This article presents an interview with Paul Avon, the former executive director of the Canadian Virtual College Consortium. Avon has spent over fifteen years in the distance learning (DL) field managing the production and delivery of online learning at TVOntario, Humber College, the Sri Lankan National Online Distance Education Service, and the…

There is surprisingly little analysis of the employment and earnings impact on students of taking and completing Internet-based programs and of how it compares with earnings outcomes for graduates of face-to-face universities. This paper analyzes a follow-up survey of students who began attending the virtual Internet-based Open University of…

Because the globalization of traditional research universities has so far been largely an elite phenomenon, for-profit higher education has become the kind of high-growth worldwide industry that would attract entrepreneurs. The for-profit sector, by contrast, has targeted a vast and vastly different student market: non-elite learners, often poorly…

In the last decade, an important debate about the characteristics of today's students has arisen due to their intensive experience as users of ICT. The main belief is that frequent use of technologies in everyday life implies competent users able to transfer their digital skills to learning activities. However, empirical studies developed in…

The framework of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has turned the student into the main protagonist of the new educational scenario, and the teacher into the coordinator of teaching-learning process instead of transmitter of knowledge. In this new model of learning, the use of ICT is facilitating competency-based learning and the…

This article discusses the importance of measuring how students perceive quality of service in online higher education. The article also reviews the existing literature on measuring users' perceptions about quality in e-services. Even when there are a lot of articles on this matter, none of them focuses on e-learning services, so this paper tries…

A recent phenomenon in higher education is the emergence of the virtual university. Some observers have attributed its emergence to globalization and technological innovation. This dissertation study is about one particular instance of the virtual university phenomenon, the African Virtual University (AVU). The AVU initiative was launched with…

A highly touted feature of the so-called global "revolution" in higher education is the trend to use information technology to reach a broader clientele. Although there is evidence that students may be learning the material in on-line courses as well as in traditional face-to-face universities, how well students learn content is not the…

This article reviews the current status of information and communications technology (ICT) usage and provides a comprehensive outlook on e-learning in both virtual universities and organizations in Iran. A model for e-learning implementation is presented. This model tries to address specific issues in Iranian organizations. (Contains 1 table and 2…

Individualised open and distance learning at the university continuing education and post-graduate education levels is a central issue of today. The advanced information and communication technologies together with several applications offer new perspectives, such as the so-called virtual university. Simultaneously, to gain market share, several…