ICT convergence challenges in education and their impact on both instructors and students

Abstract

The blooming development of ICT and its implementation for the needs of the education institutions has presented a new set of challenges for both instructors and students. The introduction of many different approaches for learning, like face to face learning, e-Iearning, distance learning has presented new ways for obtaining knowledge, but has also resulted in destabilization of the general learning processes. This paper identifies the key challenges, which are the result of this rapid and inevitable implementation of the ICT technologies in education, for both the instructors and the learners. An additional investigation on the situations, which present the modern ICT services as being implemented with and without the use of the technological convergence, is also conducted. The Introduction section of the paper presents the global state of the ICT technologies for educational purposes and the four most common and widely available types of virtual learning environments. Then the common goals of ICT in education are defined, followed by the most significant advantages and disadvantages of using ICT for education. In the next Section of the paper the importance and the impact of the ICT convergence on the learning process, on the instructors and on the students are analyzed. The paper is completed by the Conclusions and the Reference sections.