Breaking Boundaries: Quality E-Learning for the Global Knowledge Society

Abstract

The ideas and issues raised in this paper reflect a global challenge to understand the nature of E-learning in a knowledge society so that appropriate quality frameworks can be developed for new educational environments. E-learning and virtual classes evolved from distance education and struggle to gain recognition in mainstream education as legitimate quality higher education providers. The increasing use of information technology advances, particularly the internet present new educational paradigms and models that challenge conventional assumptions and indicators of quality assurance. What is needed is the development of global standards and quality assurance frameworks that can improve pedagogy in diverse cultural, knowledge and delivery paradigms. This paper seeks to explore how quality is defined, who sets whose standards, who will teach what to whom with what effect in a world of competing paradigms and parallel worlds of reality and virtual reality.