Abstract: This study compared traditional system with virtual educational system statistically in Iran. In recent years e-learning has become a process which is changing the educational system from traditional to collaborative web-based activities in the widespread borderless world. For overcoming remoteness, distance learning and for prevailing time problem, a time boundless system of education is recommended. In this way, by the means of economical equations and statistical analysis we illustrated an in depth survey. Finally, by the means of hypothesis testing, we illustrated the best option for educational system is the combination of both systems.
INTRODUCTION
Since the adoption of internet as the common channel for delivering teaching material in electronic form, the word e-learning, previously used for defining the teaching methodologies involving electronic aids, has been used as synonym of distance learning through Internet (Van Raaij and Schepers, 2008). Internet makes available resources (hardware, software, data and knowledge) distributed worldwide, reaching the students or workers at their homes with a minimum connection cost (Peretto et al., 2008).
The popularity of the internet as an information source has grown extensively. Its shear expanse and convenience is ideal to disperse information. More and more online services have now become available such as online banking, e-government, e-learning and e-commerce. Our interest lies with e-learning and in particular with the delivery of course material online. More specifically, we are interested in presenting online course material in interactive and stimulating ways for students and creating an online learning community similar to that which one might experience in an actual university. In this study, we present our experience of developing an innovative collaborative e-learning system and discuss an extension of this system for use on mobile devices (Monahan et al., 2008).
Internet has significantly impacted the establishment of Internet-based education, or e-learning. Internet technology evolution and e-business has affected all industrial and commercial activity and accelerated e-learning industry growth (Müller et al., 2007). It has also fostered the collaboration of education and Internet technology (Kong, 2008), by increasing the volume and speed of information transfer and simplifying knowledge management and exchange tasks (Padilla-Meléndez et al., 2008). E-learning could become an alternative way to deliver on-the-job training for many companies, saving money, employee transportation time and other expenditures. An e-learning platform is an emerging tool for corporate training, with many companies developing their own e-learning courses for employee on the- job training (Mangina and Kilbride, 2008). Employees can acquire competencies and problem solving abilities via internet learning for benefits among business enterprises, employees and societies while at work.
These days virtual education absorbed the attention of educational systems (Yang and Liu, 2007; Economou et al., 2000). The large numbers of educational systems are changing their method to distance learning. Working in virtual engineering education area (Reategui, 2008), provides an environment like modern information and communication technologies to transfer knowledge and education without time and boundary limitations (Mahdizadeh, 2008). In this way, economy is the fundamental problem, for solving this problem economic comparison should be discussed and technology many problems solved. Each year many computer-based devices are invented. By the means of economic comparison we also can compare two systems of education. In general, many people who in a way involve with educational systems accept that the existing system which we call it traditional system of education is not effective anymore.
| Fig. 1: | Architecture of e-learning and collaborative activities |
In the world we live time is really important, so, to criticize traditional system it is very time consuming, such as a migrated student to a campus or the wasted times between classes. Racial diversity is one of the significant problem that cause some students away from college areas because of their skin color (Munenea, 2007).
By the twentieth century and with the entrance of computer to technology many problems solved. Each year many computer-based devices invent, produce and enter to the world markets (Pazos-Arias et al., 2008). These equipments are the inevitable parts of e-learning, because for any system we need some tools and the tools of e-learning are computer-based devices which are the fundamental items for the architecture of e-learning systems (Kambourakisa et al., 2005). The architecture of an e-learning system is shown in Fig. 1. E-learning system as it is shown in Fig. 1 support external collaborative (Sun et al., 2008), activity (i.e., domestic student consult with foreign student) rather than internal collaborative activity (i.e., two domestic students consult), which make it an effective web-based item.
E-learning system is a capable system for educational systems (Chen, 2008), especially about interactive activities which is increasing among students all over the world for improving their knowledge (Chen et al., 2005). The existence of e-learning simulator systems, expert systems and advanced hardwares motivate to fundamental variations in technical implementation of educational systems that commonly force us to discuss cost in e-learning with more depth. Because of the huge attention to virtual learning in this study, it explore the economic aspects of an e-learning implementation.
In this study, we first discuss cost management in educational systems and then analyze e-learning and traditional systems by economic evaluations. After that rigorous statistical analysis are included to survey the most benefit method for education. That statistical analysis is done in different aspects for achieving more reliable results.
COST MANAGEMENT IN E-LEARNING
Definitely cost analysis and budget allocation is a complicated task for e-learning. Because, of the pace of thrive of technologies and innovations and also the increase of functionality and effectiveness for the time factors of new technologies in establishing e-learning has its own cost affects (Lenton, 2008). The budget of e-learning enforcement consists of performance and investment cost forecasting that is shown in Table 1.
Performable steps for determining costs:
| • | Identifying the elements that are fix in budget (facilities, maintenance of applicable softwares, database, infrastructure, ...) |
| • | Preparing a complete description for each cost item |
| • | Predicting aggregation of fix costs |
| Table 1: | Compound budget segments for e-learning enforcement |
| Table 2: | General indexes for budget forecasting |
| • | Preparing essential documents for e-learning implementation committee to survey possibilities and capacity of cost reduction |
| • | Preparing costs for external organization contractions and softwares license |
After costs determination an initial budget is forecasted and provided for the implementation of systems. For preparing, an initial budget some indexes should be noticed. Some general indexes for budget forecasting are shown in Table 2.
When the budget is provided identifying the effective system is required. All researchers emphasize on the economic role of new technologies and talking about cost and effectiveness will be stronger when a system of education is being discussed. Even some researchers argue it as a cost dilemma and some other agreed on the cost effectiveness of computer-based education (Liao, 2004; Duffy et al., 2004). In this study economical analyzing of varied systems implementation considering the following ways:
| • | The equipments that are required in e-learning system. |
| • | The useless time which is spent in colleges in traditional system. |
| • | The money that students spend in traditional system. |
In this way the most effective and efficient system is discovered.
ANALYTICAL ECONOMIC EVALUATION
Many researchers tried to evaluate traditional system and e-learning system economically. For accomplishing that, they compared them in different ways; mostly they attempted to calculate the Rate of Investment for each system.
For economic comparison we need costs and benefits of both educational systems. Cost is a substantial element and it is divided in to direct cost and indirect costand plus by fix cost and marginal cost (Stratman et al., 2003). When the costs and benefits of each system have been got, we then can calculate it by different methods. Many methods such as: net present worth, rate of return and equivalent uniform annual cost are existed for analyzing.
Assumptions:
| • | Benefits are with positive mark and costs are with negative mark. |
| • | Interest rate in Iran is different in varied years. |
| • | The system that has higher net present worth is economically more efficient. |
| • | The formula is according to the factor of [P, F, A]. |
Notations:
| Pnet | : | Net present worth |
| P | : | Present worth |
| F | : | Future worth |
| I | : | Interest rate |
| N | : | No. of period |
| A | : | Annual cost or benefit |
(1) |
For calculus way, it is use the following equations:
| Table 3: | Costs in traditional system of education |
| Table 4: | Costs of e-learning system of education |
(2) |
(3) |
(4) |
As it is mentioned above educational systems in nowadays universe are basically divided to two groups, each of which has their cost and benefits. Present study is derived from engineering educational systems in Iran. As shown in Table 3 the costs of a traditional system of education are as follows:
And also, the costs of implementing e-learning engineering system of education are as shown in Table 4.
According to the former tables the costs in both systems are expressed. Hence the following notations could be defined.
Notations:
| CM | : | Cost of moving |
| CA | : | Cost of accommodation |
| CN | : | Cost of nutrition |
| CE | : | Cost of equipment |
| CR | : | Cost of registration |
| CM | : | Cost of maintenance |
| CEF | : | Cost of excessive facility |
| CT | : | Total costs |
Of course, when we want to use this formula for e-learning system all costs except the cost of equipments, registration, maintenance and excessive facility are zero. For economic comparison, it also need the benefits. There is not any noticeable economic benefit in traditional system, but for e-learning system we can mention plenty of economic benefits as follows:
| • | Opportunity benefit: E-learning system is time boundless the students have enough time for other activities like working which can compensate a large amount of costs, it is the value added for e-learning system. |
| • | Benefit of accommodation: Food, traveling or moving and transportation that were costs in e-learning system. Students would live in their own city and house that reduce the costs and alter them to benefits. We won`t take it into account as a separate benefit but for e-learning system`s equations and tables we put zero instead of their costs. |
| • | Omitting the cost of instructor`s repeated teaching: In this case because everything is recordable there is no need for instructor to teach a same course for many times and the training simulator is used. |
| • | Benefit of quality: Because of being repeatable, i.e., the lesson which is taught can be repeated and the property of being collaborative, i.e., students can discuss a problem with other students in all over Iran. Additionally, just one good professor is required for supporting all the students and it is an important point especially in countries that the number of well skilled professors is too low. In traditional system students should pay more for such a situation. |
Notations:
| BW | : | Benefits of working |
| Bq | : | Benefits of quality |
| Br | : | Benefit of omitting repetition |
| BT | : | Total benefits |
Now, it can develop a linear formula about costs and benefits which help us to compare two systems:
| CT | = | CM+CA+CN+CE+CR+CM+CEF |
| BT | = | BW+Bq+Br |
An implementation of an e-learning educational system throughout Iranian Universities is done. For achieving economic comparison between that e-learning educational system and the traditional system, the anniversary costs and benefits of two systems for ten years are shown in Table 5.
| Table 5: | Costs and benefits of e-learning and traditional systems of education (1996, 2005) |
Now by the stated equations the economic comparison is accessible. In this way, it is possible to identify the more economic educational system. The efficiency of this approach is understood while strategic planners and policy makers are planning for long run in a country.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS BY HYPOTHESIS TESTING
In this research, a hypothesis testing is affordable for discovering more economic system of education as follows:
| H0 | : | μe-learning!μtraditional = δ < 0 |
| H1 | : | μe-learning!μtraditional = δ $ 0 |
where, H0 means the mean total cost of e-learning is less than traditional system against H1 which means the mean total cost of e-learning is more than traditional system. For this hypothesis testing the t-student distribution is used.
Assumption:
| σ2e-learning = σ2traditional |
Notations:
| μ | : | The mean of the population |
| : | The mean of the sample (data) | |
| n | : | No. of samples |
| σ | : | The variance |
| S | : | The standard deviation |
| δ | : | Difference between the mean of the populations |
(5) |
(6) |
(7) |
If
So, the result shows that the mean total cost of e-learning system is more than traditional. Now, what makes e-learning system to have its fans, that are too many, despite the former calculations, is the future trend of the world toward virtual education based on computer-based elements (Johnson et al., 2002) and the quality of engineering education in e-learning system and also the substantial reason which is the economical benefits of e-learning engineering educational system (Fresena and Boydb, 2005)
BLENDED APPROACH
Here, two different hypothesis testing are being used each of which illustrates a result. It choose 3 cost factors of each system to fulfill the hypothesis testing. For traditional system, it choose the cost of accommodation, the cost of equipment and the cost of registration as cost factors for the supposed testing. The rules which used here are as same as described earlier. The test would be as follows:
| H0 | : | μe-learning!μtraditional = δ < 0 |
| H1 | : | μe-learning!μtraditional = δ $ 0 |
where, H0 means the mean total costs of e-learning cost factors are less than traditional system against H1 which means the mean total cost of e-learning factors are more than traditional system.
If
Another experiment is done as a blended approach. In this case, a combination of two systems i.e., traditional system and e-learning system is used simultaneously. Now we select another 3 cost factor in blended situation i.e., costs of the same parameters in two systems are added to each other, that summation is multiplied by 1/4 as a share coefficient. Those factors are the cost of moving, the cost of accommodation and the cost of nutrition. Therefore, we set another hypothesis testing as follows:
| H0 | : | μhybrid!μtraditional ! δ < 0 |
| H1 | : | μhybrid!μtraditional ! δ $ 0 |
where, H0 means the mean total cost of blended cost factors are less than traditional system against H1 that means the mean total cost of blended cost factors are more than traditional system.
If
Corresponding to the above hypothesis tests we come to this result that the blended approach i.e., parallel consuming of both systems, is more cost effective. Nonetheless, in blended approach a student would be at the environment of university time by time which ensues to a better interactive relationship between students.
CONCLUSIONS
Economic comparison is a substantial factor for implementing projects, especially when we want to discuss an engineering educational system. By the means of economic comparison between e-learning engineering educational system and traditional engineering educational system it can realize which system is suitable economically and it helps us to a better decision making and implementation. By finding out varied costs and benefits according to above mentioned formulas economic comparison and also future trend is achievable. As it was illustrated the blended approach provide a more economic situation in the future, the reasons would be lack of environment in traditional system and infinite capacity of e-learning system.