ACCESS TO TECHNOLOGY FOR ONLINE ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Abstract

Is there such a thing as “free” access totechnology in education? Open source technology plays avital role in a cost-effective and robustly accessible onlineengineering education. This role becomes even more vital insome developing countries where there are muchengineering education demand and where the supply ofaccessible technology may be cost prohibitive and not asaccessible. This paper encapsulates some of the freelyaccessible state-of-the-art open source technology and theirapplications in online engineering education and addressessome key features of the current technology. Open sourcetechnology is not very useful without the appropriate tools.Thus, discussions also include some open source tools tofacilitate the access and the cost-effectiveness.Furthermore, Web-based references are providedthroughout the article to direct interested stakeholders tomore information available from the developers and theuser-groups.

Index Terms - distance learning; pedagogy; engineeringeducation; open source technology; freeware; learningmanagement system