CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
It is commonly thought that new technologies can make a big difference in education. In young ages especially, children can use the huge interactivity of new media, and develop their skills, knowledge, and perception of the world, under their parents’ monitoring, of course. E-learning includes all forms of electronically supported learning and teaching. The information and communication systems, whether networked learning or not, serve as specific media to implement the learning process. This often involves both out-of-classroom and in-classroom educational experiences via technology, even as advances continue in regard to devices and curriculum. E-learning is the computer and network-enabled transfer of skills and knowledge.
E-learning applications and processes include Web-based learning, computer-based learning, virtual education opportunities and digital collaboration. Content is delivered via the Internet, intranet/extranet, audio or video tape, satellite TV, and CD-ROM. It can be self-pace or instructor-led and includes media in the form of text, image, animation, streaming video and audio.
As information and communications technology (ICT) advances, organizations invest significant resources in ICT to support all aspects of organizational work from group work to individual teaching, training, and learning (Isakowitz et al. 1998).
The e-learning is not a new phenomenon in promoting education in some parts of world. Presently, some institutions in Nigeria are using it to promote distance education (DE) and lifelong learning. E-learning according to Sale (2002), is the use of electronic technology to deliver education and training applications, monitor learner’s performance and report learner’s progress. Hedge and Hayward (2004), defined it as an innovative approach for delivering electronically mediated, well-designed, learner-centered and interactive learning environments to anyone, anyplace, anytime by utilizing the internet and digital technologies in concern with instructional design principles. It is all about learning with the use of computers. In this age, learning with the use of computer is simply online ways of acquiring knowledge through the internet or through the offline – CD-ROM. The online involves the use of Internet Explorer/Navigator. It may be in form of Audio, Visual, and or Audio/Visual. The convergence of the internet and learning, or Internet enabled learning is called e-learning. The applications and process of e-learning include computer-based learning, web-based learning, virtual classroom and digital collaboration where contents is delivered via the internet, intranet/extranet, audio and or video tapes, satellite TV and CD-ROM (Islam, 1997). The revolutionary development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT’s) in education in the developed countries facilitated the establishment of 100% ICT – based University known as Virtual Universities. Here in Nigeria, very few of our conventional universities are now carrying out their academic activities through one form of ICT or the other. While the urge to embark on e-learning is still a dream to some because their infrastructure of ICT’s is very weak. The rapid expansion of ICTs in Nigeria offers an opportunity to consider its use in the promotion of DE. It offers students considerable benefits including increase access to learning opportunities, convenience of time, and place, making available a greater variety of learning resources, improve opportunities for individualized learning and emergence of more powerful cognitive tools (Khan, 1996, Pierre, 1998). Distance Education (DE) is a system of education characterized by physical separation between the teacher and the learner in which instruction is deliver through a variety of media including print and other ICTs to learner who may either have missed the opportunity earlier in life or have been denied the face-to-face formal education due to socio-economic, career, family and other circumstances. Jegede, (2003) defined distance education as education provided by a mode other than the conventional face-to-face method whose goals are similar to and just as noble and practical as those of on-campus full time face-to-face education.