Online education has now gained its ultimate height and level of development, based on advances in computing and telecommunications. The basic point of an online education system in this generation is a combination of electronic access to multimedia materials held on CD-ROMs and in tele-libraries, computer conferencing, and the electronic interchange of assignments between instructors and pupils. The delivery of online courses in online education is aligned in the same order.
The Online Cost: The cost structures of online learning systems are different from those of traditional online education systems. It is essential to understand the costs involved in an online course system before considering its cost effectiveness, but the literature on this topic has been limited. Some researches focus on the costs of a particular technology, such as computer-mediated communication (CMC), in a particular setting; others discuss how the costs of CMC could be affected by various factors.
A research was carried out to study the costs of using CMC for a reasonably large group of students in a course. The calculation of the costs of CMC was broken down into the following categories.
o Development and fixed production costs, which included the human capital, the development of course materials, the initial costs for software licences and capital equipment, and the costs of space for staff and equipment.
o Distribution costs, which included the costs of storage and despatch of course materials, and the recurrent costs for software licences.
o Reception and delivery costs, which included teaching costs and costs incurred by the student, e.g. the network and central computer costs, the purchase of microcomputers and modems for loan to students, the tuition costs, etc. Another factor is that the ownership of PCs is more commonplace nowadays. Assuming student ownership of a PC, the overall cost would have looked very different. Nevertheless, this study provides an indication of the costs that could be incurred in setting up an online learning system, which can be used as a basis for analysing the cost effectiveness of using online technologies.
A further research reviewed the literature on CMC and suggested that the costs of implementing a CMC course might be affected by the following factors:
o The type of implementation;
o Who pays for which costs; and
o Whether a computer infrastructure is in place
This analysis provides a useful framework for considering the factors involved in presenting a CMC course.
Cost effectiveness of Online Technologies: Again, the literature on this topic is very limited and focuses mainly on comparing the relative cost effectiveness of a particular technology-for example, CMC-with the provision of more conventional classroom-based instruction. Another study compared the costs and effectiveness of a conventional residential classroom and a CMC learning environment for two US Army Reserve courses (‘Leadership’ and ‘Engineering’). In this study, course completion data, test scores, and students’ self-ratings of their levels of knowledge before and after the courses, were used as indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of the instructional methods. Evidence showed that both formats were equally effective in facilitating learning, but the CMC ‘classroom’ cost less than resident instruction in the long term.
Concisely, given the narrow scope of studies, the potential cost effectiveness of using online technologies in online education is still uncertain. These studies also show that the concepts of cost and effectiveness are in practice complicated. The selection of criteria to define the effectiveness of a programme, and decisions about the allocation of costs in a programme, reflect value judgements and could be arbitrary. For example, the effectiveness of the CMC course might vary if different criteria were used. Also, the overall cost to the institution would have looked very different had equipment not been supplied to students. Therefore, both the costs and effectiveness of a programme may vary as a function of the selection of assessment criteria and the type of implementation.
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