Critical factors for effective E - learning

Over the past years, we have witnessed a fundamental economic transformation. Economists generally acknowledge that a profound shift has occurred in the role that knowledge and technology play in driving productivity and economic growth (Stiglitze, 1999 cited from Kozma, 2003), a phenomenon referred to as the “Knowledge economy.” These changes entail new skills, abilities, attitudes, and habits for employees in the knowledge economy and for citizens of the information society (Voogt and Pelgrum, 2003). Information communication technology, in the common contemporary rhetoric, (ICT) provides the tools needed by the knowledge economy and information society. These tools allow us to create, collect, store, and use this new knowledge and information. As ICT become an integral part of our work, places, schools, and homes, it is changing the way we live, work, play, communicate, and learn (Kozma, 2003). This explosive growth of ICT has made it a popular platform for providing a wide rang of electronic services from business to education (Chiu, et al, 2005). It is widely accepted that advances in information technology and new developments in learning science provides opportunities to create well-designed, learner-centered, engaging, interactive, affordable, efficient, easily accessible, flexible, meaningful distributed and facilitated e-learning environments (Khan, 2005). The rapid growth in e-learning, experienced particularly during the 1990s has overcome many of the barriers to Higher Education (National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, 2001),