E-Quality (quality in virtual campuses) in developing countries: Case study of Iran

Davoud Masoumi

Introduction
Explosive growth of the ICT in the world has made it a popular platform for providing a wide range of electronic services (e-service) 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, efficient, easily accessible, flexible, meaningful, distributed and facilitated e-learning environments (Khan 2005).
This rapid evolution and widespread penetration of new media and technologies represents both significant challenges as well as significant opportunities to the higher education systems of the “developing world”. Countries that lack a sound higher education infrastructure can thereby tap the resources of the more developed countries. However higher education and universities in developing countries are increasingly facing pressures from globalization and the knowledge society (Heydenrych, 2002), and there is a widening gap between the developed and developing worlds ("digital divide") in this area (Wolff and MacKinnon, 2002). It is obvious that ICT serve first those who have access to it, and therefore tend to put at higher priority exchanges between technologically equipped partner.

position paper pdf

Not presented at the workshop