The Impact of Cloud Computing on Distance (Online) Learning

Distance learning has become quite popular lately, and many institutions are bombarded with a lot of concerns as the number of their distance (online) students gradually increases. However, the most important challenge faced by these institutions is the need to provide unhindered, flexible and quick access to the bulk of teaching instructions, lesson materials and learning platforms for students so as to give them the unique opportunity to attain greater educational achievements. Distance education requires the use of large amounts of data and learning resources that need multi-faceted IT infrastructure in the areas of storage and the provision of easy and quick access to interactive videos, online academic chats and teleconferences, digital feedback system and digital library services. Incidentally, these on-demand educational technologies have caused several institutions to either expand their in-house IT structures or outsource some of these services to third-party IT firms. This is because new servers, networks and storage facilities are needed to meet the upsurge in amount of data produced by the large number of distance-learning students.  However, this practice has been discovered to be non-economical because the affected institutions have to suddenly increase their annual budget for IT requirements. Hence, cloud computing has been recognized as one of the best solutions to the problem of bloated IT budget for institutions that run distance (online) programs. Apart from helping these institutions reduce their overhead IT expenditure, cloud computing also provides some highly competitive features of reliability, scalability and speed. For instance, institutions normally spend a lot of money to set up and maintain new educational technologies. But such expenses will be unnecessary when they move their in-house IT structure to the cloud. Some of the options available to distance-learning students, as far as cloud technology is concerned include:

• Software as a Service (SaaS)—students are allowed to use software/applications but they have no power to control the hardware, operating and networking systems;
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)—in this case, users can use a hosting environment for their applications, but they cannot control the hardware, operating system etc;
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)—users can control the hardware, operating system and the networking system while using the storage facility, networking system and other principal computing resources provided by the cloud computing firm.

Based on the merits of cloud computing highlighted above, distance (online) education administrators should consider adding cloud computing to one of their strategies to make their institution's performance optimal. Since cloud technology allows interoperability, online learning administrators need not worry about whether their current hardware, networking system, servers and applications will work perfectly with the newly introduced cloud computing. More so, cloud technology enhances fast delivery of educational content, quick reception of feedback and students’ comments and the storage of huge amount of data generated in the course of learning. Though users are still concerned about security, privacy and long-time efficiency of cloud computing, the good news is that some institutions that had already moved their IT structures to the cloud are enjoying some benefits of doing so. Now, they worry less about maintaining in-house IT systems and they are happy about the extent of flexibility and  scalability provided by cloud computing; in other words, if they lose some students in their distance-learning programs, they can consequently reduce their required storage and networking requirements. This is not possible in an in-house IT facility whereby software, hardware, applications and other materials acquired to facilitate online education cannot be reduced even if the number of students that enrolled for the courses suddenly declined. As a matter of fact, cloud computing not only gives flexibility and a faster rate of access to educational materials stored in the cloud, it also helps institutions cut expenses and enhance better academic performance.

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Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.   About the Guest Author: Jerry Olasakinju, a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree holder, is a passionate researcher and writer whose interest in everything computing is unparalleled. He blogs about his literary works at http://jerryolasakinju.blogspot.jp/