Technology Adoption in Online Tutorial

Background

The success of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) systems in any society will ultimately depend upon how best they can put in place Innovative and Flexible systems of Information dissemination, Programme Offerings, Student Support and Quality Assurance (Belawati T & Zuhairi A, 2007). Web based technologies open up a range of possibilities to develop such solutions. However technology per se is not the ultimate solution to accomplish the objectives. It’s a challenge to assess how the prospective clientele will ultimately perceive the technology enabled solutions and utilize such solutions for their course completion. Challenges are uniformly the same across the developing countries; however it is even more difficult in a country like Indonesia where prospective clientele of ODL systems comes largely from rural backgrounds, lives in sparsely distributed rural interiors and are not much familiar with the culture of technology. It makes the job of distance educators much more challenging in such a situation.

The Open University of Indonesia is still struggling to properly assimilate the technological solutions in their academic delivery strategies. Though the technological solutions are gradually becoming part of the programme offerings in Indonesia and many institutions have begun to experiment with modern ICT-based courses we find that access and participation by students is still relatively low (Belawati T & Zuhairi A, 2007). It is the challenge for Open University in Indonesia to socialize and educate students, educators and the society in using ICT facilities for ODL enterprise (Belawati T & Zuhairi A, 2007).