Influences on the Educational Use of the WWW, Email and Videoconferencing

Abstract

As email, the World Wide Web (WWW) and videoconferencing become more and more familiar in daily life, does this mean that their use will also be commonplace in the way teaching and learning activities occur in educational and training organizations? Here we report on the results of a survey of 550 people involved with educational and training organizations in 41 countries. Even though these people already make personal use of email and the WWW, why or why not do they make use of these tools for specific learning-related purposes, as for example, within courses? And what about a tool like videoconferencing, that is not yet commonplace as a personal tool? Will it ever make a breakthrough for teaching and learning? This study examines these questions and draws six sets of conclusions that are consistent over national boundaries.