The Impact of New Technologies on Distance Learning Students

This book "The impact of new technologies on distance learning students" addresses a crucial dimension of educational provision: the expenditure on educational technology of the 27 Ministries of Education in the European Union and of Ministries of Education and Higher Education throughout the world, for their schools, colleges and universities. If it cannot be proved that there is an impact of technology on learning and if it cannon be proved that this impact is beneficial then this expenditure is without justification. As recently as 2005 the World Bank claimed ‘The positive impact of ICT use in education had not been proven. In general, and despite thousands of impact studies, the impact of ICT use on student achievement remains difficult to measure and open to much reasonable debate.' The book takes a different approach to other studies in the field in that it concentrates on the impact of technology on learning in adult education, lifelong learning and distance education. In this context it has a special focus on distance education. Much previous work in the field has focused on the impact of technology on learning by children in schools. The book has a matrix structure. One branch of the matrix is provided by studies of the five forms of distance education technologies used in the study: distance education systems electronic distance education (usually referred to as e-learning), synchronous e-learning the se of the World Wide Web on- campus and mobile learning. The other branch of the matrix is supplied by two studies of the impact of technology on learning by men and women and by younger and older learners. This book was published with the assistance of the European Commission through its Leonardo da Vinci programme.