Digital dilemma: issues of access, cost, and quality in media-enhanced and distance education

Abstract

The writer discusses issues of access, cost, and quality in media-enhanced and distance education. He identifies age, income, race and ethnicity, gender, previous education, geography, household type, physical disabilities, and learning disabilities as the specific obstacles facing higher education institutions trying to leverage technology to accommodate unprecedented growth. He examines a range of issues, including institutional mission and vision, efforts at collaboration and cooperation, price versus cost of technology, tangible versus intangible costs, and student technology fees and computer leasing arrangements, that must be dealt with if the economic benefits of technologically mediated learning are to be realized. He explores the problem of Internet content, instructional design considerations, online assessment, and institutional support of faculty who integrate technology into instruction as specific issues of quality and effectiveness and offers seven conclusions and seven recommendations concerning the issues of access, cost, and effectiveness in higher education.

Whole issue. Incl. bibl., index.