colleges and universities have enthusiastically accepted the improvements and understood that they permit them to expand the quantity and scope of their services. Others, for lack of resources or interest, are more skeptical and opt for a wait-and-see policy. Perhaps it is precise because of this kind of attitude that some donors have warned and said that "unless universities take the lead and influence their course, it is the people who are less competent in it. the matter which will decide for them ”.

The information age and therefore rapid evolution of digital technology are synonymous with change and adaptation. The permanent changes in today's world have important consequences for the various players in the educational process: students, educators, administrators of educational organizations, employers. The evolution of society, therefore, requires the creation of an adequate and versatile learning environment. The current pressure on universities and adult training organizations that still work with the printed tool will force them to change their theory, practices, culture, and traditions to meet the demands of the digital age. In this process of transition from printing on paper to electronics which will become the main means of information, the volume of knowledge, the modes of learning, the public having access to it and the way in which knowledge will be put to profit will also change. There is therefore an urgent need for institutions to prepare for the new conditions and consequences of the shift from traditional education to electronic education.

The online education model

Online education as a distance learning tool is a teaching method that allows the teacher and the learner to be separated from each other in time and place. space while remaining connected by appropriate technological means. In online education, the space-time divide is bridged by ITC's networks, notably the Internet and the World Wide Web. The courses designed as part of online education often referred to as virtual classrooms, are delivered through an electronic information system. The concrete tool - the blackboard for example - is replaced by a learning context based on software and hardware. All the training tools and kinds of interaction that exist within the traditional classroom also exist within the “virtual” classroom but the activities and interaction are done through software and browsers and not in the classroom.

Virtual lessons are basically asynchronous, which means there is no meeting time or place. Students do not go to a higher education institution at a specific time but work interactively through a personal computer connected to the Internet. The student has the choice to consult the teaching material and to communicate when and where he wants.

Communication in the virtual classroom is done using several dialogue tools, namely electronic mail (E-mail), list servers, WWW, file transfer protocol, remote connection (Rlogin ), and relay-chat or "webchat" from the Internet. These tools have a dual function: an electronic dialogue on the one hand, and the presentation of teaching material on the other. The type of communication that takes place by electronic mail, list servers, and "webchat" is used for electronic dialogue: discussions, questions, comments, and conversations not directly linked to the content. Typically, these communications are frequent (daily) and concise and do not require in-depth study or analysis.

The possibilities offered by online education

Since At the top of the 19th century, distance education has been an integral part of education within the English-speaking world. Learners, higher education institutions, and the community have benefited tremendously from improved access opportunities, flexibility, adequacy, contractual accountability, and educational quality. The primacy of traditional classroom teaching has been called into question by the research carried out by some distance education specialists on educational performance, methodologies, and costs; others believe that the boundaries between distance education and formal education are blurring and even in danger of disappearing. The benefits of distance education and the possibilities offered by JTIs are starting to revolutionize education. Now let's take a look at the possibilities and benefits of online education.

More educational opportunities

The range of institutions that already offer courses over electronic networks is extremely wide. In the United States alone, there are already more than a hundred such universities. Similar developments are observed in Australia, New Zealand and therefore the UK. Millions of pages of data from virtually every country are available at the click of a button on a personal computer. In Africa, the World Bank has launched a project to establish an African Virtual University (AVU). Among other things, you'll study electronic engineering, nursing, and computing. Classes are open to thousands of eligible students who would otherwise have no chance of access to further education, especially in disadvantaged areas. The inability of African governments to fund the training of all eligible students is a problem that AVU can address. The first courses were started at the Kenyatta University campus in July 1997. In this context, the University of South Africa's Internet project entitled Students-On-Line Virtual System (SOL), is a success. indisputable for Africans. The project is now reaching several thousand distance students across South Africa. Today, virtual education programs offered alongside traditional university degrees are recognized as a compelling way to improve access to education.

Flexible learning

Access to learning increasingly takes precedence over educational provision per se. Various donors have drawn attention to the need to develop more empowered, more independent, more self-directed, and more responsible learners, especially in an interactive learning context. Educators could encourage learner empowerment if they adopted flexible learning methods giving students a free choice of what, how and when to learn: start and end dates, recognition of teaching prior, choice of assessment and subjects, choice of the order in which they are studied. These factors play a really important role in the course. The lecturer becomes, in the effect, an educational facilitator, and online education is ideally suited to this type of flexibility.

Better chances of making the right choice

Currently, distance education is often the last resort for students who do not have the opportunity to pursue formal studies: this is the case for the primary education diploma issued by the University of Botswana through a distance education program, which gives more than 9,000 primary school teachers the opportunity to upgrade their qualifications. This is the only possible option under the current circumstances. On the other hand, online education empowers every student to meet their needs without losing the value of the way of learning.

Improved services, the better quality of teaching

In traditional university education, lessons are often prepared by isolated teachers who lack the necessary pedagogical training. The actors concerned rarely evaluate this sort of education. Whether they use more or less sophisticated tools or not, these courses are always a private relationship between the teacher and the students directly concerned. Virtual education, on the other hand, is often a team activity; the contribution of each actor is complemented by the skills of other team members, for example by specialists in pedagogy or media design. The virtual pedagogical approach sees education as teamwork and accepts quality criteria and contractual responsibility as natural elements that can substantially improve the quality of educational provision. Many scholars believe that quality management processes and indices are easier to integrate into distance education methods and even online education.

Access to a greater volume of information

Cyber-space provides access to more comprehensive educational and research documentation then an organization allows on its own: course texts, research results, news and studies, online books, and online access to the catalogs of libraries. We ourselves have benefited enormously from having access to lecture notes posted by our colleagues on the Internet and have repeatedly encouraged our students to seek additional information on the Internet.

Wider possibilities for innovation

In online education, annotations, references, and citation of sources tend to disappear in favor of hyperlinks to the original sources. New forms of language, writing, reading, study, and criticism are emerging from this digitized medium. Some donors have drawn attention to the very fact that online education requires new sorts of scholarship and skills, which universities will need to invent new techniques to conceptualize information and establish knowledge conventions. It is important to realize that the more education is delivered online, the more there will be a need for new educational theories and practices and these will eventually give rise to a new form of scholarship.

Online education: issues and challenges for universities

The growing need for online education is due to several factors that need to be assessed one by one as higher education organizations face the challenge of the computerized age.

React / adapt to changes

The university with its classrooms, campus, and community of experts may be a model deeply rooted within the university concept itself, and has opposed all alternative conceptions. The university structure - its tradition and its values - is today considered to be one of the main obstacles to the new mode of educational delivery. Some commentators on the future of university education believe that there is an urgent need today for lifelong learning offerings and change and that degrees as they are conceived and organized today are less in less appropriate. We are already feeling this pressure in computer science education, namely that more and more employers prefer candidates with specific training in software and hardware to those with a general university education, they even prefer “industrial certification” to university degrees. Higher education and training institutions are under such pressure that they have to make extraordinary efforts to readjust their educational programs and offerings.

Transform the knowledge structure

To ensure the transfer of the structure of knowledge from stable traditional institutions based on the use of the printed tool to e-education based on interaction and technology, it is necessary to have recourse to modes of assessment. new. Content is no longer of the same importance now that information can be accumulated to this magnitude and made accessible so quickly in digital form. Information users in the cyber age must learn to differentiate between the sources and value of digital information because all information looks the same on the screen. The authority which emanated from the academic journal, for example, and which differentiated it from popular magazines, must now be readjusted in equivalent electronic terms. The abandonment of content in favor of processes calls into question the hierarchical organization of the university system.

University scholarship

Recently a good number of online journals have popped up. Print journals are increasingly giving way to electronic fact sheets, and the most recent research information is available online on the web. Aside from finding ways to assert their authority in new media, scientists also need to learn how to showcase their electronic contributions and educational sites. The challenge is to know to what extent universities, still trapped in their knowledge and the university standards of the past, will be ready to adopt new modes of university practice adapted to the needs of the cyber generation.

Intellectual property

The question is who owns the works produced by academics. Some organizations already claim to “own” everything that is produced by their staff. But when "pedagogically inappropriate" documents are published, who bears the responsibility? Worse yet, who gets sued for copyright infringement?

Avoid letting yourself be marginalized

One of the most salient features of the new educational concept is how it breaks down boundaries, turning universities into commercial corporations and vice versa, with corporations sometimes even paying academics by turning them into intellectual workers. The distinctions between subjects disappear, the differentiation between teaching and research blur as more information is produced online. Much of university intellectual activity now takes place outside its doors. Traditional universities will have to compete with virtual universities.

The consequences for human resources

Educators will have to learn to master the computer tool to be more efficient in the new online environment. Since research/teaching resources are available online, teachers of all levels will need to be as proficient with ICT as they are with printed material. The move to online education will require staff to master in-depth knowledge of information technology and educational programs. The aim of these programs should be to better inform the academic community about the benefits and methodologies of online education. Training and retraining of available personnel will require considerable resources.

Maintaining quality

The ultimate goal of all higher education organizations is to provide effective and good-quality university programs. Research has shown that working online in a course not only increases accessibility for teachers but also increases student motivation and participation in classroom discussions and projects. At The University of Botswana, where the poor performance of freshman science students is of concern, a Senate panel made recommendations to improve the performance of students in the Faculty and proposed to use assisted teaching technologies. computer. Many institutions concerned with improving the quality of their teaching will opt for online learning and make available various resources to facilitate support, communication, and collaboration. They will also choose to improve opportunities and access to their classes outside of regular classes.

Reach more students

The increasing use of the Internet and the computer's multimedia options - video, audio, etc. - made distance education essential. The pressure on universities to reach more students is likely to encourage them to use computer networks and facilitate access to their courses outside their premises through mainstream technology platforms. Traditional organizations can, for example, offer programs on the Internet, including master's degrees in management or finance and banking studies, opening the doors to new sources of income that are urgently needed, without requiring additional equipment. On the other hand, the programs offered in the backyards of campuses by private virtual institutions like the University of Phoenix and the Virtual African University are increasingly competitive. Universities are going to have to invest in computers and more specifically in computer networks if they are to gain access to a larger market of learners.

Online education and its implications for universities and adult education providers

Online education is an alternative way to allow institutions to offer distance education programs to a larger number of students and especially to working adults who already have access to the programs at their workplace. or at home. While this state of affairs is indicative of the immense potential available to institutions, the possibilities for accessing online education in developing countries appear to be very limited for the following reasons: inadequate and unreliable communication infrastructures; difficulty in maintaining existing infrastructure; socio-political issues; expensive and difficult to access telephone equipment; general lack of financial means to acquire and maintain new systems or to promote effective research and finally, insufficient / lack of manpower capable of using new information technologies.

There is general agreement that rising costs, increasing student numbers, and the convergence of computer and communications technologies are forcing universities to adopt new ways of doing business. These changes involve the use of communication and information technology (ICT) in education, including the Internet and WWW, which universities still rarely do; although the experiments are many and varied, there is still no consensus on best practices. Before opting for online education, institutions in developing countries should carefully consider the following issues: policy and institutional framework including human resources, accessibility to international networks, access for students and support services.

Strategic policy

It is up to each institution to put in place an appropriate policy which will allow the development of online educational programs adapted to the respective situations. The use of the Internet in distance education must be considered consciously and deliberately as one of the components of an overall strategy, the objective of which is to facilitate access to education for the lower classes. society that cannot participate in traditional educational programs. Strategic plans must be put in place that take into account the issues and factors on which the success of the programs will depend.

The institutional framework

Each institution must establish an institutional framework that will serve as a support for online education. Institutions must be prepared to put in place new organizational structures that will provide different services from the traditional services offered on campus. There is a need to develop efficient pedagogical approaches to which students react and based on the exceptional nature of distance education through electronic networks. The institutional framework must include respect and awareness of the implications of this new type of education by staff, the development of online courses, accessibility for students and support services.

Human resources

One of the main elements of the overall organizational structure is the human resources available to institutions to carry out and support their online education project. Given the way we use information technology in our lessons, the attitude of teachers is likely to be a major obstacle to the widespread introduction of change. Some teachers believe that information technology would tend to widen rather than narrow the gap between students and teachers, and that developing and monitoring educational material online will be a huge time overload for instructors. Digital technology and in particular the Internet and the World Wide Web are transforming the role of the teacher in the classroom. Education is shifting from a teacher-centered system to a student-centered system, with the teacher's role no longer that of a ruler in their classroom but that of a mentor or ý 'an animator. If we are to ensure the success of these revolutionary changes which will profoundly affect the role of the teacher, considerable support efforts are needed in terms of training, policy change and remuneration systems.

 

Developing virtual courses takes a lot of time and effort on the part of educators and instructional designers. Before deciding in favor of online education, the institution must absolutely ask the following questions:

• should distance education courses be part of the normal workload of teachers?
• Will teachers be charged additional fees for the virtual courses they develop?
• Should more free time be given to teachers to encourage them to develop virtual online courses?
• How to assess the results of lecturers in this new education system?
• Should there be other incentives to encourage instructors to develop online courses?
• Who will have control over the intellectual property of innovative teaching materials that will be adapted to the online education system?

It is therefore important to create a systematic framework for the development of human resources, training in educational projects, and the delivery and evaluation issues faced by instructional designers.

Equipment and use of online education

Universities must also be concerned with the question of the necessary equipment for networking and communication. Access to international networks must be planned, but also its immediate and recurring financial consequences. Regardless of the type of equipment installed, it must always be carefully measured against the educational objectives set. Additional equipment should be provided to ensure communication and submission of homework in the event of equipment or e-mail failure. This could include sending homework by fax or mail.

Student access

Universities need to think about the issue of student access to online learning. These issues should be viewed in the context of learner development, which includes preparing the student for an educational experience beyond technical guidance. In countries where it is not possible to own a personal computer, alternative solutions must be found allowing access to inexpensive service providers or a set of institutions that join forces to facilitate access to the Internet in as part of a resource sharing system or in the form of an association. For example, educational resource centers could be created in strategic locations across the country that provide access to virtual lessons, communication equipment and other teaching materials.

Support services

Distance learning students need a wide range of support services, including information for prospective students, educational guidance, enrollment assistance, ongoing study support, support psychological discouragement and support to students on practical matters, including placement activities.

These questions involve a number of managerial and organizational factors which considerably influence the way in which the learner perceives his learning context. The way in which these questions are handled may just as well motivate the student and create a context for personal learning as it may discourage him and make the act of learning difficult. Care should be taken to receive regular feedback from students, which will help improve lessons. One of the key factors in the management and organization of distance learning courses is the speed and efficiency with which feedback is given to students.

Conclusion

We have just analyzed the main challenges facing the transition to online education. Online education holds great promise for distance education; it is an option which is likely to succeed and which can improve educational opportunities, promote learner empowerment, gain access to more comprehensive information and improve the quality of education. Nonetheless, universities that opt for online education will have to prepare for changes and even drastic readjustments. The inadequacy and mediocrity of communication infrastructures on the one hand, the insufficiency, or even the absence of an appropriate workforce on the other hand, are likely to reduce the chances of maximizing the potential of the new communication technology. information in developing countries. The effective use of online education by universities and adult training organizations therefore depends on how they deal with these issues according to their respective situations. However, it is also a question of whether they are ready to consider online education as one part of an overall strategy aimed at providing access to education to an audience. wider.