Online Education: Worldwide Status, Challenges, Trends, and Implications

Abstract

Online education in its various modes has been growing steadily worldwide due to the confluence of new technologies, global adoption of the Internet, and intensifying demand for a workforce trained periodically for the everevolving digital economy. Online education is on track to become mainstream by 2025. This editorial documents country-level factors that impact quantity and quality of online education. Such factors include industry (business); governments at local, state, and federal levels; country laws; ICT capacity; Internet/mobile technology diffusion; and income and digital divide. We provide implications for country and world organizations concerning online education.

Higher education institutions and the use of online instruction and online tools and resources during the COVID-19 outbreak - An online review of selected U.S. and SA's universities

“…However, the uptake of online learning varies with individual HEIs and with individual countries (cf. Bates, 2016;Lin et al, 2020;Palvia et al, 2018;Sener, 2010). This section of the paper, nonetheless, is not intended to focus on the successes and failures, the adoption rate, and the unique characteristics of online learning as they pertain to either individual HEIs or individual countries.…”

“…One of the core de nitions of online learning articulated by Blackboard Support (1998) that resonates with this paper is that it is a teaching and learning approach that employs Internet technologies meant to communicate and collaborate in a given educational setup (cf. Bates, 2015;Chaka & Nkhobo, 2019;Darby, 2020;Designing Digitally, 2019;Gannon, 2020; International Association for K-12 Online Learning, 2011; International Baccalaureate Organization [IBO], 2020; Means, Bakia & Murphy, 2014;Means, et al, 2010;Palvia et al, 2018;Sener, 2010;Xu & Jaggars, 2013;Zhu & Liu, 2020). This approach entails: student-student and faculty-student communication; student-centred pedagogies; 24/7-hour course material accessibility; just-in-time strategies to evaluate and assess student progress;and minimising administrivia related to course management (Blackboard Support, 1998).…”

Structural Changes in the Landscape of Spanish Distance Universities

“…On the one hand, the scope of the innovations points to a necessary reconversion of traditional institutions, and their repositioning within the higher education system is also discussed. According to the benchmark of the new agents in distance higher education, and the evolution of the digital education sector in the last decade (Palvia et al, 2018), three types of innovative guidelines are proposed: (1) In the methodological field, to deepen the scalable teaching methodologies, which maintain the costs contained while guaranteeing the quality of studies and the social mission of distance universities; (2) at the operational level, innovations aimed at deepening the use of digital technologies based on data, and at focusing the learning process on the student and his/ her particular needs in a distance learning environment; and (3) at the institutional level, to relocate distance education universities to the higher education landscape as agents that facilitate in-depth learning and certify higher-level skills throughout life, which means making the teaching offered at universities compatible with skills acquired in non-formal and informal spaces, whether in digital or face-to-face spaces.…”

Digital Twin Coaching for Physical Activities: A Survey

“…Students have become more and more used to a digital educational environment. They have a positive attitude towards e-learning [ 12 ] and online education is expected to become mainstream by 2025 [ 13 ], particularly after the COVID-19 era. The permeability of digital learning in the current population will help cement DT Coaching as a valid technology.…”