The Future of E-Learning in Higher Education

Universities, colleges and polytechnics are institutions of higher education that have increasingly embraced online education and its forms. Statistics reveal the rapid increase of students enrolling in distance learning programs in the United States and UK. In response, these institutions, the government and organisations have created strategic plans to implement online education. However, the following aspects present challenges to  a cheap and fully accessible online education for everyone:

·    misconceptions and myths regarding the difficulty of teaching and learning through purely online sources
·    lack of access to available technologies that support and facilitate online instruction
·    lack of support and compensation for qualified online-based instructors
·    charting the needs of online students and how these are different from students taking traditional education

There is also the issue of which avenue of technology such as electronic books, simulation programs, text messaging, podcasting, using free encyclopaedia-based sources such as wikis and forums would best fit e-learning in its different circumstances and the various needs of students. The confusion arises because no sooner has a new strategy been planned (which has to go through the usual long planning stages typical of projects involving the government and academia) than a newer and more popular method of instruction or communication emerges, rendering the old one as redundant or altogether useless.

These technologies also do not come cheap, and it is difficult for schools instructors and administrators to catch up with these in the face of budget cuts facing many learning institutions worldwide as a result of a global economic downturn.