'The Role of Technology in Quality Education\r'

'THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN bore EDUCATION Dr. R. Sivakumar Assistant Professor surgical incision of culture Annamalai University Introduction Quality procreation is a universal goal. It is common to taste arguments that instructional applied science will be the key to bringing upal fiber as we enter the new millennium. Investment in directional engineering is urged upon policy-makers as the passage trend to didacticsal fictional character.In fact, enthusiasts for informational technology w solely that fiber has and will continue to step-up rapidly, creating a â€Å"new tuitional socialisation” Whatever problems exist ar seen as ones which mint be handled through go bad administrative and technological planning †that is, technology believers perceive no intrinsic obstacles to occur property assurance using knowledge technology in higher information. opposite voices headspring educational technology as a panacea.The problems associated with techno logy in the college schoolroom in terms of issues such as poorly functioning equipment, over-promotion of technology-based information to learners, and drop of quality in physiques delivered by technology. educational technology who say students choosing online courses ar non getting the education they pay for, and question whether universities should be providing such instruction.The Ameri brook federation of Teachers and other efficiency organizations stool excessively raised serious cautions ab turn up web-based education and halt even gone on strike over it. Technology in Quality preparation In result to growing criticism of the recent, rapid, unregulated product of outgo education, a number of recognise higher education organizations have hypothesise quality standards and guidelines. The principles have been endorsed by a number of higher education disposal and policymaking bodies in the world, as hearty as by the regional accrediting fraternity.The core i mpudence of these guidelines is that, â€Å"The institutions curriculummes holding specialized accreditation meet the alike(p) requirements when offered electronically. ” Since these guidelines are a widely-accepted definition of â€Å"quality” as applied to online education, they are quoted downstairs: * Each syllabus of study results in acquire outcomes subdue to the rigor and largeness of the microscope stage or certificate awarded. * An electronically offered degree or certificate program is coherent and complete. The program provides for let real-time or delayed interaction surrounded by achievement and students and among students. * Qualified capacity provides appropriate oversight of the program electronically offered. * The program is consistent with the institutions role and mission. * Review and favourable reception processes ensure the appropriateness of the technology cosmos used to meet the programs objectives. * The program provides ski ll get work specifically related to teaching via an electronic system. The program provides readiness for faculty who teach via the use of technology. * The program ensures that appropriate learning resources are lendable to students. * The program provides students with clear, complete, and timely information on the curriculum, course and degree requirements, temperament of faculty/student interaction, assumptions about technological competence and skills, technical equipment requirements, availability of pedantic support serve and financial aid resources, and be and payment policies. Enrolled students have reasonable and adequate access to the range of student services appropriate to support their learning. * Accepted students have the background, knowledge, and technical skills sine qua noned to undertake the program. * Advertising, recruiting, and admissions materials intelligibly and accurately represent the program and the services available. * Policies for faculty rating include appropriate consideration of teaching and scholarly activities related to electronically offered programs. The institution demonstrates a fealty to ongoing support, both financial and technical, and to continuation of the program for a period equal to enable students to complete a degree/certificate. * The institution evaluates the programs educational effectiveness, including assessments of student learning outcomes, student retention, and student and faculty satisfaction. Students have access to such program valuation data. * The institution provides for assessment and documentation of student achievement in each course and at completion of the program.Empowerment in Online education Technology enthusiasts believe online methods will unfreeze learning from the confines of the lecture anteroom, only when it can be difficult to fit in hold education with empowerment of students and faculty. unrivalled common tactic where empowerment is a goal of distance education at all is to keep guidelines-from-on-high to a marginal and to rely on local autonomy. young position, quality assurance in distance education, however, have noned with dismay the betray toward standards imposed from above. Remote learning” would precisely lead to students staying at home in front of ready reckoner keyboards instead of existence taught in a school environment. â€Å"This is way out of touch with the expectations of parents who call for their children to part both socially with other students and educationally under the guidance of qualified teachers”. Online Education and Community The â€Å"community of scholars” was central to the conventional concept of higher education.The thrust of online education advocacy is to broaden the concept of community in non-traditional ways, particularly through federation with or even contracting out to the business community. Educational institutions in all advanced countries encounter stro ng incentives for underground sector partnering since the high costs of multimedia-rich online curricula are often beyond what a bingle local college can afford. In the traditional â€Å"community of scholars” the student was mentored as an assimilator and eventually became a co-investigator in question and creative activity.Advocates of online education represent that this impulse of academic community will be enhanced through the wonders of technology. Online education is oft the province of the campus adult education unit, not the academic departments. Often instructor date is an overload, potentially seducing faculty away from look for. Administrators undertake to use online education â€Å"to increase academic productivity” and, as discussed elsewhere in this essay, seek cost savings in an atmosphere unfavorable to the research function.Moreover, virtually institutions have found that online education is as such very demanding of valuable faculty time, which can also take away from research. On the student side, the social distance built-in in online education seems to make students want clear, precise, objectives-oriented curricula which may represent a constraining of education, and may make them unlikely candidates for collegiate work on faculty research projects. The reality of online education is that it favors a diversity from traditional notions of academic community toward a much narrower, transactions-based model.Online Education and Learning familiarity Online education faces the paradox that it is best undertaken by students with strong autonomous learning skills, still at the same time the disconnect of students from teachers seems correlated with insistent student demands for clearly structured learning assignments and schedules. Students frequently smack the need for ongoing communication with their instructor. A commonly expressed student need is that for very clearly and explicitly articulated course learni ng objectives.That is, online pedagogy seems much associated with â€Å"cyber distance” than with â€Å"virtual community,” and students quickly suit motivated to seek to overcome cyber distance through increased course structure, reduction learning autonomy. Online education is part of a cost reduction effort, requiring human resources to be stretched to cover more(prenominal) credit hours, faculty resignation to the training mentality of outcome-based evaluation is all but assured except, of course, in environments which do not even chafe to attempt to enforce quality assurance standards. Online Education and Critical ThinkingOnline education can handle instruction-to-facts more easily; drill-and-practice is the loud of computer methods. Ironically, in contrast, traditional education with its supposedly uncreative lecture hall methods has prided itself in its ability to inculcate lively thinking skills. quad education administrators are aware that critical t hinking of online methods. thusly it is not unusual to find that quality assurance standards for online education make book of facts to student thinking skills, independent learning skills, teamwork and communication skills, and other aspects of critical thinking.Moreover, profound-agent and workgroup coaction software often are targeted promptly at encouraging critical thinking skills. Critical thinking can be inculcated using technology such as cyber mentoring and video theater. A love-hate relationship exists amidst online education and critical thinking skill development. Writing assignments are concept to swear out develop critical thinking and go online methods can enhance collaborative writing, in general online courses are associated with less(prenominal) writing, not more.Socratic discussion with faculty is also mentation to inculcate critical thinking, but eyepatch online methods in theory could enhance discussion, in reality online courses are associated with f ar-off less instructor-oriented discussion. Critical thinking is also thought to be associated with problem-solving going beyond computational mechanics to consideration of complex causal and value systems, but while intelligent tutoring software does exist, the open-endedness of creating problem-solving together with the asynchronous nature of most online education mean that in practice online courses rarely develop the problem-solving approach.Online Education and Educational Quality In analyze computer-mediated distance education with traditional personal teaching experiences, while distance education increases access to education, one may well find decreases in instructional quality brought about by increased faculty workload, problems of adapting to technology, difficulties with online course management, and related obstacles. By way on instruction to learning objectives, as with traditional instruction-to-test approaches, test performance standards are usually met by online courses.Although tested make of electronic education is often on a par with conventional teaching, this does not mean educational quality is immune however. Many observers find in typical online education offerings a substantial restricting of the concept of education to the detriment of students. hotshot of the recurring problems of computer-mediated education is that it is programmed around cover learning objectives. Conclusion Many educational technology writers, in fact, explicitly argue that quality education using computer methods must be built on a foundation of clearly-defined competency-based curricular objectives.Online education is now arousing academic resistance. The emergence of a two-tier educational system †a more expensive upper tier with wholesome traditional education supplemented with the benefits of full online access, and a cheaper inferior tier dispensing programmed training which meets objectives far narrower than the traditional goals of liberal education. References Barnard, John (1997). The beingness Wide Web and higher education: The promise of virtual universities and online libraries. Educational Technology, Vol. 37, zero(prenominal) 3 (May-June): 30-35. Special issue: Web-Based Learning. Bergeron, Bryan P. (1996).Competency as a paradigm for technology-enabled instruction and evaluation, diary of Instruction Delivery Systems, 10(2): 22-24. Hillesheim, Gwen (1998). The search for quality standards in distance learning, In Distance Learning 98, Proceedings of the Annual gathering on Distance Teaching and Learning, (14th, Madison, WI, haughty 5-7, 1998). Pakkiff, Rena M. and Keith Pratt (1999). Building learning communities in mesh: Effective strategies for the online classroom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Roth, Brenda F. and Denisha Sanders (1996). Instructional technology to enhance teaching. New Directions for Higher Education, 94: 21-32.\r\n'