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Who benefits from online education? How the implementation of technology in higher education can result in increasing inequalities in higher education institutions

The existing literature is inconclusive on how technology in education influences student outcomes and whether it will lead to an improvement in tertiary education access. This paper aims to determine whether the implementation of technology in higher education will lead to an improvement in the access to higher education through online education as well as improving student outcomes. In addition, the paper aims to show that implementing technology in higher education could increase existing inequalities amongst students from different backgrounds. The paper will do this by demonstrating the qualitative and quantitative factors which are the underlying reasons for some students doing better in an online setting compared to others. Furthermore, the paper will show that students from advantaged backgrounds with respect to race and income, benefit more from online and blended learning than students from more disadvantaged backgrounds. Therefore, tertiary institutions need to provide caution when establishing blended learning and online education programmes as it could lead to increasing educational inequalities.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uct/oai:localhost:11427/32966
Date24 February 2021
CreatorsPieterse, Allison
ContributorsMlatsheni, Cecil, Cliff, Alan
PublisherFaculty of Commerce, School of Economics
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeMaster Thesis, Masters, MCom
Formatapplication/pdf

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